NOTES for Mar 3:13-35

The human mind is resourceful; this has been known long and well. So has the fact that it is the greatest flatterer in the world: if a person very much wants to convince himself of something, prove something to himself, or justify something for himself, his mind is glad to try and please him. It will find the needed arguments and offer such interpretations of perfectly obvious facts that, if the person wants, they will allow him to see those facts as completely different from what they really are. This activity of the human mind turns out to be especially "useful" when certain facts simply refuse to fit within the framework of a scheme, concept, or theory devised by the same human mind.

Something like this happened when certain "scribes" (apparently learned rabbis or teachers of Torah from the Jerusalem academy) began to claim that Jesus supposedly cast out dark spirits by using the power of their own head, the ruler of the world of shadows and the kingdom of death, one of whose names was Beelzebul. The absurdity of such a claim was obvious, and Jesus immediately pointed it out to the scribes: if everything were as they claimed, that would be a tremendous stroke of good fortune, because it would mean that a split had occurred in the kingdom of darkness, so that fighting it would now be quite easy. It was obvious to everyone that nothing of the sort was to be expected.

The scribes simply proposed a theory that could explain what was happening without destroying their own concepts, above all their messianic concepts, and some others as well. This Man, they said, violates the Law given by God (in reality, the prescriptions invented by people and proposed as an interpretation of that very Law given by God); therefore He cannot be a man of God; therefore He cannot heal; and since He nevertheless heals, then... at this point the new theory came in handy: therefore, He heals by the wrong power, not by God's power. The logic is preserved, but it has no relation to reality.

Yet a person who wants to deceive himself tries not to notice this, and truly does not notice it, while the mind helps him remain in ignorance. A person's life is determined not by mind and not by logic, but by will, which compels a person to choose and decide. This includes choosing what he wants to see and what he does not want to see. And seeing what one wants or failing to notice what one does not want is not so hard; when needed, both mind and feelings will help with this. They cannot resist the will, which determines who and what a person will be before God and people.

It is interesting: at what moment do the apostles actually become apostles? At the moment when Jesus called them to follow Him, each in his own hour? On the day when He sends them out for ministry? After His resurrection and their meeting with Him, risen from the dead? On the day of Pentecost? It is probably impossible to give a single answer to this question. After all, an apostle is above all a witness, a witness of Christ and of the Kingdom. That means he becomes an apostle at the moment when he begins to bear witness. And what should be counted as the beginning? In essence, the apostles fully understood what the Kingdom was only after Pentecost, when they experienced its breath upon themselves. But they became witnesses much earlier. In a certain sense, their very readiness to follow Jesus immediately after He called them can already be considered a witness.

Of course, the moment when Jesus sends His twelve closest disciples out to preach really does become a turning point on their spiritual path. Before that, they bore witness by their very presence beside the Teacher, by the support they gave Him. Now they had to give independent witness, to walk their own path, certainly connected with the earthly path of their Teacher, but still their own. At the same time, of course, the question arises by itself: how could the apostles bear witness to the Kingdom, which they truly came to know much later, after the Resurrection and Pentecost?

Here, as we can see, one of the fundamental patterns of spiritual life shows itself, as spiritual life exists in our world that is being transformed but has not yet been transformed, and perhaps not only here. The point is that in spiritual life what might conditionally be called training and, just as conditionally, practice exist inseparably. Spiritual life and practice cannot be learned the way we learn one specialty or another in a secondary school or university, so that after finishing the course we then begin work. There is not even the practical internship familiar in such schools. One has to work, so to speak, directly on the job from the very beginning, learning without leaving it. Such learning can sometimes appear too difficult and even risky, but this appears to be the only possibility, at least in our fallen world. And Jesus teaches His disciples exactly this way: on the road to the Kingdom. So that when they arrive there, they will already know and be able to do everything they need. At least at first.

Many people walked the roads of Palestine after Jesus, but not all of them were included among the twelve apostles. As the evangelist Mark says, He "called to Him those whom He Himself wanted." The Lord prepared these disciples for ministry, giving them power to preach the Kingdom of God, heal the sick, and cast out demons. Having followed Christ's call and gone up the mountain with Him, they became completely different people. Is this not what is shown by the fact that Simon is given a completely new name: Peter...

