NOTES for Luk 11:15-26

We often spend a long time asking God to deliver us from some fault of ours, from a sin we lack the strength to fight, from temptations. If we also make efforts toward this, then the Lord, of course, helps us. If we do not make those efforts, then He does not help us not because He does not hear us, does not want to help, or cannot help, but because that would be violence against our will. After all, if we ask for something but in reality do nothing to fulfill our desire, it means that we do not fully want to change; we may simply be afraid of it. Therefore the Lord waits, and when we take even a very small, but still first, step, the Lord adds a thousand to it.

But what happens after that? The Lord helps us overcome a temptation, or even fully frees us from some sin or fault... and we stop there, quite satisfied. Most often we are satisfied with ourselves. At best, we thank God for it. Yet the Lord has freed a place in our soul for good, for His Light, for the Holy Spirit; but He never enters without being asked. He does not want violence, because He is Love, and love is possible only in complete freedom. He "stands at the door and knocks" and waits for us to call Him, to invite Him into the place where He helped us clear space for Himself. And if we do not call Him, the freed place in our soul again becomes clogged with dirt and dust, overgrown with weeds, and the second time it is often harder to pull them out by the roots than the first.

A simple question: should biblical texts be applied directly or not? Should the words written there be related to what is happening in the world?

After reading the beginning of the book of the prophet Joel, one wants to say that the ways of responding to what is happening described there should be put into practice. After all, as human beings improve their ways of fighting others like themselves in defense of their own opinion, they improve the means, but their goals do not change. In the same way, the ways of responding to evil in the world that the Bible offers do not change: fasting, prayer, and faith that only One has conquered death. The strong man's house has already fallen; the demons have already been driven out.

Looking at the world even from the standpoint of human logic, it is clear that no human powers can protect us from evil. It can be fought with faith that turns into confidence that Jesus, who drives out demons, will also give us the strength to stand against them.

"Whoever is not with Me is against Me, and whoever does not gather with Me scatters." These words, which the Lord speaks today, give us an exhaustive mental picture of what at the same moment is described very vividly by the parable of the seven spirits more evil than the first. "Whoever is not with Me..." What does this mean? As for those possessed by demons, things are more or less clear: they are not with the Lord. But now there are no demons; they have been driven out...

Let us pay attention to the words: coming, he finds it swept and put in order. In this tidiness one sees a symbol of emptiness, for a house can be tidy if its occupants have gone away for a long time, while in a house where people live, such tidiness does not occur. Because when we tidy up, we immediately disturb the order achieved for a moment; this is natural. There is even an English proverb: "this house is clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy." But in the swept condition mentioned in today's reading, we see a symbol of the absence of life, a symbol of abandonment, in other words, a symbol of emptiness.

But what is emptiness, since we know perfectly well that "nature abhors a vacuum" (Aristotle)? Here, it seems, is a metaphysical parallel to our parable. Let us pause for a second and think about what relation this order has not to summer-home settlements in winter, but to our souls.

There exists a type of person, the type of the rationalist, the positivist, the scholar, or let us recall at least the old prince Nikolai Bolkonsky. These are people of enormous intelligence and diligence. But they value above all else the inner order gained by such enormous labor. Moreover, their considerable knowledge gives them an understanding of what ignorance and error are. Therefore they always maintain neutrality. Intellectual, spiritual, religious, political. Because they see so much falsehood, error, and misunderstanding among people and texts...

But a great man said: "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of the greatest moral upheaval (that is, at every time, as we understand it), maintained neutrality" (Dante). Because neutrality, whatever it may be, is the main thing opposed to love. Where there is neutrality, there is no love. Someone may point to the words: "...bearing with one another in love" (Eph 4:2, in Bishop Cassian's translation), saying, there you have a kind of neutrality in love. But here some purely linguistic misunderstanding arises. To bear with someone means to accept, to be together despite incongruity, while neutrality means leaving and closing the door behind oneself. Not slamming the door and running out, but leaving and quietly closing the door.

There is one more thing worth paying attention to today. St. Silouan the Athonite said: "Keep your mind in hell and do not despair." It is impossible to exhaust the meanings of this phrase here; dissertations could be written about it, but one blade of grass can be taken out of the bouquet of its meanings. Coming to God does not consist in soaring in thought and soul toward His unearthly perfection, but in entering the very filth of hell, the filth of lies, stupidity, error, misunderstanding, and cruelty, and being there. Not being afraid of filth, for hell is very filthy. However, perhaps for this one will have to take off the professor's suit...

There is a type of person, especially common among intellectuals, who call themselves agnostics and in their own way take pride in their spiritual neutrality. As a rule, these are people of high morality and deep education, people who are worthy in the highest degree. Such a position seems very attractive in its noninvolvement, its hovering above the fray, and its visible purity.

But the Lord does not accept such a position, and in today's Gospel He explains why: because there is only the appearance of neutrality in it. Pontius Pilate also thought he was washing his hands. Yet in the main text of our confession of faith, the Creed, he alone bears responsibility for the evil that was done.

