NOTES for Mat 4:12-25

Jesus begins His preaching where the preaching of John the Baptist broke off: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near." But this is not the essence of His preaching. This very passage from the Gospel of Matthew describes His ministry most clearly: He calls disciples and thereby begins to build His Church; He preaches the Gospel of the Kingdom; and He reveals the works of God in this world, bearing witness that with His coming the relationship between God and the world has changed. Today's passage is a kind of "summary" of the whole Gospel that follows.

The key word in today's Gospel reading is light. The evangelist tells us that the Lord Jesus' arrival in Galilee became for the inhabitants of that land the appearance of the great light prophesied by Isaiah. The Lord Himself speaks in a similar way in His conversation with Nicodemus, as the evangelist John tells us. The Lord said that judgment upon the world consists in this: the light has come into the world. This is certainly not about the mysterious radiance of the Godhead that sometimes accompanies the revelation of the Almighty's glory. Rather, we should recall the words of the psalm: “Your word is a lamp to my feet.” Christ's coming enables us to see and distinguish good from evil, the way of life from the way of death. In His presence, we are able to see the truth about God, about ourselves and about the world. Although only some of us are granted a vision of the light of the Transfiguration, the uncreated radiance of God, the light of truth about which the prophet Isaiah and the evangelist Matthew speak today is given to everyone from the day the Lord began His ministry.

Why did Christ need to withdraw to Galilee? According to ordinary human logic, He should have gone to preach in places where there were more educated people, people knowledgeable in Scripture and therefore better prepared, places where it would be easier to be heard. And in days when a widely known preacher is being imprisoned, it would be better to quiet down altogether, but at the same time secure the support of influential people, wait, and at a convenient moment begin preaching with their backing.

But Christ follows His own logic, one that is incomprehensible by ordinary human standards. Even to a sympathetic observer, His preaching could have looked like taking up the baton that had fallen from John's hands. After all, Jesus repeats John's words: repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near. But soon, already in Galilee, the difference between the two teachings will begin to emerge, and one will give way to the other. Christ will increase, and John will decrease. Yet Christ's greatness is inseparably bound up with His self-emptying, and one of the expressions of that self-emptying was His withdrawal to Galilee, a remote province on the border of pagan lands. It is here that an event, at first noticed by few, takes place, an event that changed the world: the preaching of the Savior.

Reflecting on the calling of the apostles, it is worth considering this. Skeptics can say that there are "charismatic" personalities whose word is so authoritative that they literally hypnotize people, and this can explain why those ignorant fishermen followed Jesus. That is the whole explanation.

How should we answer this? What can we present? Let us recall a passage from the Gospel of John: "Then Jesus said to the twelve, 'Do you also want to go away?' Simon Peter answered Him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed and known that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God'" (John 6:67-69).

Many want to leave Him, and they do leave, because they do not accept what He tells them. Does this happen with "charismatic" figures? Was it so with Hitler or Stalin? On the contrary, they drew crowds of people to themselves. Christ offers even His closest disciples the chance to leave if they wish. And yet something holds them. What exactly? This is what matters: in Christianity nothing is built on emotions alone, otherwise this faith would have disappeared very quickly; it has an unshakable foundation, and this foundation is the Word.

As we can see, Jesus' main work during His earthly ministry was bearing witness to the Kingdom. Miracles and healings are, in essence, only proof that it is near, that it is already entering our world, and that it has entered so fully that anyone can feel its power.

This, in fact, is the meaning of the good news brought into the world by the Savior: He is the Messiah, He has come into the world, and He has brought with Him the very messianic Kingdom of which the prophets spoke. And the meaning of Christianity is to receive this Kingdom and live in it.

Of course, for that to become possible, one must also receive the One who brought the Kingdom into the world, trusting Him completely and following Him. Just as the apostles followed Him when He called them after Himself. And miracles and healings are visible testimony to what the Kingdom is and what it is like. A miracle always presupposes the invasion of our world by the laws of another world, one that for some reason has suddenly come near. So too the Kingdom, having come near, enters our world and brings its own laws into it. These laws completely deny sickness and death, just as they deny all the evil and sin in which the world lies.

That is why healings and resurrections became the chief events accompanying the Savior's earthly path: they became signs of the coming Kingdom. Of course, it was impossible to transform completely the nature of a human being who still remained part of the untransformed world. But it was fully possible to give each person who came into contact with the Kingdom all the fullness of life possible for this untransformed world. The sick recovered, and those who had died before their time returned to life in order to exhaust all its fullness available to them on earth, a fullness they had not exhausted because of the evil in which the fallen world lies. And all who met Jesus on their path were divided into those who were ready to live life in its fullness and those who rejected that life together with the One who brought it into the world.

Thus the path of the Kingdom became for the Savior the way of the cross, leading Him through death into the life He left to the world.

Have you ever wondered why Simon, Andrew, James, and John respond so immediately to Jesus' proposal? Let us imagine ourselves in a similar situation, and it becomes clear that our reaction might well have been different. Who "in his right mind" would get up from his workplace, leave his familiar life, leave what provides a livelihood and simple everyday joy and satisfaction, and follow Someone he had seen very little, and even then "under mysterious circumstances" - see Matt. 3:13-17, John 1:29-39 - and who promises something completely unclear (see Matt. 4:19)? Now we know that they do not leave their fishing nets forever (see Luke 5:1-11), but then it could have seemed to them that they were completely breaking with their familiar life.

What makes them do this? Why do we see no hesitation, reflection, or conversation? Yes, they had probably managed to understand something about this Man through their conversation (see John 1:38-41). But even if they recognized Him as the Messiah, it still is not easy simply to pick up and move instantly. Yet this is exactly what they do. What is the reason? A frivolous attitude toward life, a dislike of work? It is hardly something inside them themselves, since these people are much too different.

