NOTES for Luk 11:29-53

The Savior's words addressed to the Pharisees and teachers of the Torah, who in those days were usually called "scribes," may seem too harsh, just as they seemed to some of His listeners. But the question was too serious, and things had to be called by their proper names. The accusations are serious: in essence, Jesus reproaches both the religious leadership of the Synagogue of that time (the Pharisees) and the outstanding teachers of the Torah for not observing themselves what they call others to observe. A strange accusation, it would seem: after all, in the Gospels it is precisely the Pharisees and teachers of the Torah who are shown as zealots for the Torah; they are the ones who constantly reproach Jesus for violating one or another of its prescriptions. But Jesus clearly identifies the problem: external religiosity devoid of spiritual content. This very religiosity became the main problem of synagogue spiritual life in the Gospel era. Many Pharisees adhered to such religiosity, and many teachers of the Torah taught it to the people.

There was, of course, an alternative, but only a few represented it. The New Testament books have preserved the names of some of them for us: Nicodemus, Gamaliel... But they did not determine the general atmosphere of synagogue life at that time. And so it turned out that calls to spiritual life were accompanied by instruction in a life that was not so much spiritual as religious. People were taught not how to acquire inner wholeness and inner light (the very "clear eye" of which Jesus speaks), but how to observe ritual prescriptions. Of course, these prescriptions also did not appear for no reason, and behind them stands a certain spiritual experience that gave rise to them; but by that time the experience had already been forgotten, while the prescriptions remained.

And now the people are offered a life of religiosity alone, without spiritual content; prescriptions without communion with God. Meanwhile, the teachers themselves feel like masters of the Torah: after all, they are the ones who comment on it and interpret it; people come to them for advice; it is their authority in the eyes of ordinary people that is unquestioned.

Not all of them, of course, were like this, but there were enough of them for a vast number of people to become locked inside a circle of formal religiosity with no possibility of leaving it. And every free word from God, any breath of God's Spirit in this environment, is perceived as something unnecessary and even dangerous: it undermines the monopoly of teachers and interpreters over the Torah, and therefore over spiritual life. It is no accident that Jesus tells those who build monuments to the ancient prophets that they are no better than their fathers, who killed those same prophets. They have no need of living spiritual life, just as their fathers had no need of it. And that means they have no need of the Kingdom either.

Today's reading is devoted to the central theme of the controversy that unfolded between Jesus and part of the Pharisaic brotherhood - the theme of the Kingdom and religiosity. To understand the situation, it is important to keep in mind that this is not about some specific form of religiosity. The religiosity of the Pharisees, of course, had very concrete features characteristic of the era; but on the other hand, the Pharisaic mentality can be regarded as the quintessence of religiosity as such, and in a certain sense any other religiosity known in history (at least in the history of the Abrahamic religions) can be compared with Pharisaic religiosity as with a standard.

But the point is that Jesus was not the founder of a new religion. Christianity is not a religion, but life in the Kingdom, and the Savior is constantly trying to convey this thought to His interlocutors. It is no accident that He answers so fully the Pharisee who invited Him into his house, when the man asks about the ritual washing of hands before a meal (vv. 38-44). The question of ritual purity is the central question of any religion; it defines a person's belonging to a religious community and his religious standing.

Jesus, however, speaks of purity not as a religious condition, but as a spiritual one. The possibility of abiding in the Kingdom is determined not by a person's qualities, moral or religious, but by his relationships with God and with his neighbors. Religion and morality can cleanse a person outwardly; careful performance of religious duties makes a person religiously impeccable; he conforms to all the prescriptions of the Torah if it is understood only as religious legislation that has no relation to a person's inner life.

One can call this religious formalism, but that would still not be the whole truth, because the same Pharisees tried to fulfill the prescriptions of the Law not only formally; they were simply completely sure that, after carefully paying the tithe, they really were clean before God (v. 42). Jesus, however, speaks of almsgiving for a reason (v. 41), of something that no law can regulate: only the refusal to try to formalize everything in one's relationship with God can make a person think not about his religious duties and rights, but about his relationships with God and with people. Then such a person will also not attach special importance to status, so important in religious life (v. 43). And the main problem here is that the way into the Kingdom is not some special, new religion, but the rejection of every religion as such. This was unacceptable even to the "scribes" - teachers of the Torah (v. 45). But Jesus replies by noting that rabbinic theology, like all traditional theology in general, is occupied with justifying that same religiosity, which, incidentally, does not obligate the theologians themselves to anything (v. 46).

