NOTES for Luk 8:17-18

We can have quite varied relationships with the Word of God, but in today's Gospel reading the Lord singles out only two main points. First, there is attention, the readiness to listen to the Word. God speaks quietly, and in order to hear Him, one needs outward and inward silence and the desire to hear Him. And second, Christ speaks about putting the Word into practice. "Take care how you hear," and in explaining this, the Lord calls the one who hears and acts on it the one who "has." Such a person understands God's Word, and it fills him with life; it itself becomes his life. But the one who does not hear, and especially does not put the Word into practice, that is, listens in vain, loses even the very ability to hear.

In essence, the only One who truly hears the Heavenly Father and fulfills His will is the Lord Jesus Himself. Therefore those people who follow Him on the path of hearing and fulfilling the Word of God become close to Him; they become His family. And this kinship of ours with the Lord Jesus is no less strong than the bonds of blood kinship that connect people. That is why the Lord says that those who hear and fulfill the Word are honored with the name of His brothers and His Mother. And for all of us it is exceptionally important that Jesus' family, His Church, is gathered by Him not according to signs of bodily kinship, but according to obedience to the Father. That is why His Mother became the Virgin of Nazareth, who said: "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord." This is precisely how all of us enter His Church, though we are so far from His people.

More precisely, "even what he thinks he has." Jesus by no means has in mind something like the saying "money goes to money." He is speaking of relations with God to which we are not accustomed: relations of trust and respect (in the end, of love). God offers His relationship to everyone, but He forces it on no one. A person who freely accepts this gift enters an unending process of developing this relationship, whose goal is the deification of the person, the fullness of that person's entry into the life of God. But a person who thinks that everything is fine with him, that the relationship with God he thinks he has is enough for him, by that very fact closes himself off from God and does not accept from Him what God gives; and that means he breaks even the weak threads that had still kept him afloat in this life. "Take care, then, how you hear"; tune your "receivers" to the wavelength of God's grace.

The words that nothing will remain hidden are often recalled as a stern warning that any evil done in secret will sooner or later come to light. Yes, this is so; it is a great truth, and we have witnessed it many times. But here the subject is light that cannot be concealed. This means that the many good deeds done continually will also become visible—deeds so familiar that they go unnoticed by those accustomed to paying most attention to loud and sensational events. But a day will pass, perhaps a few days, the inflated sensations will evaporate, and the unnoticed good will remain.

The episode in which Jesus declined to meet His Mother and brothers may seem troubling: one might conclude that He is openly breaking the commandment to honour one's parents. Yet a careful reading is enough to see that this is not so, for He called those who hear and carry out the word of God His mother and brothers. And who, if not Mary, received it and fulfilled it completely?

The behaviour of Christ's disciples during the storm on the lake is entirely natural. Yet after calming the storm, He reproached them: ‘Where is your faith?’ Here lies the difficulty: too deeply ingrained in us is the reflex that tells us everyday life exists on its own, while faith is a kind of Sunday seasoning added to our ordinary existence.

But if faith is genuine, it cannot fail to become the core that shapes a person. Then the usual reactions fall away, and what remains is a firm bond with Christ, who gives calm steadfastness amid every anxiety and storm.

Speaking of the Kingdom and of bearing witness, Jesus gives the example of a lamp that serves no purpose if it is hidden and made invisible. Of course, there is also a polemic here, not obvious to everyone, against the advocates of a holy war against the Romans. They usually acted in secret, seeking to prepare the uprising as thoroughly as possible so that, on the appointed day, they could emerge into the light as triumphant victors.

The Kingdom Jesus speaks of does not need some secret, clandestine organization to prepare its coming: it needs witnesses, not conspirators. Yet this is probably not the whole point. The point is also that once the Kingdom has become part of your life, it cannot be hidden from those around you. Of course, it does not begin publicly at all, for merely hearing testimony as we hear noise reaching us in the street is not enough.

It is no accident that Jesus says: take care how you listen. What is heard must be received by the heart; it must begin a spiritual process involving not only reflection on what has been heard, but also the choice the hearer must make after considering everything said, and the decisions that will have to be taken in accordance with that choice.

