NOTES for Mat 9:1-17

It is no accident that there are so many stories of healing in the Gospel: every healing is a witness to the Kingdom. But, as can be seen, not everyone understands the essence of what is happening, even when everything happens right before his eyes. Hence the displeasure of the Pharisees around Jesus: Jesus speaks of the forgiveness of sins, and who can forgive a person's sins except God?

Yet even from the point of view of the ideas generally accepted in those days, the situation in this regard was not so unambiguous. The fact is that the question of a person's forgiveness of sins was connected above all with the day of Judgment and the day of the Messiah's coming, which in the Judaism of the Gospel era coincided. And the Messiah took a certain, though not fully defined, part in God's judgment, testifying for or against the accused; His testimony could become decisive. Then, depending on the outcome of the Judgment, a person received, or did not receive, the right to enter the messianic Kingdom.

Jesus, however, somewhat corrects these familiar ideas: He speaks of the Kingdom entering the world, giving everyone the opportunity to begin with a clean slate. He speaks of the forgiveness of sins with reference not to the Judgment, nor even to the judgments a person may pass through before the day of the final Judgment. He speaks of the fact that the sins of everyone who touches the Kingdom and shares in its life are forgiven precisely because that person begins a new life in the Kingdom, leaving the old one behind. And every healing is an act of faith, faith as trust in God and in the One who brought the Kingdom into the world. That is why Jesus says to the healed man: "...your sins are forgiven."

For the Pharisees, as can be seen, what is happening has no relation to the Kingdom. At best they see simply a miracle, an action of God which by itself gives the One through whom it is performed no right to substitute Himself for God, or His own determinations for God's judgment. Here passes the boundary between the world and the Kingdom, the very boundary that is so clearly visible from the Kingdom and often completely invisible from the world.

Sometimes there is no strength to begin some task, no strength to reassess one's position - civic, religious, whatever it may be - and simply no strength to get up. There is no strength because we have spent it on something or because an illness torments us; it does not matter. Sin or sickness - does it matter? Perhaps sin, perhaps sickness. Often no line can be drawn between them.

We very much want this, we very much want clarity, but we do not have it - and we do not need it, for there is only good and evil, and only between them is a strict demarcation line needed. But there is no need to classify either one or the other. We will be told: we do not know whom to go to - a doctor or a priest. It is worth going to both, but it is important to remember: we are going to God so that He may heal us.

Today people speak much about cooperation between the priest and the psychologist. And this is good: the time of divergence between types of activity has passed, since a fundamental limit has been reached, and before us is a time when convergence slowly begins again. This will enrich everyone, for in every phenomenon of the visible world there is the imprint of the Creator - but it is revealed from different angles. To see here not a "flat" picture, but a "three-dimensional" one, costs great labor - but this labor is blessed

Today the evangelist Matthew tells us about the healing of the paralytic, which Mark and Luke also mention. Its essential feature, apparently, is the words that the Lord Jesus Christ says at that moment: "Take heart, child! Your sins are forgiven you." These words provoked sharp rejection from the scribes, but by the miracle itself the Lord confirmed His authority to forgive sins. For us, what matters most is the connection between suffering and sin.

The many healings performed by the Lord Jesus Christ by no means always imply that diseases and sufferings are caused by the person's own sins. It is enough to recall the healing of the man born blind. But for the paralytic, it is precisely God's forgiveness that becomes the source of healing. This means that the cause of his suffering is sin. This is important because, when we come into contact with suffering, we experience its irrationality and meaninglessness very painfully, and we rarely manage to remain on the boundary between bewilderment and complaint. Seeking an explanation, a person almost inevitably asks the question, "Why does God allow this?" But as we see, God did not create death and suffering, and it is not Him but ourselves whom we should blame for them.

In essence, it is separation from God as a result of sin that makes us subject to death. Therefore forgiveness becomes for us the gift of freedom and the restoration of what was lost. The Fathers of the Church constantly remind us of this.

