NOTES for Luk 19:29-40

The Mount of Olives is the beginning of Christ's glorification. It is His Entry into Jerusalem, the entry of the King. And He returns to the same mountain after He has eaten the Passover with the disciples. And again from the Mount of Olives begins Christ's glorification, now as Savior of the World.

And at the Passover meal Christ explains to the apostles what He Himself had been doing and what is being accomplished. He is the One who serves, and beside Him were people whose hearts had already changed. People to whom He promises a meal in the Kingdom of Heaven. And to whom, as witnesses of His deeds, He bequeaths the Communion of His Body and Blood. Communion in His death and imminent Resurrection. Communion in the glory of Christ, through which all Christians have been strengthened and saved from those days onward.

Why do the Pharisees ask Jesus to make His disciples be silent when they were glorifying Him as the Messiah? Was it only out of fear of possible political consequences? Of course, they could have feared excesses, or even outright revolt, although in a certain sense the time for that had already been missed. Still, anything at all could be expected from the Jerusalem crowd, and the Romans, who tolerated no disturbances in the city, were always ready to intervene, and their intervention always ended in bloodshed. But the matter was not only these fears. The matter was also that, in the eyes of the Pharisees, Jesus was the "wrong" Messiah, one completely inconsistent with their ideas and concepts. They were, of course, waiting for the Messiah, but not for one like this. And this one did everything differently from what they expected. At first He refused to provide them with the proofs of His messiahship that they expected; then He avoided the opportunity to head a mass popular movement, though such an opportunity presented itself to Him several times. But now He, it seems, speaks directly about His messiahship, yet again not in the way a "real" Messiah should have done it. After all, a real Messiah cannot ride into the city mounted on a donkey, can he?! This is no longer even a parable; it is a real profanation of the triumphant entry into the city of the Messiah-victor, the Messiah who drives out the Romans, the Messiah who establishes His Kingdom, the Messiah who will rule with a strong hand in the name of God... And suddenly, instead of the expected triumph, there is some half-solemn, half-buffoonish procession, recalling the entrance into the city of a "king" chosen from slaves during the Roman Saturnalia... There was reason to be confused. It is no wonder that the Pharisees, as deeply religious people, began asking Jesus to stop what seemed to them an inappropriate and unworthy comedy. And Jesus answered them that everything was serious. So serious that it was even hard for them to imagine it. Only the events would unfold differently from what they expected.

Today we read a vast passage from the Gospel according to Luke, including the account of the Lord’s Entry into Jerusalem and the account of the Last Supper and Christ’s Farewell Discourse with His disciples. In essence, it is the account of the establishment of the New Covenant, which will be finally sealed by Christ’s Blood shed on the Cross.

For the sake of establishing the New Covenant, the Lord goes to the Cross. Today we read that not one step on Christ’s final path is easy. Like a razor, God’s saving action divides people. A few disciples accept what Christ does and says, but the voices of opponents who take offense at Jesus are constantly heard around Him. In the end, only the twelve disciples remain beside Him, and even one of them proves to be a traitor. At the foot of His cross, amid the mocking crowd, we see only His Most Pure Mother with the beloved disciple, several women, and the astonished centurion Longinus, who unexpectedly to himself declares the truth that this man was the Son of God.

But despite the ever-growing opposition, the Son of Man goes as it is written of Him. Reading such a long passage allows us to feel the events gathering ever greater speed. This is not a slow and stately procession. Rather, the evangelist’s account gives the impression of a swift march whose final purpose is the establishment of the New Covenant, the covenant in which we become participants by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ according to His commandment.

The Mount of Olives is the beginning of Christ's glorification. It is His Entry into Jerusalem, the entry of the King. And He returns to the same mountain after He has eaten the Passover with the disciples. And again from the Mount of Olives begins Christ's glorification, now as Savior of the World.

And at the Passover meal Christ explains to the apostles what He Himself had been doing and what is being accomplished. He is the One who serves, and beside Him were people whose hearts had already changed. People to whom He promises a meal in the Kingdom of Heaven. And to whom, as witnesses of His deeds, He bequeaths the Communion of His Body and Blood. Communion in His death and imminent Resurrection. Communion in the glory of Christ, through which all Christians have been strengthened and saved from those days onward.

Today we read a vast passage from the Gospel according to Luke, including the account of the Lord’s Entry into Jerusalem and the account of the Last Supper and Christ’s Farewell Discourse with His disciples. In essence, it is the account of the establishment of the New Covenant, which will be finally sealed by Christ’s Blood shed on the Cross.

