NOTES for Luk 3:17

In Gospel times, the coming of the Messiah was associated by most of those who awaited Him with the day of God's judgment. This is no surprise: the Messiah was to establish His Kingdom on earth, and not everyone could enter that Kingdom, but only the righteous. Therefore the day of the Messiah's coming and of the arrival of the Messianic Kingdom, by definition, had also to become the day of Judgment. True, this Judgment was understood in different ways, so that in popular religiosity one can find many images describing it.

John uses one of these images in his preaching. At its foundation lies the picture of humanity's separation, and this separation is symbolically described as the winnowing of wheat at harvest. This is an image to which the Savior Himself also turned more than once during His earthly ministry. As we can see, it proved very apt for describing what will happen on the day of the Kingdom's triumph and the final Judgment. The subject is the separation between the righteous and sinners. But here there is not simply separation; rather, there is a kind of examination, a test of fitness.

Grain to one side, chaff to the other: this is clear. But grain differs from chaff qualitatively. They even have different weight, and it is different because grain is filled, while chaff is empty; it is only husk, an empty shell. Here lies the main distinction between those entering the Kingdom and those remaining outside. The whole question is with what a person comes to the threshold of the Kingdom: whether he is full or empty. And this, in turn, depends on the path the person has traveled.

Righteousness, after all, is connected above all with that presence of God without which it simply cannot exist. This presence is what fills a person. It makes him grain. But if there is nothing of the kind, if a person goes through life seeking no presence of God or not thinking about God at all, then there will be nothing for him to be filled with. Then at the end of the path, at the threshold of the Kingdom, he will prove empty. It is not God Who judges and drives a person away from this threshold. One could say that the person judges himself. Or, more precisely, the path he has traveled becomes judgment for him: traveled either with God or without Him.

As he moves into the main part of his Gospel, Luke weaves into a single narrative the continuation of John the Baptist's story, the beginning of Jesus Christ's ministry, and His two genealogies. Two indeed! In this paradox the joyful Good News is revealed: Jesus is called the Son of God twice—within human history, that is, in the genealogy proper that ascends from Joseph to God, and in divine revelation, when the Father's voice sounded from heaven during His baptism. This means that history and revelation merge into a single whole in the life of one Man, and now God's word will sound from human lips. It also means that the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth, which the reader will encounter in the following chapters, truly reveal God: He is found in the very midst of earthly events, on the streets and plains of Palestine and—in the reader's heart.

Today's reading brings us back once again to the figure of John the Baptist. Here again we encounter the different visions of the evangelists Matthew and Luke, this time regarding John's ministry. Unlike Matthew, Luke, in addition to the general content of the prophet's preaching (vv. 3-9), also mentions the advice John gave to people of different professions and social groups (vv. 10-14). This advice differed in different cases, but it also had something in common: all of it, in one way or another, was connected with the question of keeping the commandments given by God. Clearly, when John recalls Isaiah's words about the need to "prepare the way of the Lord" (v. 4), he has in mind first of all the importance of following the Torah. It would seem that there was nothing fundamentally new in such an appeal: all the Old Testament prophets spoke about this. Yet there was also something unusual in John's activity.

It is no accident that the evangelist's account mentions tax collectors ("publicans") and soldiers (vv. 12, 14). Both groups were outcasts in Jewish society in Gospel times. Publicans were seen as collaborators, working with the occupiers and robbing their own people. As for the soldiers, the reference here is probably to Roman soldiers who were either pagans, which is improbable, or proselytes, former pagans who had converted to Judaism. The social position of such proselytes was rather ambiguous: they were not considered full members of the Jewish community, only their children became such, while to their fellow tribesmen they were outsiders, and often traitors.

John, however, evidently accepts everyone regardless of social or religious status. He obviously did not think that the coming messianic Kingdom would be given only to orthodox Jews. The way was open even to those whom the people of God considered lost, and lost forever: the publicans. For they had committed their sin consciously and freely, and from the consequences of such a sin, it was believed, one could not be cleansed, even if later the sinner sincerely repented of what he had done. God could accept his repentance, but the defilement left by the sin would rest forever on him and on his descendants.