Christ can heal physical illness, and He has already healed many sick people, but this time He chooses to begin with the forgiveness of sins. This is the main thing needed not only by this particular paralytic, but by everyone who comes to Christ. To this day many who come to church for healing receive it, yet even then we are so reluctant to admit that our most serious illness remains our habitual, long-standing sin. Christ does not refuse at all to heal bodily illnesses, yet already in the healing of the paralytic He clearly showed what should follow what.

Meanwhile, by publicly declaring the forgiveness of sins, Christ truly bore witness to Himself as God. The Pharisees do not accept the works Christ performs and are ready to accuse Him of blasphemy, but they are right that no one except God can forgive sins. From this point on, the crack grows between the educated scribes, who do not want to entrust themselves to Christ, and the simple people, who understand the subtleties of the law less well and often do not understand who Jesus is, but are drawn to Him.

For the scribes, distrust will cancel out their knowledge; for simple people, trust will fill in theoretical gaps and lead to a deeper understanding of the meaning of revelation.

By what right does Jesus do what He does? How dare He forgive sins, if every sin is guilt before God and only God can forgive it or not forgive it? This is a question asked not only by the scribes, but by every person who has not found faith in Christ. Let us try to answer it this way: if doing the Father’s will makes us His relatives, then the perfect fulfillment of His will, such as we see in Christ, means that Jesus is the Son of God (Matt. 3:17, 17:5) and bears witness to the fullness of the unity of the Son and the Father. Thus Jesus simply does what His Heavenly Father desires: He forgives sins and thereby heals people’s infirmities.

Perhaps the hardest thing in today's reading is demons. Many people do not know what they are, many shift their own guilt onto them, and others see only them everywhere. How should we relate to this extremely difficult concept in Scripture? After all, even in the Lord's Prayer we say, repeating after Jesus: "...deliver us from the evil one." This means that understanding what this power is and recognizing its existence is a necessary condition for praying the Our Father consciously.

The first and main thing to understand here is this: demons, whatever mental form we give them, are creatures, just as we are. In this sense they are on the same ontological level as we are, or even lower, for we are in some measure joined to God and to His true being. Therefore, in any case, they are not stronger than we are, and there is no need to fear them. On the contrary, they fear God and in fact are subject to Him. This is shown to us very clearly today in the story with the Gergesenes: we see how obediently they are ready to come out when they see the true power of Christ. The apostle James says this exactly: even the demons believe, and tremble (James 2:19).

The second important observation, and it is visible from today's reading, is that they recognize God faster than ordinary people do. Why? This is very easy to understand: they are the ones who resist Him, and for that very reason they know Him well. So one should not simply recoil from the mentally ill, fearing them as if they were lepers; at times one must listen very carefully to what they say, because amid delirium one can discern flashes of meaning that are inaccessible to us.

And finally, when we are afraid and it feels as if demons are tempting us, we must call upon Christ in all simplicity, and that alone will be enough for them to fall silent, because they fear Him greatly. Better still, do not let go of the hem of His garment at all. Then, when asked whether we know demons, we will be able to answer with a clear conscience: no, we are not good with demons.

Already in antiquity the psalmist said: "Blessed is the one whose sins are cleansed." A person experiences the sense of his own sinfulness very painfully, especially if this experience is hidden and unconscious. A vague, dark feeling of guilt bends us toward the ground and paralyzes every creative activity. The sense of our own imperfection, or, as psychologists say, a lack of positive self-esteem, drives us almost more strongly than hunger or thirst. At times this experience pushes us toward truly terrible things, but most importantly, it deprives us of joy and of the sense of the fullness and meaningfulness of life.

The whole experience of humanity converges on the thought that our imperfection and guilt are closely connected with humanity's disasters and sufferings. And this truly is captivity, a blockade that we are powerless to break through. That is why it is so important to hear these words of Christ about forgiveness. For by them He opens for us a new life in which we can be free and live meaningfully, fully, and joyfully. And nothing is required for this: no social reconstruction of society, no titanic efforts to change our own biography... Only faith that Christ's words about forgiveness are true.

