NOTES for Joh 15:18-21

And again words of consolation are heard... Not only consolation, however, but also the Lord's mercy and love, which every person needs so much. Jesus is already suffering as He encounters alienation and rejection from those around Him. And what should those who follow Him expect? Yes, the growth of the Church, the joy of the Gentiles, and other grace (see, for example, Acts 4:33, 6:7, 13:48), but along with that, rejection as well.

This is said not so that we become fixated on struggle, but so that the virgins have oil in their lamps (see Matt 25:1-13). And in today's passage the Lord says that the situation in which Christians are persecuted is natural, because He Himself is persecuted. The world remains the world, and in it there will always be people who oppose His word.

Yet in these same lines we see amazing support and encouragement. After all, if you are not received, then you share His lot, and that means you are His.

Jesus says: a servant is not greater than his master. The conclusion seems perfectly obvious: if Jesus was persecuted, why should His disciples not be persecuted? What is not obvious is something else. He says that a servant is not greater than his master—and continues: “If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.” It follows that, by the master’s mercy, the servant also receives His privilege: to speak with authority. In what situation can the disciples’ word be “with authority,” like the Teacher’s word? The answer is simple: when it is the same word—or, more precisely, the same Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. When it is He Himself who speaks and acts through them.

Speaking about the inevitability of the persecutions awaiting Christians, Jesus at the same time clearly defines their cause. His words make it clear that these persecutions cannot be called religious, just as Christianity cannot be called a religion. After all, Jesus says nothing about any new religion. He speaks about a new life. About the life of the Kingdom that He brought into the world. And about the fact that this new life is incompatible with the life of the world in its present state. If the matter were religion, conflict perhaps could have been avoided.

Every religion usually has some measure of adaptability. All religions, in one way or another and to some degree, have adapted and still adapt to the demands of this world, and religions that have grown on Christian soil are no exception. But no one has ever managed to adapt the life of the Kingdom to the life of this world. Not in any form of this world: not secular, not religious. It is no accident that Judaism, which became the religious environment and, to a certain degree, the religious form in which the early Christian Church existed, did not accept Christianity.

What in Judaism went beyond the strictly religious framework - the tradition of living Revelation, the teaching about the inner Torah and the living Torah - was accepted and assimilated by Christianity, though some of it was later lost. But Judaism as a religion never became an organic part of Christian life. And the issue here is not newly converted Gentiles, but the fact that Christianity as new life did not fit within any religious framework. Not even within the framework that was part of the soil that had grown it. And the religiosity that grew on the soil of historical Christianity also proved too narrow for Christian life.

It is no accident that Christian history has so often seen cases when Christian righteous people, or saints as they are called in some churches, who sought the fullness of the life of the Kingdom and found it, were persecuted precisely by religious people and religious authorities, now Christian ones. Religion is part of this world, and when it meets the Kingdom and its life, that feature of religion will inevitably show itself. That is why Jesus speaks about the inevitability of persecutions. Until the end of time. Until the full triumph of the Kingdom. And until the full transformation of the very nature of this world.

Christ does not promise those who follow Him the conveniences of life or earthly prosperity. We are clearly warned: if someone wants to see Christianity as a way to solve accumulated problems and a means of achieving comfort, he has come to the wrong door. And the Lord does not refuse us help at all: when solving these problems is necessary, He is ready to respond to our petitions and gives us the right and the opportunity to reap earthly fruits as well. But by placing not God Himself at the center of attention, but His gifts, we turn away from Him, perhaps unintentionally, without thinking about it, but this does not change the essence of the matter.

If we choose Christ, we must be ready to face opposition. The call to carry one's cross, addressed to each of the disciples, flows from a clear vision of the reality of evil ruling in the world. One can evade this call if one wishes; however, then we will inevitably be defeated by evil. Evil often looks attractive and tempting, but its weight, unlike the weight of the cross, will both crush us and press us into the mud.

We are also warned that many of the persecutors will be sure they are serving God, but Christ clearly said of such people that they have known neither the Father nor the Son. The persecutors themselves will not agree with such a reproach and in response will begin to refer to their own theological knowledge. But knowledge of ideas about God is still not knowledge of God Himself, and here the warning applies to all of us: persecutors are not the only ones at risk of making such a substitution. As history shows, the persecuted, when circumstances changed, also became persecutors more than once...