For the sake of establishing the New Covenant, the Lord goes to the Cross. Today we read that not one step on Christ’s final path is easy. Like a razor, God’s saving action divides people. A few disciples accept what Christ does and says, but the voices of opponents who take offense at Jesus are constantly heard around Him. In the end, only the twelve disciples remain beside Him, and even one of them proves to be a traitor. At the foot of His cross, amid the mocking crowd, we see only His Most Pure Mother with the beloved disciple, several women, and the astonished centurion Longinus, who unexpectedly to himself declares the truth that this man was the Son of God.

But despite the ever-growing opposition, the Son of Man goes as it is written of Him. Reading such a long passage allows us to feel the events gathering ever greater speed. This is not a slow and stately procession. Rather, the evangelist’s account gives the impression of a swift march whose final purpose is the establishment of the New Covenant, the covenant in which we become participants by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ according to His commandment.

Most often, the mystery of Christmas is connected for us with a pleasant festive mood. In general, news of the birth of a child in the family of acquaintances, people not too close to us, is usually accompanied by a feeling of tenderness and joy. But the birth of a child in one's own family is often connected with anxious, and not always positive, expectation: we do not know for certain how the child is spending those nine months, whether he is healthy, whether everything is normal, how the birth will go, or whether the doctors will let us down. And with the birth of a child, our anxiety and worry do not weaken; on the contrary, they grow day by day. Our children make us feel the breath of death always and everywhere.

The celebration of Christmas leads to the realization of an equally terrifying fact: God came into the world to give us the Kingdom, but this Kingdom, which He possesses, can be handed over to us only through a testament. We refused the possibility of living in the Kingdom, choosing not life and good, but death and evil. And then He was born, became tiny and defenseless, entrusting Himself to human beings completely and without reserve. He was born into the world, and that means He takes upon Himself the whole weight of death. He wants to bring us into the Kingdom, and one path remained for Him: to bequeath to us what belongs to Him.

The day has come of which the prophets of Israel spoke with fear: God has visited His people. From deepest antiquity people waited for this coming of God and placed all their hopes on it. Not only Israel, but many other peoples at the beginning of the first century of our era expected the appearance of someone who would bring them peace and open the way to life. To some degree even we, after two thousand years, have inherited this expectation and hope for God's visitation. The prophets proclaimed that the sun would be darkened on that day and all creation would change, sin would cease, and people would be redeemed from death. "Oh, that You would tear the heavens and come down!" exclaimed the author of the second part of the book of Isaiah. "The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills", as the Song of Songs presents this day as a happy meeting of lovers.

And now He comes. A multitude of disciples, perhaps several hundred people, praise the great works of God and bless His coming. But right there, among the distrustful crowd, there are those who consider it necessary only to reproach Him for immodesty: "Forbid Your disciples to praise God and You!". And almost no one thinks about what He called for many times through the prophets: "Amend your evil ways, so that you do not perish on that day." Only His Most Pure Mother and close disciples are given to feel His sorrow. He comes, and even on this day we do not know that to meet Him we must stop doing evil and learn to do good. How should we meet Him, and by what can we deserve His favor? What should we do so that He will bless us and help us? "Seek good, and not evil, that you may live," He said through His messengers. But we think that we must perform certain rites and arrange splendid celebrations. As if this would serve for our peace and give us peace in this meeting with Jesus.

If He does not enter Jerusalem today, we will not be able to become partakers of His Body and Blood. If He does not give Himself up for us, we will remain prisoners of death. But His chosen ones do not recognize the time of visitation; they do not recognize that the expected and foretold day has come. And therefore Jesus weeps. Recently the Lord spoke in one of the passages about what His disciples should rejoice in. Today we understand what we need to fear: failing to recognize the time of visitation.

The people of Judea greet Jesus as He enters Jerusalem as the King who comes in the name of the Lord. This is true, but not at all in the sense that those greeting Him attach to these words: the Kingdom He is coming to establish is unlike any earthly kingdom. For now, Jesus has influence comparable to the authority of the people’s leaders. He can put the Temple in order, and no one can hinder Him because the people listen to Him without ceasing. Unfortunately, though they listened, not all of them heard Him. That is why tears are in His eyes at the very height of the celebration: even those who place their hope in Him seek an entirely different salvation from the one Christ wishes to give, and therefore many of them will very soon turn away from Him.