All this takes place “in secret,” since it concerns a person's inner life. But once the choice has been made, the decisions taken, and life changed accordingly, witness in one form or another inevitably becomes part of the convert's new life. Then the hidden truly becomes manifest: it is impossible to bear witness only within oneself. Testimony, in turn, once heard, gives rise to new witnesses. Thus the Kingdom brought by the Savior grows in the world.

"He answered them, My mother and My brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it." Today we read the Lord's words, which speak of the love between mother and child as something that leads beyond earthly feelings and becomes for us a kind of bridge to the knowledge of God's love. The parallels are close, even to the point that these words, like the words from the book of Sirach, cut and grate on the ear if they are read not prayerfully, but in the ordinary way.

But in order to try to understand, let us turn to the book of Psalms. "Have I not calmed and quieted my soul, like a child weaned from its mother? my soul is within me like a weaned child" (Ps 130:2). A great deal of what the Lord says is a direct answer to the questioning of the book of Psalms. This is understandable, for that book is a kind of sum of all prayerful sighing, of everything we want to say to God, while Christ is the center of what the Lord wants to say to us.

So let us look closely at this image of a child weaned from its mother's breast. This is how a person feels in the world: every person seeking the meaning of his life and the lives of those he loves, seeking a love that is not afraid of decay, seeking the sources of that inexpressible feeling of holiness that he senses in his chest. It is a brilliant image... The Lord gave birth to the human being into the world, nourished him, and released him from Himself, while the human being so longs to press his little nose to His breast again. Without Him it is so frightening, sad, lonely, cold, and hungry. These are human feelings.

But then Christ says... My mother and My brothers are those who hear the word of God... The reunion of mother and child, and of sisters and brothers with one another, has taken place; harmony has been restored with His coming into this world. Only it is strange: everything is reversed, and the images of mother and child appear to change places. Is this accidental? Was it just said because the occasion presented itself, because His mother came and His brothers came?

But nothing is accidental. Nothing is meaningless. As the great physicist Einstein said, "The Lord God does not play dice." Therefore in everything, in everything, we can look for meaning. So why did the images change places compared with the book of Psalms? Perhaps because pure love is a relationship between two who are fundamentally equal, or more precisely, commensurable. We cannot love an ant; it is too small. But we can love a kitten. Yet God is far more perfect than we are than we are more perfect than an ant; we are far less commensurable. And when this logic is broken through, one can no longer simply take the relationship of mother and child and place it directly on the relationship of God and His child. It is only a bridge. One can cross it in order to begin to know the love of God. And that means that the change of order alters nothing. The main thing is that the logic of incommensurability has been broken through; the main thing is that wholeness has been restored.

But there is also a simpler meaning. Perhaps Jesus is telling us that we are no longer little, that we are no longer infants; God has weaned us from His breast by bringing us into this world. Yet no longer, for all His love for us, can He put us to the breast again. Five-year-old children are not put to the breast.

Jesus is often called Teacher, and for us this is true as well. But each of us also has to take on that role from time to time, so it is worth learning from the Teacher. These three verses from the Gospel of Luke let us glimpse Jesus' teaching method.

After telling an extended parable, the parable of the sower, and giving its explanation for the disciples, He continues in the traditional manner of Jewish teachers, aphoristically. The classic example of this method is the book of Proverbs, which is composed almost entirely of aphorisms. An aphorism in itself is already an image, acting on the listeners' imagination and provoking them to reflection. The parallel passage in the Gospel of Mark, perhaps the earliest of the Gospels, Mark 4:21, shows more clearly the lack of connection among these sayings of Jesus, while the Gospel of Matthew even places them in different chapters.

Luke is writing for Hellenized readers who were not used to this style, and he inserts logical connectors such as "for" and "therefore," so that these sayings acquire the quality of a unified text that lets us trace the logic of the development of Jesus' preaching. The first image, the lamp, says that the new message heard by the disciples is not for "internal use," but for passing on to others. The second saying suggests the uselessness of playing hide-and-seek: everything comes out into the open. And then comes the unexpected "take care how you hear," calling for special attentiveness, and the paradox Jesus states many times about cooperation and inaction.

All this, gathered together, gives rise in the listeners to a new idea of the way of life before them: serious, interested, active, and fearless interaction with other people.