Having received these "supernatural" abilities, the apostles did not turn into magicians proud of their wonder-working skills, because none of this was their achievement. Jesus called those He wanted, not those who were more worthy. The astonishing things done by the hands of the apostles, which we find in the book of Acts, are the action of the Savior Himself, not of those whom He Himself appointed to this ministry. This relationship between the Lord and the disciples is an amazing example for us of what humility is.

The Lord, descending to earth in His self-emptying, limits Himself in His actions to human possibilities. There is simply not enough of Him for everyone; He is not able to heal everyone who wants healing, or to tell about the Kingdom of God to everyone who is ready to hear His good news. Therefore He calls disciples to Himself for help - He will send them to preach the Gospel, heal diseases, and cast out evil spirits. He Himself chooses them for this ministry and gives them new names, as His servants and envoys. Later, the Twelve will become the foundation for His Church.

It is essential for us that Christ's disciples are not merely adherents of a new teaching, participants in certain spiritual practices, or keepers of particular mysteries and rituals, but messengers (Greek: apostles) of their Teacher, called to carry out His ministry - with Him and for Him. There is enough suffering and injustice in the world for us to fulfill our mission: to make the world a little better, a little more open to God's love, and to bring a particle of His presence. This is exactly what makes us true disciples of Christ.

Unwillingness to acknowledge the obvious sometimes gives rise to the strangest theories and assumptions. So it was with the Pharisees: some of them, unwilling to see the Messiah in the Messiah, tried to explain the miracles Jesus performed by saying that He was resorting to the help of dark powers.

To any unbiased person, such an assumption would have seemed at least strange: Jesus had repeatedly cast demons out of people, freeing them from the power of those very dark forces whose help He was supposedly using, if one followed the logic of the Pharisees who accused Him. Jesus points to this contradiction when He rejects the accusation brought against Him: the devil, He says, will not go to war against himself. At the same time, Jesus warns about the most terrible sin, the sin that is not forgiven: blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. At first glance everything is simple and clear: He casts out demons precisely by the Holy Spirit, while the people accusing Him regard and call that Spirit dark and demonic, thereby blaspheming God.

Yet there is also a second meaning here, less obvious, but completely clear on closer examination. This has to do with the lie to which a person often resorts in order to justify his own view of the world, his own attitude toward particular people and events. In fact, when a person acts this way, he deceives himself while also trying to deceive other people, and often even God, for all the absurdity of that attempt. This kind of self-deception ultimately turns out to be blasphemy against the Spirit.

Indeed, if a person can see the truth even to some extent, it is only insofar as God shows it to him. This concerns every truth in general, the very possibility of seeing something that really exists. This is God's world, and only God's will, God's action, and God's determination make it real and true. For a human being, the world is disclosed as something real and true insofar as God shows it to him as such.

Refusing to see the world as God shows it to a person is the beginning and root of lying as a way of perceiving reality. Self-deception like the kind people often resort to, and which Jesus' accusers resorted to in particular, means precisely a conscious refusal to perceive reality as God shows it to a person. This refusal becomes blasphemy against the Spirit and is not forgiven, not because God is merciless, but because, until a person renounces self-deception, he will be able neither truly to see God's world nor to meet the One who created it.

Perhaps the most striking thing in the story by the evangelist Mark that we read today is that the Lord answers the outrageous statement of the scribes at all. A crowd gathers around Him. There are so many people that there is not even time to pause for a meal. One after another they come to the Lord Jesus with questions and pleas, and most of them need healing. It is hard even to imagine such a concentration of suffering in one place, and how terrible it must have looked from the outside... The possessed and the insane, the crippled and the ragged... One could easily become unclean there; one would not find profound theological insight into the law there; there was nothing respectable there. For an intellectual scribe, or even simply for a respected person with a position in society, it was somehow shameful even to approach this crowd. So even today people sometimes say about our Church that only old women and half-mad people go there...