And what do we today expect and desire from Him? Is it what He wishes to bring us, or what we project onto His image because we want to see Him as an expression of our own moods and whims? And do we desire Him Himself?..

The evangelist combines in one account Jesus' triumphal entry into the holy city, when praise and joy cannot be restrained by any force, so that even the stones are ready to sing glory to the coming King, and Jesus' sorrowful weeping over Jerusalem. The city of promise here becomes a collective image of all who wait for Christ, who cannot live without Him, but who do not recognize Him and cannot believe that their hope is being fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. Before our eyes there is both triumph and catastrophe, because the city, the people, and individual persons are given the long-awaited opportunity to see, recognize, and meet their dream, but they "do not know the time of visitation."

Deep down, we would probably like this time to be clear, obvious to everyone, or at least for it to be optional, not for everyone. But such a time does happen, and what is most terrible is that it can be missed: one can fail to recognize God when He passes nearby...

Entering Jerusalem, Jesus weeps over its fate. He clearly foresees the city's sad destiny: in A.D. 70, after the anti-Roman revolt raised by the Zealots and the war that followed, Jerusalem will be razed to the ground by the Roman army sent to suppress the revolt. In the Middle Ages, and partly also in modern times, an opinion was widespread and popular among Christians that this catastrophe became a punishment for the Jewish people's rejection of the Messiah sent to them. Yet Jesus Himself looks at the situation differently. For Him this is above all a tragedy, a national catastrophe. He does not look at it as just retribution. For Him it is rather a rejected and therefore missed opportunity.

In the lives both of individuals and of whole peoples, there are crossroads at which the direction of further spiritual movement is determined and set for years ahead, if we are speaking about a person, or for centuries ahead, if we are speaking about a people. There is nothing predetermined here, no program written in advance, no fate or doom. On the contrary, such a crossroads is always a moment of highest freedom. A moment of that choice when the person himself or the people themselves choose and determine what later may look to them like doom or fate. The day of the Savior's entry into Jerusalem became such a moment for the Jewish people.

Of course, one can say that the enthusiasm with which the crowd met Him in the streets of Jerusalem was not worth much: the enthusiasm of crowds never lasts long. But the people did have the possibility of a choice, a serious choice determining further history for centuries ahead, and Jesus understands this perfectly. He also understands something else: like all such choices, this one essentially comes down to whether to follow God or one's own opinions, traditions, and habits. And the second option is always catastrophic. The only question is how soon this catastrophe will come. That it will come is beyond doubt: missed opportunities always exact a price, and the greater the opportunity, the more terrible the catastrophe will be if that opportunity is missed.

That is why Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. He understands as no one else does what has been given and what has been missed. And He also understands what the consequences will be.

Today's reading contains the disciples' rejoicing and the Lord Jesus' sorrow. True, genuine faith is indeed always joyful. This does not mean that a Christian must always be in high spirits, but even amid trials and sin our darkness must not smother the light. If joy seems to us incompatible with reverent fear of God, with the seriousness of prayer and penitential weeping, then we become like the Pharisees “from among the crowd,” to whom the Lord said that if we do not rejoice, the stones will have to do it for us!

And the second aspect of this encounter between God and man is Jesus' sorrow over Jerusalem, which never recognised His coming. This sorrow is one expression of His love for sinful people. The Lord is not angry; He does not curse the city or punish it, but only weeps. He brought us life, and we turned away from His gift.

Often the memory of these tears restrains us from sin far more strongly than fear of punishment or of God's wrath. We encounter God—in prayer, in reading Scripture, in worship—almost every day. Let us remember the rejoicing and the tears in today's chapter.

The carefree times are over. If earlier the apostles could preach without a penny of money and without bread in a bag, now not even a sword can save them and their Teacher. There is a time when God does not grant the prayer even of the most righteous person, and when one cannot trust even oneself. Jesus must drink His cup, and Peter deceives himself, assuring the Teacher of faithfulness to the grave.

What should one do when "the time of the lawless and the power of darkness" comes? If the apostles did not know, how can we know? All they have left are Jesus' words: "I prayed that your faith may not fail..." Faith that even in the darkness everything remains in God's hands...

The path to Golgotha began even before Gethsemane, with loneliness among the disciples who did not understand Him. Very little time would pass before the apostles became entirely different people, but for now they are causing the Teacher additional suffering.