Worst of all, it is religion and its defenders that in every age have opposed God's witnesses and tried to get rid of them. So it was before, and in Jesus' time nothing had changed (vv. 46-52). And here it turns out that fully religious, learned, and outwardly devout people condemn to the cross the One whom, by their own assertions, they had been waiting for through many centuries. Choosing between religion and the Kingdom, they, as is clear, choose religion. And they remain with their own choice.

In several episodes, the evangelist records different sayings of the Lord about life in the coming Kingdom of God. Jesus did not preach in a vacuum—around Him were believers, some devout and some less so. Naturally, they all understood somewhat differently what God is and how one should live with Him. Yet in the sayings recorded by the evangelist one can trace two principal “types of religious life”: on one side, a person with a clear, simple eye, filled with light like the light of a lamp visible to everyone in darkness; on the other, the formal piety of people who remember when to wash their hands and when to pay the tithe, but sometimes forget—not out of malice, but solely because of the limitations of human memory—such things as forgiveness, mercy, and trust in God. Naturally, both kinds truly are “types,” distinct ideals of spiritual life; nevertheless, they depict quite clearly the two directions in which a disciple of Jesus Christ may set out.

We are blind and deaf. God is near us and addresses us, but we do not hear. Most often He speaks to us through those close to us, but most often we not only do not listen to them, we do not even want to hear them. Our heart has turned to stone; it has forgotten how to see and hear; it closes itself when the Lord stands at its door and knocks.

Of course, it is easier to live with a closed heart. It hurts less; nothing wounds, grieves, or touches us. But God does not break down closed doors, and without understanding what we are doing, when we close ourselves out of fear of pain, we deprive ourselves of joy and light.

The season of Lent is a time when it is easier to change something. Alone it is harder; in Lent it is easier, because the whole Church is walking the path of repentance and change. Perhaps for some of us this Lent will become the time when we can open the doors of our heart and throw them wide open before God.

Condemning the "evil generation" (an evil generation in the Synodal translation), the Lord speaks of the sign of the prophet Jonah. In Matthew's account, Jonah's three-day stay in the belly of the whale is a sign of Christ's Resurrection on the third day. But in today's reading, the evangelist Luke emphasizes a completely different aspect of Christ's words. According to Luke, the sign of the prophet Jonah is the repentance of the people of Nineveh as a result of the prophet's preaching. Let us remember: the book of the prophet Jonah contains a parable about how the prophet, despite his own reluctance, comes to preach repentance in Nineveh, the capital of a very unattractive military-fascist empire. The miracle is that Jonah's word about God's truth, about mercy and compassion, against which the cruel conquerors, the Ninevites, have sinned, is heard.

In Luke's account, the Lord emphasizes that the Ninevites will rise at the judgment with this generation because they were able to hear the word of a weak man as the proclamation of God's truth. Christ's contemporaries, and all of us who read the Gospel, hear His word, spoken with authority, and do not recognize the voice of God. It is precisely this recognition that the Lord in the Gospel of Luke calls the sign of the prophet Jonah. In essence, the evangelist John speaks repeatedly about the same recognition, especially when he quotes Christ's words in chapter 10 that "the sheep follow Him because they know His voice". The essence of the sign, then, is that we hear the word of Christ and the word of the Gospel about Him, and recognize in it the truth that alone resonates with the image of God placed within us.

The Savior explains spiritual life to His listeners through the example of physical sight. If a person's eyes are healthy, He says, then his whole body is filled with light; otherwise, instead of light, the person is plunged into darkness. But here the point is still not only physical sight, which serves merely as an example for describing the realities of spiritual life.

In the Gospel age, the most widespread ideas about the Kingdom were either religious-political or mystical in character. In the first case, the Kingdom was viewed as a strictly political reality, as an ordinary earthly state, differing from all others above all in that the Messiah would become its ruler and its laws would fully correspond to the Torah. Of course, a special measure of God's presence in the Temple was also expected, as was the renewal of the covenant with the coming of the Messiah, but the matter was still an earthly state that would be created in the way all states of this world are created.

The direct opposite of such an idea of the Kingdom was the idea of it as a mystical Kingdom, existing somewhere in another dimension of being, the way into which the coming Messiah would open for His chosen ones. And if the Pharisees and the Zealots saw the Kingdom above all as an earthly state, then, for example, the Essenes considered it a mystical reality.