Sin and illness have always been connected in the consciousness of religious people. So it was in the Judaism of Gospel times. It was taken for granted that illness, especially serious illness, was the consequence of a sin committed by a person. If a person had been sick from birth, people thought that he suffered because of sins committed by his parents: it was assumed that the consequences of sin could spread to the sinner's whole family line. In order to recover, one had to repent sincerely of the sin committed, and then God, having forgiven the sin, could deliver the repentant person from the illness as well. And when Jesus tells the person He heals that his sins are forgiven, there is nothing unusual in this.

Except for one thing: it turns out that, saying this, He forgives sin on God's behalf. And this raises the corresponding questions in those who hear Him: indeed, only God Himself can forgive sins, so who is this strange wonderworker who puts Himself in God's place? If Jesus had simply healed the man, there would have been fewer questions: it would mean God's power acts through Him, and such a thing is possible. Something similar had happened before; miraculous healings had been known from ancient times, in particular through the prayers of righteous people.

But here a claim to God's prerogative was voiced, and the reaction was corresponding. Meanwhile, Jesus said exactly what He intended to do and did. The matter is not a simple healing. An ordinary healing can indeed sometimes happen through the prayers of an ordinary person, if that person is righteous. But in such a case the prayer of the righteous person becomes part of the action of God that heals the person. Such healing costs no small spiritual effort, above all, of course, for the one who asks for healing. For in this case God's work is done first of all through him. And in the fallen world it is very difficult to resist the evil of which any illness is a manifestation.

Jesus heals differently. He simply introduces the person into the Kingdom. That is why He tells the one He heals that his sins are forgiven: now, having been joined to the life of the Kingdom and having trusted Jesus, the healed person begins to belong to Him, and from now on he will have to resolve the questions connected with his sinfulness personally with Jesus.

The Savior forgives the healed man's sins as the King of His Kingdom, into which He introduces the person He heals. And there, in the Kingdom, healing happens by itself and much more simply than in the fallen world: there is no place for evil in the Kingdom, and illness there simply disappears by itself. Healing a person despite his nature spoiled by sin is much harder than freeing him from illness by freeing that nature from the power of sin and changing it. Jesus acts precisely in this way, as He says directly to the people around Him. Whether to believe Him or not is for them to decide.

Today's passage begins, perhaps, with the most personal moment in the Gospel according to Matthew - the moment when Jesus calls Matthew himself. Everything is described very simply: Jesus said to him, "Follow Me," and Matthew got up and, leaving everything, went after Him. Matthew does not describe his inner experiences, but they were certainly there, because at that moment his life was broken into two parts. This is how the Lord builds His Church.

After that Matthew again tells of His preaching of the Kingdom. It turns out that Christ's teaching, while not contradicting the Scripture of the Old Testament, is in constant conflict with legalistic interpretations of that Scripture. Perhaps the key to this conflict is found in verse 13.

What exactly so outraged the Pharisees when they saw Jesus beside a tax collector? Association with a sinner? But the Torah too knows conversion and repentance. More than that, it even knows special purification rituals performed by repentant sinners to be cleansed from the impurity caused by that sin. In essence, nothing more was required of the sinner: he had only to repent of it, then perform a purifying washing and bring a purification sacrifice, otherwise called a sin offering or guilt offering. At the same time, however, one indispensable condition had to be observed: it could concern only a sin committed involuntarily, through ignorance or weakness. If the sin had been committed consciously and voluntarily, no purification at all could be in question, even if the sinner repented of his sin deeply and sincerely. God, as was believed, could of course forgive a person even such a sin, but it was impossible to be freed from the consequences of a deliberate sin; they weighed on the person his whole life.

The tax collector's sin was exactly such a sin: everyone who took up this work entered into conscious cooperation with the Roman authorities, and not forced cooperation but voluntary cooperation. In the synagogue environment this was considered betrayal, a terrible and unforgivable sin, so that the one who committed it was forever cut off from his people, losing everything he could count on as a representative of his people, including the covenant and all the promises connected with it. Jesus, meanwhile, considers that even such a sinner, if he repents and turns, can be saved.