Unlike Matthew, Luke places the parable of the sower in the context of words that Matthew records as part of other teachings of the Saviour (vv. 16–17; Matt. 5:15, 10:26–27). We can no longer say with certainty whether Luke quotes these words to remind the reader of what Jesus said on another occasion, or whether, after telling his disciples the parable, the Teacher really did remind them of something he had already spoken about. One thing is clear: for the evangelist, as for Jesus himself, the Kingdom is inseparable from witness. The parable of the sower can be read not only as a parable about what prevents a person from accepting and entering the Kingdom, but also as one about what prevents them from bearing witness to Christ and the Kingdom. Everyday cares, if we give them too much attention (v. 14), fear of persecution and harassment, if we give in to it (v. 13), and simple frivolity towards the revelation received from God (v. 12) can all hinder a faithful witness. It is not merely that all these things distract a person from a particular activity by turning their heart, and therefore their attention, to something else.

It is also that a full witness is not merely an account but a visible demonstration of what life with Christ in his Kingdom is like. Everything listed in the parable of the sower destroys the spiritual wholeness that makes this demonstration possible. It is no accident that commentators interpreting verses 16–17 still disagree about what Jesus means by the secrets that will sooner or later be revealed. Some are certain he means carefully concealed evil deeds or weaknesses that people do not usually speak of, and feel uncomfortable speaking of aloud. Others maintain that he was speaking of the Kingdom, which, though hidden for a time, will sooner or later be revealed in all its fullness and become visible to everyone.

Verse 18, meanwhile, may help settle the dispute: it calls those listening to a particular kind of spiritual attentiveness. The Gospels often mention situations in which people listen but do not hear. This does not mean that they simply let the words pass them by: Jewish culture is a culture of dialogue, not only dialogue between people but also between a person and God. It concerns what sometimes prevents someone from hearing the person speaking to them, the very thing described in the parable of the sower. The listener does not keep track of what is happening, because their attention is focused neither on the speaker nor on the words, but on something else. Without spiritual wholeness, however, a person may not even notice this, having neither the habit nor the skill of observing where their attention is directed.

Alas, such an unreflective state is normal for fallen humanity. But this kind of spiritual slackness is unsuited to the Kingdom, for what matters most in the Kingdom is relationships, and here attention, and awareness of where it is directed, become essential. Without this spiritual collectedness, a person will not gain the Kingdom they hope to receive. This is not an examination for its own sake: a spiritually slack person simply lacks the organ needed for life in the Kingdom. Or they have it, but it is so weak that even after entering the Kingdom they cannot remain there: they lack the spiritual strength to keep God and their neighbours in the focus of their attention, and without them there is no Kingdom. Then contact with the Kingdom becomes a moment of truth: what was previously hidden, perhaps even from the seeker—for fallen human beings are prone to deceive themselves about themselves—becomes evident and known to all. Then it becomes clear whether a person is ready to enter the Kingdom.

Jesus' parables are something halfway between amusing stories from everyday life and riddles: in them He explains the inexpressible, the Message of His Kingdom, in simple human language. Many of them begin just this way: "The Kingdom of God is like someone who..." - and then He sketches a situation familiar to His listeners, revealing to them the essence of His Gospel.

So, the most famous parable is about how the Word of God, like a seed, must fall into fertile soil in order to bear fruit and not be lost in vain. The evangelist wonderfully completes the parable by giving, immediately after it, the account of Jesus' family, where He speaks to the disciples a new riddle that expresses the same Message in other words: "Whoever hears the Word and does it has entered My family".

The listeners only have to compare these parable-riddles to understand what the Kingdom consists in that their Teacher brought to earth. Through his book, the evangelist offers this task not just to the small circle of disciples, but to all readers of the Gospel.

The word, the seed sown by the sower, contains within itself the germ of the Kingdom of Heaven. Falling into our hearts, it begins to sprout into an ear of new life. But in this parable the sower does not act alone. Without soil—that is, without us—the seed cannot sprout. As Jesus observes, the more we participate in this process, the more fruit we bear. This produces an apparent injustice: the richer we are, the richer we become. Yet the issue here is probably not spiritual wealth, but how much of our capital—our time, attention, strength, and finally our whole life—we are willing to invest in this shared process of cultivating the Kingdom.