On Good Friday, on a Good Friday that is not distant from us but closer than ever, although we were not yet alive then, Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh spoke these words from the pulpit. '<...> The Mother stood by the Cross; Her Son, betrayed, reviled, cast out, beaten, torn, tormented, was dying on the Cross. And She was dying with Him… Many, surely, looked at Christ; many, surely, felt shame and fear and did not look into His Mother's face. And now we turn to Her, saying: Mother, I am guilty—among others, yes—of Your Son's death; I am guilty—intercede for me. Save us through Your prayer, through Your protection, because if You forgive, no one will condemn or destroy us… But if You do not forgive, Your word will be stronger than any word spoken in our defense… <...> Let us stand before the judgment of our conscience, awakened by Her grief, and bring a repentant, contrite heart. Let us bring Christ our prayer that He may give us strength to awaken, come to our senses, come alive, become human, make our life deep and broad, capable of holding the Lord's love and presence. And with this love let us go out into life to create life, to fashion and build a world, deep and spacious, that would be like a garment clothing the Lord's presence, shining with all the light, all the joy of paradise. This is our calling; this is what we must accomplish by breaking ourselves, giving ourselves, dying if need be—and it is needed!—because to love is to die to oneself, to cease valuing oneself and instead value the other, whether God or a human being; to live for another, laying aside concern for oneself. Let us die as much as we can, let us strive with all our strength to die, so that we may live by love and live for God and for others.' So close to us is that Friday on which the Metropolitan spoke these words, as are all the Good Fridays that have been and will be. 'I am guilty.' I was not alive then, but I am guilty. We cannot regard this day as a symbolic commemoration of events that once took place. No. For the Body and Blood of which we partake are not a symbol, but the very Body and the very Blood. Here I am, and I am guilty here and now. It is frightening when people begin to greet one another for Easter in advance—this really happens, and happens often! Today I know nothing of Easter; I know only one thing: whether woman or man, I am guilty, for He died, and I did nothing to prevent it.

The passage from Christ's Last Discourse with the disciples that we read today reveals to us how the Lord Himself looks at the disciples. The point is that He, in fact, likens them to Himself. The world first hated Christ, and then His disciples. They do not belong to the world. People kept Christ's word, and they will also keep the disciples' word. Finally, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, and the disciples will bear witness to Jesus.

And the Lord says all this while explaining the commandment: "Love one another." This means that likeness to God and adoption as sons, for that is exactly what is being discussed, do not flow from some special superhuman merits of these Galilean fishermen, but from the fact that they will fulfill this commandment. Therefore Christ's words also apply to all who follow Christ's disciples in the Church, which He Himself founded precisely through these disciples.

Jesus builds His conversation with the disciples on a contrast: I give you a commandment to love one another because the world hates you. In the world there is hatred; among you there is love.

Two questions immediately arise here. First, can the disciples' love overpower the world's hatred, if the world is always larger and the disciples themselves do not really know how to love? And second, it is clear that the situation is not so polarized at all: in the world that does not believe in Christ, love is always present (for people cannot live entirely without love), and among Christians love, to put it mildly, is not the most frequent guest either.

As for the first question, one can only note that the matter is not the disciples' own love, but the mercy of the Father; and who is stronger - God or the world's evil - is a question addressed to the very depth of our being, since it has no "external" answer. As for polarization, the matter is apparently not a division into "believers and unbelievers" (it is unclear how to divide them), but the opposition between Christ and "the world" within each person again.

