NOTES for Mat 17:10

This conversation takes place immediately after the Transfiguration of the Lord, when Jesus asks the disciples to keep silent about the fact that they have now received confirmation from above that Jesus is the Messiah, the Savior awaited by the house of Israel. And the disciples' question is quite natural, although prompted by doubt. From childhood they know that the Messiah's coming must be preceded by the coming of the prophet Elijah, and now the tradition they have known since childhood comes into conflict with their own experience, just lived through. And Christ lets them understand that there has already been a man who "prepared His ways," John, whom people did not accept and killed. And He Himself is to face rejection and suffering. These terrible words are a warning to all of us.

Very often we have a fixed idea of how grace can and cannot be manifested, trying to squeeze the divine plan into our own earthly ideas. Then the same danger lies in wait for us: failing to notice, overlooking, unintentionally rejecting the one sent by God, and thereby rejecting Him Himself. There is only one way: to listen to the Word of God and live in trust, without relying on ready-made formulas and without placing excessive hopes on someone else's experience.

By asking about Elijah, the disciples are trying to find out from Jesus whether His coming corresponds to the messianic prophecies. If He is the Messiah, He should have been preceded by the second coming of the great prophet. Christ's answer makes them shift their perspective somewhat. The Lord does not say that Elijah has already come and therefore that He is the awaited Savior. He says that John the Baptist was that very forerunner, but directs attention not to the fact of His own messiahship that follows from this, but to how people respond to this coming. The death and humiliation endured by John await Him as well. In preparing the apostles for this, He draws their attention to the Messiah's sacrificial role. Perhaps many of them had already become disappointed in the Forerunner after his execution, regarding him as an ordinary man. These words of Christ help them look at the Baptist anew and see that he was chosen by God, though not in the usual worldly sense.

John the Baptist was always just a little ahead of Jesus. He was born six months earlier and, apparently, died the same six months earlier. It is as though, through his own—strange as it may sound—simpler example, he constantly teaches us to understand all that is impossible for a human being to comprehend. What preceded his birth can easily be called a miracle, but how incomparable it is with the Annunciation and the Nativity! He was the first to greet the Virgin and the Child She was carrying. Each time, everything he says means only one thing for us: look, it is so simple to recognize, accept, worship, and serve Jesus. The constant nearness of the holy and incomprehensible compelled him to be an ascetic and a spiritual struggler, as we would call it today. Not because God required it, but because he was, like us, a sinful human being.

“Elias truly shall first come...” This would seem to be a statement founded on knowledge of Scripture. Yet for some reason it does not enable people to recognize the coming of Elijah in the deeds of John the Baptist. Apparently the issue is that there are different kinds of knowledge of Scripture: knowledge according to the letter and knowledge according to the spirit.

It is noteworthy that Satan also quoted Scripture when he tempted the Savior. “The devils also believe” (James 2:19). This means that demons too can profess everything a good person professes. Yet there is some essential difference. It is immeasurably important for all of us to grasp what that difference is and understand it truly and deeply. For one of our most painful experiences is to encounter people among our brothers and sisters in faith who are in fact terrifying.

If Elijah and John are compared according to the letter, they may indeed seem to be two completely different people. Elijah kills pagan priests; Elijah is all storm and fire. We need only recall how Jesus' disciples James and John ask Him whether, like Elijah, they may call down fire to destroy the ungodly (Luke 9:52-56). John the Baptist, although he certainly speaks stern words of rebuke, nevertheless washes everyone who comes to him. This means that he grants forgiveness and acts through mercy, not violence. These two men would seem to be complete opposites. And yet Christ says that Elijah comes in John...

But consider the spirit of these two men. Clearly they are related and brought infinitely close by their very prophetic nature, with all its anguish over betrayal of God. Something else also unites them: both are human beings, no strangers to the torment of doubt. Elijah asks to die (1 Kings 19:4), while John too, awaiting death, suffers the agony of despair and doubt. If Jesus is not the One, then he must fight for his life, arrange an escape, and so on; if He is the One, then John must accept death. In essence, it is the same question of life and death.

It is noteworthy what Elijah says when he asks to die: “Take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.” Such humility may be compared with the humility that moves John when he says, “whose shoes I am not worthy to bear” (Matt. 3:11). The self-understanding of both prophets can be joined in a single formula: “I am only human.”