Meanwhile John did not push away even the publicans, requiring only that after the cleansing washing ("baptism") they should no longer violate the norms of the Torah (v. 13). For him, evidently, cooperation with the Roman authorities was not as terrible a sin as it was for most of his contemporaries. But of course that was not the only point. For John, as no one else, understood that the Messiah whom he awaited and whose coming he testified to would bring into the world the Kingdom where everyone would be given the chance to begin life with a clean slate. And his own task was to prepare the people of God for this new life. A life in which, after repenting, even the most terrible sinner can share, if only he is able to accept the chief gift of the Kingdom: the gift of God's love.

The word “repentance” has become familiar to us. We repent simply because we are supposed to. We repent of many sins, but does our life change as a result? If we bear no fruits of repentance, we may safely apply to ourselves the Baptist’s words about a “brood of vipers” and the “axe laid to the root of the trees.” It is clear what fruits tax collectors and soldiers should bear. But what if we belong to neither group? What are we to do?

To understand this, we need to work seriously on ourselves, pay attention to our lives, and resolve to live differently. Then the possibility opens before us of being baptized with the Spirit and fire and of following the beloved Son, and we may hope to hear the cherished words: “In you I am well pleased!”

The beginning of John's preaching of repentance is tied to a historical date, giving us the opportunity to relate the events of the Gospel to occurrences that attracted far more attention from contemporaries and later from historians. Endless wars are being fought, empires rise and fall, and rulers ascend thrones, while in the midst of impressive bloodshed a wandering preacher calls sinners to repentance. Yet not much time will pass before the wars and reigns dissolve into the darkness of the ages, while darkness will be unable to overcome the memory of John's preaching, which seemed so inconspicuous.

The chronological points of reference are mentioned for more than just the contrasting perception of events. People, who tend to plunge into one extreme or another, are accustomed to choosing one thing only, either the temporal or the eternal. But the biblical view brings the apparent extremes into harmony, recognizing the importance of both the eternal and the temporal. Yes, the temporal is valuable too, but it acquires special value where it meets the eternal.

John denies that he is the Messiah; he is carrying out a ministry that must fit within the bounds of his own time. But he prepares the coming of the One who will reveal the face of eternity in the midst of the temporal world.

John's preaching and his call to conversion (called repentance in the Synodal Translation) confront us with a paradox that we do not notice immediately. Irreligious people—the tax collectors, soldiers, and ordinary people in general who do not think much about religion—respond to John's call more readily than religious people such as the Pharisees, who formed the religious elite of Jewish society in the Gospel age. In principle there is nothing surprising here: every religious person is confident that conversion is needed not by him, already a believer, but by those who are far from faith. Faith in such a case is, of course, always identified with religion, just as spiritual life is identified with religious life. John, however, evidently calls everyone to conversion, both the religious and the irreligious. His task is to prepare the people for the coming of the Messiah, and therefore for receiving the Kingdom. Mere religiosity is no longer enough here, and even human faith alone is not enough; what is needed is such fullness of trust in God and such readiness to entrust oneself completely into His hands and His will as fallen man does not know in principle. From the standpoint of what the Kingdom requires, there are no converts, just as there are none ready to enter it: not one person is ready, and everyone must be converted. This is where irreligious people find it easier: they have nothing to lose, they make no claims concerning spiritual life, and they readily agree that they need conversion. Religious people find it harder: admitting that they need conversion means largely devaluing their own religious achievements in the eyes of others and in their own eyes as well. Such a decision is not easy, and it evidently proves beyond the strength of many Pharisees.

Manifesting Himself in the waters of the Jordan, the Lord enters the course of human history with authority. The waters of this river become cleansing and life-giving, like the waters over which the Spirit of God hovered on the first day of creation. The Almighty comes to wash us with the Holy Spirit and fire. Who can withstand the power of the Father’s favor revealed to us in Christ Jesus? And yet John the Baptist speaks of people’s responsibility for what is taking place. Bear fruit worthy of repentance! He calls for a change of life, for complete conversion. The Day of the Lord, great and terrible, is coming. But on that day the Lord comes in quietness and humility, and each of us must make an effort to enter His Kingdom, now opened to us. It therefore matters what we are like when Christ manifests Himself to us. His manifestation does not violate our freedom. On the contrary, the Theophany is the only thing that gives this freedom meaning.