No, it turns out that the point is not in them, but in the One who calls them and in the way He does it. He calls them, and it becomes impossible not to answer His call. His voice is so strong, His person so rightly attractive, that doubting the truth of His words, and still more His presence, simply does not happen. Here He is, standing at the door and knocking (see Rev. 3:20).

Having called the twelve disciples, Jesus includes them in His life, in His ministry. He instructs them, then gives them practical assignments (Matt. 10; Matt. 14:16). And after Pentecost the Apostles go in the power of the Holy Spirit to continue Christ's ministry: to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom, heal people, and build the Church. The whole book of Acts is about this.

Gradually one can get used to it, but reading this phrase for the first time is unpleasant. Simply because one cannot speak about people as about fish. And in general, when one imagines it: a little fish is swimming and frolicking in freedom, and then a fisherman appears with a net, first deprives the fish of freedom, then pulls it out to where it is impossible to live, and finally simply eats it. And is it the same with people? Horror.

Now let us imagine a different picture. A little fish is swimming and frolicking in a murky little pond and does not realize that the water is poisoned by runoff from a chemical plant. Then a Greenpeace worker appears with a net, catches it, transports it to an ecologically clean place, and releases it into a clear, huge lake full of oxygen and food. Somehow everything looks different, does it not?

It is possible to get gradually used to this, but reading this sentence for the first time is unpleasant. Simply because it is not good to speak about people as fishes; and in general how can someone imagine: a swimming fish gambols freely, and here comes a fisherman with a net, he first deprives the fish from freedom, after removes it from there to a place where life is impossible and just eat it. And what, is it the same with people? But that’s horrible!

Now let’s imagine a different scene. The small fish is swimming – gamboling in a muddy pondlet and doesn’t think that the water is contaminated by chemical combine’s drains. And here comes a Greenpeacer with a net, catches it, brings to an ecologically clean area and release it in a transparent huge lake, full of oxygen and food. Doesn’t this scene look different?

There is such figure of speech appropriate to ancient literature of descriptive character – “sum”; it consists of bringing out the general sense of occurring events into one-two short phrases. This allows after not to describe all and one after another, but to make substantial examples. Evangelist Matthew brings out everything Jesus did during His public ministry in the “sum” read today by us: taught in the synagogues, preached the gospel of the kingdom, and healed people. If we consider that He was accompanied all the time by His disciples, then we can add: and built His community - the future Church. But Christ continues indeed to do all these things now; we should just wish to see them.

The blessings pronounced by Jesus during the Sermon on the Mount are commonly called the Beatitudes in Christian tradition, and are compared with the commandments of the Decalogue. Yet Jesus Himself did not treat them as new commandments replacing the old ones. In fact, in form they do not resemble commandments at all, but rather the series of blessings and curses with which Deuteronomy ends, or the blessings by which the Torah instructs priests to bless the people. But these blessings, of course, acquire a special meaning: they make sense only if the Messiah has already come and the messianic Kingdom is near and about to arrive.

The mention of the poor and the humble in such a context is especially significant. Historically, this refers to members of a movement that had formed even before the exile around Isaiah of Jerusalem. They came to be called 'the poor,' although in the literal sense they usually were not beggars. Sometimes they were also called 'meek' or 'humble,' with the same meaning: these are people who completely refuse to rely in life on anyone or anything except God, and who await the coming of the messianic Kingdom, where they will receive reward and consolation for the difficult path of righteousness they tried to follow. Speaking of the blessedness of the poor and the meek, Jesus thereby makes it clear that the messianic Kingdom has already come or is about to come.

Just as natural is the mention of those who thirst for righteousness: for the image of 'the poor one' was inseparable from the image of the righteous person, and already in pre-exilic hymnography these words had become virtual synonyms. At the same time, before the exile, purity of heart and mercy began to be perceived as integral traits of the righteous person. In addition, already in the pre-exilic period the image of the righteous person becomes the image of one persecuted by the authorities or the powerful of this world. Jesus proclaims the blessedness of those persecuted for righteousness, that is, following the tradition already existing at that time, for faithfulness to the Torah. And He adds: blessed are those persecuted for My sake, thereby in fact pointing to Himself as the Messiah; for the image of the suffering Messiah was known to tradition after all, although in those days it had somewhat receded into the background, and those persecuted for the Messiah and the messianic Kingdom were, of course, also understood as persecuted for righteousness.

Thus Jesus, proclaiming the nearness of the coming Kingdom, at the same time answers the hopes of those who were awaiting the Messiah and His Kingdom. He lets them understand that the long-awaited day has come - although not in the way they had imagined.

The Sermon on the Mount is one of the most important Gospel texts, laying the foundations of Christian morality. Yet the beginning of this sermon, though traditionally called the "Beatitudes," speaks not about rules but about happiness: the happiness of a righteous life, the life Jesus calls the Kingdom of Heaven. In such a life, consolation, mercy, and joy overcome tears and pain, and grace and peace reign.

The Evangelist could hardly even have had the thought that Jesus' trial in the wilderness would end with Him yielding to Satan's temptation and falling into some sin. Rather, in the description of this strange dispute, where the Son of God and Satan exchange biblical quotations, there lies the deep choice that stood before Jesus: what path He would choose to carry out His mission, and exactly how God would appear to people and return them to true life.

The tempter offers Him the path of an earthly kingdom: for if He truly is the Son of God, then all the kingdoms of the earth rightfully belong to Him, all the countless legions of angels will fight for Him, the earth itself will turn His realm into paradise, and stones will become bread.

But the Lord chooses another path: He will not draw people by showy miracles and power; instead of slaves He will have disciples, who will come to know His divine glory without coercion, through faith and love.