Seeing this, Christ, who came to save us, does not reject the disciples. This is precisely the meaning of His words to Peter, which contain both a warning about his coming weakness and the commission to strengthen his brothers after his fall. Christ sees Peter’s weakness, just as He sees the weakness of each of us; yet He not only refrains from condemning or rejecting Peter and every one of us, but also strengthens us. Even in the words addressed to Judas, we hear not condemnation, but a sorrowful reproach capable of awakening the conscience.

If only we were ready to accept His support. Peter will be able to do so a little later, but Judas will not want to...

The name of the Mount of Olives makes us remember the oil used for anointing, including anointing to kingship. But Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world, and He goes toward His triumph not through ritual anointing, but through sacrificial suffering.

The events we read about in the Gospel of Luke today are familiar to everyone. We constantly encounter injustice and violence, cruelty and betrayal. Sin and suffering have penetrated human nature so deeply that they seem inevitable. And so, as we prepare for Great Lent, we read how God, having become man, drank this cup to the dregs. Unlike us, He accepted our suffering voluntarily in order to share it with us. We therefore seek an opportunity to honor His suffering through some spiritual effort. Last week we read the words of the apostle and evangelist John, who told us that this can only be an effort to love our neighbor, an effort to keep Christ's commandments. In the second half of the sixth century BC, the author of the second half of the book of Isaiah also conveyed God's words to us: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness...” And the passages about Christ's way to the Cross that we read this week tell us that loving God and loving people means standing with the Mother of God at the foot of the Cross.

The most remarkable thing about the arrest and interrogation of Jesus is that no one involved in it, except, of course, Jesus Himself, truly understands what is happening. The disciples think that they are witnessing the beginning of a failed uprising which ended before it could even begin. Peter, the most determined of them, is ready to fight and even tries to start it, but the Teacher's response leaves him completely bewildered, as it does the other disciples. They do not understand what is happening or what they should do next. In the end they simply scatter: there is nothing else left for them to do, since everything is lost.

Peter follows the Teacher, but now without any hope, simply wanting to see what will happen to Him. He denies Him so easily precisely because nothing matters to him any longer. Everything is over, so what difference does it make now whether or not he was with Jesus? It would be utterly absurd to suffer for taking part in an uprising that never happened. Only the cock's crow brings Peter back to reality: true reality, where relationships matter absolutely and where nothing is over yet, but everything is only beginning.

As for the high priest and his circle, they understand little more. For them too, Jesus is merely the leader of a failed messianic uprising who remains dangerous as long as He is alive. All the charges are transparently fabricated and judicial procedure is not observed. Clearly, they simply want to get rid of Him.

But He goes about His work: bringing into the world the Kingdom that He must bring. Caring for His disciples without relying on them. Paying no attention to mockery and abuse. And making no attempt to defend Himself at the “trial,” not only because it is indeed a “trial” in quotation marks, but also because in this case He could have defended Himself only by abandoning the fulfilment of the one supreme task for which He came into the world. And He goes on, to the cross. In a fallen world, there is no other path for Him.

What happened was what had to happen, as Jesus had repeatedly foretold to His disciples. The world under the power of Satan could not endure its meeting with the Righteous One. It had either to die to sin itself, to change radically, to be reborn, or to pass a death sentence on this Man.

Having become disciples of Jesus, we must not forget this incompatibility of Christ and sin, not only in Him Himself, not only in our hearts, but also in the world. If we have truly found faith in Christ, then the choice inevitably stands before us: to die to ourselves and live with Him, or to join those who condemned Him to death two thousand years ago. Peter's denial shows that this choice does not change a person automatically, that his fears, weakness, and cowardice remain with him. Yet there is still an enormous difference between Peter, who wept bitterly over his denial, and the members of the Sanhedrin.

We love Christ very much, and often because of this love we feel so sorry for Him in His sufferings that we want so badly for Him to avoid them by some miracle. In a way, we become like Peter when he said, "This shall never happen to You" (Matt. 16:22), only we cry out: if only You could avoid such suffering. And in those moments it seems to us that if Judas had been stopped, nothing would have happened. Judas becomes the object of our involuntary desire for revenge.

But we must not forget the main thing. Christ's suffering was voluntary. In the whole drama, Judas played no decisive role; he was simply a victim, a victim of his own weakness. Therefore it is wrong to see him as the embodiment of world evil or anything of the kind. If Judas had not been there, everything would have happened according to another scenario, but the meaning of the Redemption, as the greatest event in human history, would not have changed.