So what, then: was the pre-Christian approach too rigorist and completely without mercy? Hardly. Rather, one can think that with the coming of Christ the spiritual situation in the world in general, and among the people of God in particular, changed radically. Previously the inner intention with which an action was performed completely determined its consequences, and a conscious sin committed once, or rather its consequences, truly weighed on a person for his whole life, so that even God could not change it: for then, in essence, the world would have had to be created anew. But in the Kingdom one can begin with a clean slate, even one who has sinned consciously and voluntarily: repentance for what has been done is enough. And not because the world has become different, but because the laws of the Kingdom entering the world differ from the laws of this untransformed world. And the chance for salvation is now given to everyone who wants to be saved.

It is hard and repulsive each time to stumble in yourself over the same nasty things. It feels as though you are walking in a closed circle. Again you repent of what you thought had already been passed through and understood. And you say to yourself, "Maybe I should terminate the agreement? Nothing comes of our cooperation."

But what do you hear in response? "I came to call not the righteous, but sinners." The Lord called a sinner, pulled him out of the mud, and brought him near to Himself. He said that He needed the sinner. And it turns out there was no agreement; there was a call and consent. My voluntary consent to answer His call to leave everything except Him. And then, once again recognizing my nature as a sinner, a tax collector gathering where he did not sow, recognizing the sickness whose destructive work you keep encountering even after it has been treated, the work that has deadened parts of you, I come to the physician.

I am still pained by myself, but I know who heals all this, who quiets the pain, who gives strength to rise. And, returning, you repeat the words of Psalm 106: "...He sent His word and healed them, and delivered them from their graves. Let them praise the Lord for His mercy and for His wonderful works for the children of men."

It is interesting that Matthew himself tells us about his calling. He gives no special details of that calling, none of the psychological particulars that we like so much. Everything happens as in the story of Abraham: he was called—and he went. All the rest is left for us to imagine. Matthew was a publican, a collector of taxes—a taxman, in today’s language. We all understand how full of temptation this work is. In other words, he collects money from people, ostensibly not for himself but for the state, yet for himself as well. And at Jesus’ first word he leaves all this and follows Him. There is another point too: he collects money from God’s people for pagan Rome, so in Jewish eyes he is doubly a sinner—a collaborator and an outcast with whom no one associates. Perhaps he had long wanted to leave this hateful work that burdened his conscience, but could not because he had no hope that anyone would accept him. Then Jesus, the Teacher, breaks through this wall of alienation and hopelessness and calls him. How often we consider people irretrievably mired in sin and pass them by, comforting ourselves with the thought that we are believers and go to church! Jesus’ words are addressed to us: “Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

Every believer would consider it shameful to do what the future apostle Matthew does: collect taxes for the occupying Roman authorities. Nevertheless, the Lord calls such a man to be an apostle. Matthew himself emphasizes in his Gospel that this was not an isolated case, and the evangelist Luke also testifies to it. This is important because, according to the logic of religious psychology followed by the Pharisees, Christ should have called only those who had devoted their whole lives to religion: Pharisees and scribes, theorists and practitioners of piety. Some of them do indeed become His disciples, but they are few.

For the most part, the Lord calls ordinary people who are accustomed to working constantly and do not claim social importance or spiritual authority. Of course, as the evangelist John writes, the Lord had no need for anyone to testify to Him about a person, for He Himself saw into the human heart. Of course, He calls those who are ready and able to answer His call. Yet perhaps the fact that these are mostly ordinary people tells us something important about the essence of Christian faith: it concerns practical life first and contemplation only afterward.