Jesus, however, as can be seen, looks at the matter in a completely different way. The fact that the Kingdom is "not of this world" does not at all mean that it exists in some other dimension of being. It is here, nearby; only not everyone is able to see it. To see it, one needs healthy, full spiritual sight, which the fallen person is originally deprived of. But if his sight is cleansed and corrected, the Kingdom will become for him as obvious and certain a reality as the untransformed world is for him in his present state. After all, the Savior brought the Kingdom into the world not so that it would remain something alien and foreign in nature to the world, but so that its power and breath would transform the world, renewing it and making it part of the Kingdom. So that at the end of time the whole of our world would become part of the Kingdom, except for that evil in it which is incompatible with the life of the Kingdom.

It is not the Lord's way to leave a rebuke without instruction, and today He speaks of the light given to people. In essence, He says that it is precisely the clouding of our sight by sin and vanity that deprives us of the ability to see the light and plunges the whole person into darkness. It is because of sin that we do not accept the sign of the prophet Jonah and fail to recognize God's voice in the words of Christ brought to us by the Gospel. The Lord says of this human condition: “If [your eye] is bad, your body also will be full of darkness.” Conversely, if we try to free ourselves from sin, do everything in our power, and ask God for mercy and help where our strength falls short, then we have the opportunity to see Christ, to recognize and love Him, and the light of God will illumine us.

Jesus was quite demanding toward the Pharisees and the "lawyers" (teachers of the Torah), condemning much in their life. He is plainly condemning first of all the distortion of the system of priorities in spiritual life, which outwardly manifests itself as religious formalism.

Of course, there is nothing good for spiritual life in formalism by itself: it distracts from what matters most. But something else is worse: religious formalism provides an excellent justification for self-assertion. After all, by fulfilling all the required formalities, the one who fulfills them thinks he has every right to be proud of himself and of his achievements in spiritual life. Meanwhile Jesus reminds the people listening to Him of what matters most: justice and the love of God.

It would seem that justice and love are, in a certain sense, directly opposite things. But on closer examination the connection between them turns out to be quite clear. Indeed, if we follow the prophetic tradition (and it was the prophets who spoke most often and most extensively about God's judgment and about justice), justice can and must be connected not only with court proceedings, but also with making a decision as such. Making a choice and a decision in one situation or another, evaluating his own or someone else's actions, a person who wants to follow the Torah must first of all evaluate his own and others' actions with respect to their conformity to the norms and laws of the Torah, in particular to the commandments of the Decalogue.

A correct evaluation of one's own and others' actions, as well as of the situation as a whole, the right choice, and the resolve to follow it are, properly speaking, the foundation of normal everyday spiritual life. Meanwhile religious formalities often not only fail to help here, but directly get in the way, distracting attention from what matters most and shifting it to secondary things. Instead of thinking about whether a given action or decision conforms to God's commandment, the religious formalist begins thinking about whether it conforms to religious rules. And religious formalism distracts from the love of God no less: after fulfilling the prescribed religious rules, the one who has fulfilled them begins to think that he no longer owes anything to anyone.

Love, however, never limits itself to the framework of law and obligations: the one who loves is always ready to do more for the beloved than he is obliged to do. And the point is not even that the religious formalist withholds something from someone, although, of course, in reality that is almost always how things stand. The point is that, remaining what he is, such a formalist builds his relationship with God in the same way as with his neighbor. And he is ready to receive from Him as much as is prescribed. But what is prescribed is plainly not enough for any of us for salvation, so the formalist will have to forget about salvation. And about the Kingdom too.

Some unsearchable fear creeps in when you think about this text and at the same time project it onto the present state of affairs in the world. "But He said: Woe to you lawyers also, because you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers". The point is not even that some of our spiritual fathers force us to fast too severely, or that someone lays too strict penances on us. It seems that none of this is really a sign of the present day. Perhaps somewhere there are priests who are strict beyond measure. But overall, this is not at all the spirit of our days. Any normal priest understands that simply being an ordinary decent Christian against the background of our maddened, corrupted, terrifying age is already a very difficult task, to say nothing of ascetic feats among laypeople.