It is not so easy to distinguish prophecy from prediction, and in response to the Lord Jesus Christ's words about the Resurrection, the disciples ask Him about Elijah's coming. After the disciples see Moses and Elijah speaking with Him at the Lord's Transfiguration, they remember Malachi's prophecy and ask the Lord Jesus their question. Perhaps the disciples understand the prophecy too literally. This is the first thing the Lord tells them, pointing out that this prophecy was fulfilled in John the Baptist, the prophet in the spirit and power of Elijah. This is how the disciples understand Christ, and this view was generally accepted in the apostolic age. Later interpreters, however, considered Christ's answer incorrect and began to insist that Elijah would come before the second coming, just as John came before the first.

But the main point in Christ's answer is something else. He shifts the conversation from what God was supposed to fulfill, and whether He fulfilled it, to how people receive His messengers. In modern terms, the problem is not whether God fulfilled Malachi's prophecy with enough precision, but that people did not recognize His messenger, did not receive his preaching, and killed him. The meaning of prophecy, then, is not literal fulfillment, but that we may become participants in the foretold work of God.

It is not so easy to distinguish prophecy from prediction, and in response to the Lord Jesus Christ's words about the Resurrection, the disciples ask Him about Elijah's coming. After the disciples see Moses and Elijah speaking with Him at the Lord's Transfiguration, they remember Malachi's prophecy and ask the Lord Jesus their question. Perhaps the disciples understand the prophecy too literally. This is the first thing the Lord tells them, pointing out that this prophecy was fulfilled in John the Baptist, the prophet in the spirit and power of Elijah. This is how the disciples understand Christ, and this view was generally accepted in the apostolic age. Later interpreters, however, considered Christ's answer incorrect and began to insist that Elijah would come before the second coming, just as John came before the first.

But the main point in Christ's answer is something else. He shifts the conversation from what God was supposed to fulfill, and whether He fulfilled it, to how people receive His messengers. In modern terms, the problem is not whether God fulfilled Malachi's prophecy with enough precision, but that people did not recognize His messenger, did not receive his preaching, and killed him. The meaning of prophecy, then, is not literal fulfillment, but that we may become participants in the foretold work of God.

As the Savior says at the end of the preceding chapter, some of His disciples will see the Kingdom come in power before their death. This word is fulfilled several days later, when three of them see His transfiguration on the mountain. In what, then, does the Kingdom of God revealed to them that day consist? They see, insofar as they are able to receive it, a Man clothed in divine glory, a Man of whom God Himself says, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”... That is, there stands before them a Man over whom God can rejoice rather than grieve, a Man who has fully accomplished God's purpose for Him—or, to use modern language, an ideal, true man, the God-man. In what else can the Kingdom of God consist for us, if not in becoming like God and becoming what He wants to see us be? On the mountain of the Transfiguration, God who became Man shows us the path and the goal of our earthly existence.

The most important encounters between God and humanity took place on a mountain peak: Moses received the law, and Elijah heard the breath of the Spirit. Now Jesus ascends the mountain in order to begin, in Himself, the transfiguration of humanity: from the sickness of fear and hatred to divine light.

Below, on level ground, disappointment and rejection always awaited the prophets: Moses saw the golden idol, and Elijah saw apostasy and persecution. Jesus comes down in order to go to meet His suffering, death, and resurrection, so that the transfiguration of the beloved Son would not stop with Him, so that everyone could follow His path, become a beloved son or daughter of the Father, and live by His light. On this day we can enter into this bond between God's light and Christ's cross, which opens the way to the universal Resurrection.

Christ was transfigured while remaining human, but by opening to the disciples a small part of His divinity, He gave them the opportunity to touch another reality, incomprehensible to all those who are used to living by the rules of the earthly world. The light shown on the mountain of the Transfiguration was not given to the disciples in all its strength and power; they would not have endured that. Even what the disciples were given to see made such a strong and overwhelming impression on them that the disciples were very afraid. And yet they, human beings, were allowed to share in this light.

Peter's words about the three booths and about how good it is to be here are natural: they deeply reflect the inner state not only of Peter, but also of many of us when we first encounter staggering manifestations of the spiritual world. In such moments we risk forgetting everything and wanting only one thing: to remain where we feel good. But spiritual joys are not given so that we may passively enjoy them. Having given the disciples this strengthening, Christ goes back down with them into the world, where they, and we, still have much work to do.