The Evangelist does not give us even a hint that Matthew could have doubted whether the Lord was calling him. For the Pharisees, sharing a meal with sinners was madness, just like inviting a tax collector to become a disciple. It was precisely this departure from the standard notion of right and wrong that aroused indignation in their souls. There are moments in our life when we truly understand what God is calling us to do, when we discern His voice addressed specifically to us. Yet we often begin to doubt, especially when He asks something of us that we ourselves did not expect.

Christ called Matthew at the moment when he was carrying out his official duties, so hated by the whole people. Christ does not demand that Matthew repent beforehand, does not preach sermons to him, but immediately calls him to follow Him.

Meanwhile, not only for the fastidious Pharisees, but surely for a huge part of the people as well, Christ's association with tax collectors, the collaborators of their time, appeared monstrous. Few preachers of that era, even the wisest and most merciful, would have addressed such people without risking their own reputation. But the Lord sees hearts, and Christ saw Matthew's readiness to leave everything and follow Him, a readiness to do something many people with spotless reputations proved unable to do.

Here before us is a witness to the possibility of forgiveness even for people whom public opinion has grown used to considering hopeless, and this means that forgiveness is possible for any of us. And here, too, we see a warning to those who consider themselves, if not impeccable, then "not the worst," that is, again, each of us: do not exalt yourselves over anyone, for you know nothing about those whom you have grown used to despising.

Jesus' aphoristic phrases always have several meanings. So it is with these words: first, with them He reproaches the Pharisees because in their condemnation of tax collectors and sinners they are merciless; they do not understand other people's troubles or feel another person's pain. "The well-fed do not understand the hungry." Second, by condemning Jesus for associating with sinners, the Pharisees reveal their blindness, failing to see that Jesus comes not as a sinner to sinners, but as a physician to a patient. And third, Jesus invites everyone around Him to think: if sin is a sickness, then who is the physician able to heal this sickness? And if I exalt myself above others, considering myself healthy, then what physician am I rejecting in my own life?

Is Jesus saying that one must necessarily become "sick" in order to call the physician ("if you do not sin, you will not repent")? Of course not, but it is vitally necessary to recognize one's already real sickness.

Is sacrifice not an expression of love? After all, every sacrifice means giving up part of one's life: in the form of possessions, money, or time. Giving up one's life - is that not love?

Let us look from another side. A certain husband gives his wife a magnificent bouquet of roses every year on their wedding anniversary, while on all the other days he cheats on her shamelessly. Does the wife not have the right to exclaim, "I want love, not a bouquet!"? Worst of all is if the husband also thinks that everything is fine with him and does not understand why his wife is dissatisfied - after all, he gives bouquets! So it is in the spiritual life: it is impossible to call to repentance someone who does not see his sin and justifies himself.

At first glance it is surprising: right now, during Peter's Fast, the Church reads a passage in which Jesus' disciples do not fast, while the main champions of asceticism are Christ's opponents, the Pharisees. Yet through this paradox the Lord explains to us that the whole life of a Christian, including ascetic rules, is based not on the old law but on personal relationship with Him. Whether the "sons of the bridal chamber" should fast depends precisely on the living presence of the Bridegroom, for only in Him do we find true life and reign.

John's disciples did not seem to realize that by their question they had put themselves on the same level as the Pharisees. Even they found many of their teacher's words and actions hard to understand. And although John's call to repentance surpassed any teaching of the Pharisees, what mattered to his disciples was not so much being changed through repentance as fasting exactly as the Pharisees did, that is, observing the traditional regulations.

Christ's answer gives hope, but at the same time it also causes unease. He justifies the disciples' right not to observe the letter of any regulations by the fact that He Himself is beside them. In essence, He is trying to make clear that rituals have meaning only as a means of communion with God and must not become an end in themselves when He is near. But here Christ also warns that times will inevitably come when He will not be beside the disciples, and then the disciples' outward piety will again become a way of communion with God. The parables Christ speaks here about a patch on an old garment and about pouring new wine into old wineskins are widely known; they have become proverbial sayings. But it is no accident that they were spoken in answer to John's disciples, who had only a vague idea that what Jesus had brought was not simply an interpretation of the ancient commandments by one of the remarkable preachers, but the New Life itself, come from above.