The religion for which the scribes are zealous, by contrast, is very respectable. It does not concern itself with the fate of every outcast. Its goal is to raise man above the ugliness of a suffering world. Only the best, only the very best, are worthy to shine with virtue in the Kingdom of the expected Messiah. And this preacher from Nazareth... The natural conclusion for the scribes is that He associates with such people because He Himself is one of them. And even the obvious miracles, which cannot be disputed, He performs because He is possessed.

The incredible mercy of Christ is revealed in the fact that He receives and keeps receiving these crowds of suffering people, unattractive as all suffering is. He truly became one of us, though not in the sense the scribes think. He came to share this suffering and to bring His immaterial Light into this darkness. Yet even the scribes themselves, unaware of their own weakness and blindness, saying wild things offensive to any human being, are not strangers to Jesus. And in the midst of this crowd, He finds a way to address them too in their own language. It is the language of wisdom, the language of logic, the language of theology. Christ rejects only one thing: the mercilessness hidden behind the scribes' position.

Whenever Jesus entered any village, almost everyone learned about it at once. The crowd constantly surrounded Him, so that there was not even time to eat. Apart from those rare moments when the Savior withdrew to pray, Christ and His disciples were constantly serving those who needed healing and pastoral care. Such an unusual life, directed first of all toward helping others rather than securing one’s own well-being, could not fail to astonish those around Him. It must have seemed especially strange to His relatives, who clearly remembered the days in Nazareth when Jesus was a simple carpenter unknown to anyone. To them, it was as though He had suddenly ceased to be Himself and had lost His reason and common sense.

The evangelist tells us this immediately after the choosing of the Twelve, when several of the apostles received authority to heal the sick and cast out demons. One might think that universal respect and honor were now assured to them, but not everyone can readily accept their way of life. In this case, the decision to live according to one’s calling not only guarantees no benefits, but most often brings misunderstanding and condemnation.

The learned scribes constantly argue with Jesus, do not accept Him, and try to catch Him in His words. But now they are already doing something blatantly outrageous: they point to white and say "black." The Lord heals diseases, casts out demons, in short, tramples down Satan's power in this world, and they are ready to attribute His actions to the prince of darkness himself. The Lord has already said that a tree is known by its fruits, but today He speaks even more definitely: a good work is only from God, and if we do not acknowledge this, then we are close to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. If we learn to see what is good in people, in their relationships, in nature, and in ourselves, we will learn to see God's action and presence in this world. If we thank Him for every good thing we meet on our path through life, we will never confuse white with black, good with evil, the action of a demon with the action of the Holy Spirit.

It is worth paying attention to these words of Christ: "will be forgiven all sins and blasphemies." We know what our sins are. What, this too will be forgiven? Yes, it will, because Jesus says so, and His word is faithful.

And what, just like that, without any conditions? Almost. Because we still have to accept this forgiveness, since all our relations with God have two sides: His and ours. His side is accomplished according to His promise, thanks to Christ's atoning sacrifice, but ours... Jesus says that in order for us to be forgiven, we too need to forgive. That is, we must agree that forgiveness is precisely the most right path in resolving conflicts, in restoring broken relationships. Forgiveness is mercy, the beginning of love. Therefore by our consent we acknowledge the supreme rule of love and accept that God is love. Refusal of this path means rejection of love, and accordingly rejection of God's love. This is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit: refusing God in what He is, love. Then what mercy is there for one who does not accept mercy, what forgiveness for one who does not accept forgiveness? One cannot forgive or save by force.

Jesus' answer to His relatives' request to see Him may seem too harsh. Meanwhile, in other cases He turns this harshness into a principle: whoever does not hate father and mother, He says, cannot be My disciple. Of course, hatred here must be understood in the biblical sense, in a broader sense than the one to which we are accustomed. For us, hatred is inseparable from the desire to destroy what is hated, to make it disappear from the face of the earth. In the Bible hatred can be like that too, but not always. Often it implies only the desire to exclude something from one's own life, completely ending any interaction with the hated thing or, when people are involved, any fellowship with them.