Jesus often warned His followers that they would face rejection in the world, even persecution. And He sees the reason for this not in religious or other disagreements with the majority, but in the very essence of Christianity. For He brought the Kingdom into the world, and He wants His followers to be not adherents of some new teaching—religious, ethical, political, or otherwise—but inhabitants of the Kingdom. He certainly understands very well that the world will always reject such people: they will remain strangers to it until the end of time, until its complete transfiguration. But what can the Church set against the world? Jesus Himself points to the means: love. Of course, love—not as an emotion, but as a way of relating—is itself foreign to the fallen world. It is illogical and serves no practical purpose, for to love is to wish one's neighbor well and strive to make that person's life better, expecting nothing in return. Not only a cynic but even an ordinary pragmatist will say that living this way is unreasonable and impractical: love must at least be mutually beneficial to be at all acceptable to the fallen world. Yet by definition it cannot be so. And Jesus speaks of love not only as a relationship between people, but as the spiritual environment that constitutes the nature of the Kingdom. If ordinary human love, when it is genuine, usually provokes mockery and distrust, the love of the Kingdom can provoke outright hatred. This is hardly surprising: the fallen world preserves the illusion not only of stability but even of immovability largely because its adherents have managed to convince, if not everyone, then a great many people that there is no alternative to the existing state of affairs. When people appear who can offer such an alternative, the natural desire of those who support the existing order is to destroy that alternative—along with the One who brought the Kingdom into the world and those who bear witness to the alternative today.

How piercing are the words about the love that lays down “one’s life for one’s friends”... My own response to these words is bewilderment and the realization that this is impossible by human strength, and therefore the recognition that I myself do not love... How greatly must one love in order to die for others? We have only one example before us, the foremost and most important for each of us: Jesus Christ. How greatly He loves every one of us, since He went to death for our sake! And not merely to death, but to torment beyond all bounds, though He was without sin and without guilt. Here lies the most important thing: to look at Him, understanding that only He can love in this way and share this love with those who believe in Him; to rejoice in our salvation, which came through the Lord and His sacrifice, rather than grieve because we ourselves cannot love like this. Then, in us as in many others, He will be able to do something worthy of His name. This is how, for example, He acted through Maximilian Kolbe and Mother Maria, who were in concentration camps and took the place in gas chambers of those who had been condemned to death.

When speaking to His disciples about the Kingdom, Jesus constantly calls them to love one another (vv. 9-12, 17). This is unsurprising if we recall that Christianity is nothing other than life in the Kingdom, and therefore life in love. Love, of course, is not the Kingdom's only characteristic. The life of the Kingdom is also the breath of God that permeates it and those manifestations of God's power that accompany Jesus everywhere during His earthly ministry. Yet in our still not fully transformed world, the love characteristic of those who bear the Kingdom seems to be its clearest testimony.

Power, for example, is well known to the untransformed world. Indeed, in a world lying in evil there is sometimes even too much of it. Power can sometimes make people submit, but it cannot make them love. Relationships imposed by force, and therefore involuntary, are unsuitable for the Kingdom. Power in the fallen world will hardly be perceived as an alternative to the existing order. The same could be said of spiritual phenomena in themselves, for the fallen world too knows a peculiar kind of spirituality. The spiritual phenomena characteristic of fallen nature differ qualitatively in essence from the spiritual influences that proceed from the Kingdom, of course, but outwardly they can sometimes look alike, and to someone who sees only the outward appearance the difference may be imperceptible. Thus spirituality in itself does not necessarily mean that an alternative to the laws of this world has appeared.

For such an alternative to appear, everyone must be able not only to see clearly that Christ's disciples and followers possess a certain spirituality, but also to discern what it is. In this respect the witness of the love permeating every relationship in the Kingdom is the best, because mutual love visibly demonstrates to the world precisely what it does not have and what it lacks so greatly. Unlike power and spirituality as such, love can therefore become the alternative to the existing world order that the world both longs for and fears. It fears this alternative because, from the standpoint of the laws of our still untransformed world, relationships of love really are contrary to nature. Both nature and society, which has not moved so very far beyond it, follow different principles, relying on power, advantage, and efficiency.

It is no surprise that those who want to live differently in this world become a foreign body within it (vv. 18-19). But some are prepared at least to try to find an alternative, and so those who live by the laws of the Kingdom will face not only persecution. There will also be people ready to listen to their testimony and follow their path (v. 20). Nevertheless, Christ's disciples and followers should apparently neither try to escape persecution nor hope for their preaching to achieve mass success, for, in Jesus' words, “the servant is not greater than his lord.” Only the testimony is fundamentally important. Everyone decides for himself how to respond to it.