There is deep meaning in this. Nature abhors a vacuum. If we do not do good, by that alone we do evil. If we do not fill our soul with faith in God, it will be filled with faith in the principle opposed to God. Agnostics think that inside them everything has been swept and put in order, that there is no disorder, no tossing about, no searching, and they do not notice how they let in still worse demons: demons of indifference, demons of insensibility and egoism.

Speaking not of imaginary but of entirely real dark forces, Jesus compares a person freed from the power of dark forces with a cleaned and carefully ordered house, which, however, is by no means safe: the forces of darkness can again take possession of such a person, just as they can again take possession of a house that has no owner. It should be noted that the image of a person as a house into which hostile forces can enter is also characteristic of the Jewish tradition of the Second Temple period.

Hillel, one of the great teachers of that era, says while reflecting on passions and their power over a person: "Passion first looks into your house like a passerby, then enters it like a guest, and in the end settles there like the owner." As can be seen, the thought of a person being seized from within by dark forces was not foreign to the teachers of Torah in the Gospel era, just as it had not been foreign to their predecessors. But when Jesus speaks of a person freed from the power of dark forces as a cleansed house, He has in mind above all the Kingdom by whose power He frees those who need liberation. And judging by His words, for a person in the fallen world there is only one choice: between the Kingdom and the evil in which the world lies. To receive the world apart from this evil, as can be seen, is impossible: even a carefully cleaned house without an owner will not stay clean for long. Of course, the situation was not always like this: before Christ's coming into the world, one could remain clean, ready for sanctification, but not sanctified. As can be seen, in our age, the age of the advancing Kingdom, intermediate states of this kind become impossible: for the Kingdom is now entering the world and changing it, and every action in the world now takes place either in the Kingdom by the power of God or in the untransformed world by the forces of that evil in which the world lies after the fall.

There is no middle ground anymore, not because God has become more demanding, but because the formerly existing illusion of the spiritual "neutrality" of some part of creation has disappeared, the part that once seemed not to participate in the spiritual confrontation. This is no surprise: the history of the Kingdom, begun on the day of Pentecost, is the final stretch of history, leading to the complete transformation of the world, after which the forces of evil will have no place in it. And everyone now has to choose whose side he is on. Liberation from the power of dark forces is only the first step on this path. It is by no means the last.

Few are those whose Jesus’ sharp words would have pleased. We would have preferred something on forgiveness, salvation, love, eternal life … But it is indeed of them that He speaks about: it is just that, it is necessary to be with Him to be able to receive all this. It is not the same situation as in Luc 9:50, where Jesus says: "he that is not against us is for us ". There in Luc 9:50, Jesus admonishes His followers for hostilities towards those who differ from them, but aren’t their enemies. While here He speaks about another thing: God revealed Himself in all his plenitude only in Jesus, the way to eternal life is opened only by Him or through Him {Jesus}; that is why every second lived with Him leads to eternity, and time lived without Him is cut of eternity. Furthermore, halfness is impossible here, we cannot go at the same time to eternity and death. That is why every moment - is either gathering, increase of life, either its dissipation.

Today's reading includes two episodes joined by the evangelist into one account. It begins with the disciples' question about prayer, in response to which Jesus offers them, and through them all of us, the "Our Father" (vv. 1-4). Luke, as one can see, focuses chiefly on the importance of asking, and of asking persistently, as a necessary condition for receiving what is asked (vv. 5-13). It would seem that God is not a human being who needs, like a forgetful or unfriendly steward, to be reminded again and again of what is requested. On the other hand, persistence in this case turns out above all to be evidence that a person remembers his request and that it is truly important to him. Indeed, is it worth granting a request that the one who asks forgets the very next day? One can ask this way only for trifles; important requests are those that a person who truly cares about them is ready to repeat again and again, confirming the seriousness of his intentions.

The same seriousness is at issue in the second part of today's passage. The point is not only that the very idea of casting out demons by the power of their ruler was absurd (vv. 17-18, 21-22). The point is also that for those arguing, everything Jesus did was a kind of game, something remotely resembling their own disputes, which were undoubtedly fascinating but, in essence, demanded no commitment. This explains the demand for a sign that would prove Jesus right (vv. 14-16).

The proof had to be theologically correct; it had to correspond to the "right" ideas of the "right" rabbinic school in order to be accepted. And until such proof was presented, anything would do as an explanation of what was happening, including absurd claims about the "prince of demons." But Jesus Himself was not going to play these games, because for Him everything He did was absolutely serious. And He tries to explain to His listeners the full seriousness of what is happening (vv. 24-26). The games are over; what is at stake is a person's spiritual life and spiritual death.

But professional disputants, as one can see, have no concern for that. What matters to them is whether Jesus will manage to outargue them or not. And in their disputes they lose the Kingdom without noticing it. For the Kingdom is not a game; it is serious. And forever.