Does this mean that Jesus wants to exclude His relatives from His own life and advises others to do the same? At first glance it may seem so. Of course, if we speak about Him Himself and, in some cases, about one of His disciples, such a choice can be considered the only possible one. Here it is simply a matter of the particular features of a ministry and a path that exclude any family or kinship ties whatever. Christian history and practice know such a path, although a calling to it is a rare enough phenomenon; this is not the rule, but exceptions to it.

Yet something else is also present here: the denial of the absoluteness and self-sufficient value of natural kinship ties and relationships. For fallen humanity, kinship, especially blood kinship, is one of the main psychophysical bonds on which a great deal rests. Physiology here forms a strong alloy with the lower psyche characteristic of fallen humanity, and this alloy joins relatives into a single whole. Sometimes they themselves are not glad of it, but they can do absolutely nothing about it, because the nature of fallen humanity is usually stronger than its spirit.

Such bonds are completely incompatible with the Kingdom and its life, as Jesus testifies with full decisiveness. They are incompatible not because such kinship is bad in itself, but because relationships of this kind and the bonds that generate them usually remain very little conscious for the people bound by them. This means that their spiritual component, if it is not equal to zero, tends toward zero. Relationships must become different; they must be determined not by blood but by spirit. Then they will become fit for the Kingdom. This, however, will already be another kinship, not reducible to nature alone, a kinship consciously built by those who want it and strive for it.

The Gospel often speaks of the reward that those who follow the Lord will receive. Different people picture this reward in different ways. For some it is a “blessing” in the form of wealth, prosperity, comfort, or health in this life; for others it is deliverance from torment after death; for still others it is success in the spiritual life. But few of us would dare to think of the reward Christ speaks about in today’s reading: whoever does the will of God will become His brother, sister, and mother—that is, the dearest thing a person can have—His family. Not merely hired workers in His Kingdom, not merely His flock, not merely a community gathered around the Teacher, but family in the most direct sense: they will have the kind of relationship with Christ that exists between loving brothers, or between a brother and sister, or between a mother and son. Yes, perhaps this is too exalted for our imagination. People could never have conceived such a “reward for good behavior” as becoming relatives of God. Only He Himself could reveal this to those able to receive it.

In Mark, the choosing of the apostles is shown as part of the Savior's earthly ministry, His earthly path. The main emphasis is on healings and cleansings, which is no surprise: healing and liberation from dark powers are the chief manifestations in the fallen world of the Kingdom, of its breath, of its power. Against such a background, the meaning of the apostles' calling and the meaning of their ministry become especially clear.

"Apostle" literally means "messenger." In Gospel times, the ministry of apostles was communal: as a rule, they were representatives of a particular community, sent to others in order to bear witness to something important that had happened in the community that sent them. It could be a miracle, an important prophecy, or in general some event whose spiritual significance went beyond the limits of the community where it had taken place.

In this case, that event was the coming of the Messiah and the fact that the Kingdom, according to His own word, had "drawn near." This Kingdom that had drawn near, ready to enter our world, was the main event that the apostles sent by Jesus were to announce. Words alone, however, were not enough: they had to testify by deed that the Kingdom really was near.

Those deeds were the healings performed by the apostles through the power of their Teacher, for they testified that the power of the Kingdom belongs not only to the One who brought it into the world, but that it can be manifested through everyone who has a share in the Kingdom and its life. If only the Savior Himself could perform miracles and healings, that would mean that He, as the God-man possessing an utterly unique nature, had brought into the world something that could truly belong only to Him and to no one else.

But if His disciples can perform the same miracles and healings, that means they too can become inhabitants of the Kingdom. Of course, according to the measure of their human fullness, they can become like Him and can live one life with Him, a life that will not differ qualitatively from His life. Such a prospect opened the possibility not merely of a person's temporary participation in the life of the Kingdom, but of the complete transformation of human nature itself, which would make a person an inhabitant of the Kingdom not only by participation, but by nature. This means that the Kingdom and its life will be given to man not for a time, but forever.