The disciples of John the Baptist do not ask Jesus about fasting by chance: after all, among the Pharisees and among members of other religious brotherhoods, fasting was considered one of the basic religious rules, without the observance of which one could not speak of piety. At the same time, the original meaning of fasting had been thoroughly forgotten: fasting symbolized above all mourning, in particular mourning for dead relatives, as well, however, as mourning connected with events on a national scale.

Of course, in the course of the development of the Yahwistic, and later the Jewish, religious tradition, fasting acquired a new meaning, one connected with spiritual life proper: in religious life, fasting came to be associated with longing for God, with sorrow caused by the feeling of abandonment by God. And, of course, fasting became an expression of the fear and trembling that seize a person awaiting the near judgment of God; such, for example, was the fast of Yom Kippur.

But often in Gospel times fasting became simply a form of religious piety, an element of religious life obligatory for everyone and no longer connected either with concrete events in a person's life or with his spiritual state. This was the case, for example, among the Pharisees, who, judging by what we know of them today, fasted at least two days a week. The especially zealous members of the brotherhood did so even more often, and these fasts were often effectively public: those fasting demonstrated in every possible way their sorrow over their own sins, their fear and trembling before the approaching day of Judgment.

Jesus, however, restores fasting to its true meaning, not a religious meaning but a properly spiritual one. Fasting is not a religious obligation and not a rule of piety; it is the external expression of a particular spiritual state, especially abandonment by God. There is nothing here to imitate and no reason to do so: the time will come when fasting will become something completely natural, but for now there is no need for it, and it is not worth portraying a sorrow that does not exist.

Jesus, of course, does not frame the question this way by chance. After all, He is preparing His disciples and followers for life in the Kingdom. In the Kingdom there is no place for playacting and imitation, even if it is saturated with very important religious meanings. Here there is no longer any need for religion, just as there is no need here for symbols and allegories. Here is life itself, moving according to its own laws.

Much has been said and written about the world's reaction to Jesus' witness to the Kingdom that He brought into the world, just as much has been said and written about its reaction to Him Himself. And yet the brightest illustrations of this reaction are precisely the Gospel stories, despite the brevity often characteristic of them.

Such is also the story of Jesus' healing of the possessed man. In itself, from a spiritual point of view, such a healing was an outstanding event, even apart from the fate of the particular person freed from the burdensome power of the dark forces over him. But the inhabitants of those places were pagans, and in those times this meant practical irreligion. It is hard to say what they thought about the possessed man living not far from them, but in any case his healing, it appears, did not impress them very much. Something else impressed them instead: the loss of an entire, and probably rather large, herd of pigs.

Of course, the first reaction of anyone reading the Gospel to such indifference will be surprise, and perhaps indignation. But if one thinks about it, the reaction of the inhabitants of a typical pagan city was completely natural for pagans. Pagans are simply people who live by the laws of the untransformed world and know, or do not wish to know, any others. And in the untransformed world, inertia, worldview stereotypes, and behavioral patterns play an enormous role. People who live by its laws feel truly comfortable in it, and it never occurs to them that this comfort is deficient by definition.

The abnormality of the situation is emphasized by the constant presence beside the inhabitants of the city of a herd of pigs: from the point of view of the Torah, pigs are unclean animals, defiling the place where they live and the people who come into contact with them. Accordingly, the pagans in the Gospel story live in a state of uncleanness that is normal for them, just as it is generally normal for the fallen world. And all their behavior, all their reactions are "tuned" to this fallen world. The spiritual dimension in the proper sense of the word does not exist for them, while they understand very well what material loss is. And therefore the presence of Jesus frightens them.

Of course, trouble can be expected from Him, especially if the trouble is the very presence of the spiritual dimension in one's own life. And the townspeople honestly, with all the frankness characteristic of man, ask Him to leave. And He leaves: the Kingdom is not imposed by force; it can be accepted only by free will.