Another question that often arises in connection with Judas concerns his free will. Was he merely an instrument in the hands of providence? After all, Christ says that he was the "son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled" (John 17:12). Of course, this is not so either. A person is never merely an instrument in God's hands; each person whom He created "in His image and likeness" is too precious to Him. Some exegetes believe that when Christ dipped the morsel and gave it to Judas, He did so not in order to amaze the disciples with His omniscience, but to give Judas a chance to come to his senses, since the conversation was quiet, as we can see if we read the text carefully (John 13:26).

Besides, Judas could have repented as Peter did. But he would have had to repent exactly as Peter did, by bearing worthy fruit of repentance. Judas does not manage to do this. And that makes him deeply pitiful. Pity is the feeling that should arise in us toward this man.

The feast of Passover is approaching, and the disciples are sure that in a few hours their Teacher will become the promised King of Israel, will offer in the Temple an atoning sacrifice for His people, and everyone will serve Him, and therefore also them, His closest companions. Jesus, as it were, confirms their words: everything will happen very soon - He will not taste the Passover meal until He offers the sacrifice in the triumph of the Kingdom of God, and the disciples will have twelve thrones and authority over all Israel.

And here the paradox of the Gospel reaches its highest point: everything will be exactly so, but everything will be completely different. Jesus Himself will become the Passover sacrifice for the sin of the world. He will be the least of people - He will be executed as a criminal; the disciples will face persecution and the collapse of their hopes. The sacrifice has been offered, and those who share in it have become citizens of the Kingdom, which is utterly unlike all the other kingdoms of the world.

During the Passover seder that became the Last Supper, Jesus showed His disciples more clearly than ever before what Christianity is. It was the Last Supper that became for Christians the event on which the life of the Church would subsequently be founded, right up to Christ's return in glory. Every Christian breaking of bread, every Eucharist, becomes in essence a continuation of that same Last Supper which, while belonging to eternity, is at the same time refracted again and again in history, becoming what the Church usually calls a sacrament.

But what was the Last Supper? Outwardly it was an ordinary Passover seder, the traditional Jewish ritual festive meal held on the first day, or more precisely the first night, of the feast of Passover. In this respect Jesus invents nothing new. He does not intend to devise some special religious ritual for His disciples. And this is understandable: Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion. He speaks of something else, of His body and His blood. What does He mean?

In traditional Jewish usage, whether in Hebrew or Aramaic, body and blood mean the human person, human nature and human life. But life in all its fullness, both natural and spiritual. In the case of Christ this is very much indeed. One might say it is infinitely much, for He bears within Himself the life of the Kingdom in all its fullness. And Jewish ritual meals had always been a place of encounter, not only between God and the human person, but also among the people gathered at one table. God's presence united and sanctified them as one whole, one organism, one spiritual body. In Gospel times the entire Jewish people were perceived precisely in this way, as a single spiritual organism and not merely as an ethnic community. Ritual meals played an enormous part in their existence as one spiritual body: above all, of course, the Sabbath meals, but also those of other Jewish feasts, all founded on the breaking of bread as the moment when the participants in the meal met God and one another.

Jesus brings Himself into this communion. He brings the fullness of His life, and therefore the life of the Kingdom He has brought into the world. He brings it for all the ages to come, until the day when He returns as the triumphant King of His Kingdom fully revealed. Christianity is precisely participation in this life of Christ, sharing in the life of His Kingdom. Everything else is merely its setting, a historical framework which may take any form so long as it does not contradict the principal task. In an extreme case one can do without it altogether, provided that what began during the Last Supper is preserved. This, in fact, is what makes the Church the Church. Everything else will be added, if it is needed.

The Last Supper takes place in a large upper room, already prepared to receive guests. This upper room is like a person who, after being freed from dark forces, should invite Christ in so that He may dwell constantly in his heart. Christ entered the upper room in Jerusalem to celebrate the Last Supper, but even today every heart is capable of becoming such an upper room through the Eucharist.

If Jesus is not invited into the swept and prepared upper room, then unclean spirits will settle there. Many times attempts have been made to justify Judas and to attribute lofty motives to his betrayal, but the Evangelist testifies plainly: Satan entered Judas. He entered precisely because Judas turned away from the Teacher. And we see that the other disciples too, though they did not commit betrayal as Judas did, thought in categories of earthly success. On the eve of the Teacher's sufferings, about which they had been warned, they frivolously argue about who is greatest... Fallen human nature is ready to distort everything; even Christian service it tries to turn into a means of self-assertion. And if such a temptation begins to overcome us, may the Savior's words never fall silent in our consciousness: let the greatest among you be as the younger, and the leader as the one who serves.