But it seems that this is only the most direct meaning of today's reading, while it also contains deeper layers of meaning. Now these words of the Lord call to our memory other words as well. "They will put you out of the synagogues; but the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think that he is offering service to God" (John 16:2). Now the closeness of these two texts is strong.

Why will he think that he is offering service to God? Why do some "Muslims" think that by killing Christians they are offering service to Allah? Why do some "Christians" think that by dropping bombs on civilians in Iraq, on children and women, they are doing a God-pleasing, good, kind, and just thing? Why?

And the answer to this question, strangely enough, lies precisely in the words Jesus speaks today. We are obedient to "lawyers"; they guide us like donkeys on whom burdens are loaded, and we obey them. We even have such words as "spiritual leader." But it seems to me that this is some kind of oxymoron, nonsense, an impossible expression. In principle there can be no such concept as a spiritual leader. In the spirit only the Spirit can guide us, and everything else is not in the spirit, but simply criminal, a matter for court. But one must strain oneself, labor, read, think, pray. Here everything is simple: the mullah said that it is written in the Quran, if you meet an unbeliever, strike the neck with the sword (the 47th sura, "Muhammad"), so go kill Christians. But it turns out that in fact something completely different is meant; the passage is about a battle, but this requires going deeply into it, looking at different translations, simply having an integral vision and living communion with God. And Christians hear their children being killed to shouts of "Allahu akbar" and begin to hate, or even behave in such a way that the only word a believer can use toward them is "infidel." And they forget that Christ teaches love, not hatred; they forget because they turn not to Christ, but to presidents who call themselves believers, to leaders - in a word, to "lawyers."

One wants to say: people, look more carefully at the words the Lord speaks today: "that you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch these burdens with a single finger." Are we donkeys, that burdens should be loaded on us? Woe to them, yes; but we should not offer them our backs.

In the Pharisaic milieu enormous attention was paid to tradition, especially religious tradition. Naturally, the Pharisaic brotherhood relied on the sacred books, the Torah and the Prophets. Besides the books familiar to us, the Jews also count among the prophetic books Joshua, Judges, Samuel, meaning 1-2 Kings, and Kings, meaning 3-4 Kings. Meanwhile the prophets spoke quite unflatteringly about the spiritual state of the society contemporary with them, for which they were often persecuted. And the sacred history set forth in the books we Christians usually call historical evaluates the spiritual situation in pre-exilic Israel rather harshly. The Pharisees agreed with such an evaluation, though they applied it precisely to the pre-exilic period.

Much here was built on a kind of contrast between the pre-exilic situation and the post-exilic situation in general and the contemporary situation, meaning Gospel times, in particular. It was assumed that every apostasy, violation of the Torah, impiety, and everything else for which God punished the people in pre-exilic times remained there, in pre-exilic times. Now, in the time of the Savior's earthly ministry, as was thought, everything was different; the former apostasy and violations of the Torah no longer had any place in Jewish society, and now, as people thought, the pre-exilic prophets, if they could look at the people, would have been satisfied. Outwardly everything really did look that way: no paganism, no open apostasy, and even no open violation of the Torah was something Jews generally allowed themselves in those times.

And the formerly persecuted prophets had now become a kind of national hero. They had once been persecuted and even killed, but now they were honored, their tombs adorned and monuments built for them. Meanwhile in reality nothing had changed in principle: the religious Pharisaic milieu remained just as little receptive to living Revelation as the half-pagan environment with which the pre-exilic prophets had had to deal. It resisted God's plans and God's action just as before, though outwardly in a different way than pre-exilic Jewry.

And it reacted no less harshly to bearers of living Revelation, as the earthly path of John the Baptist, for example, and of the Savior Himself, clearly confirms. That is why Jesus says "woe" to the self-satisfied and outwardly pious Pharisees: they are not opposing the ancient prophets not because they have understood and taken in their preaching, but simply because now, having become part of tradition, it has largely ceased to be living and therefore has ceased to be dangerous for their religion.

Any Revelation that presented even some danger to them in this respect was rejected in the same way, and even more harshly than in pre-exilic times. Therefore the thoroughly and deeply religious Pharisees were no closer to the Kingdom than their half-pagan ancestors, and they had nothing to boast of except decorated tombs. But neither tombs nor monuments bring one closer to God.

The One who could open the Kingdom to them was rejected by most Pharisees just as their ancestors rejected those prophets whom the same Pharisees, at least in words, honored. History was repeating itself, somewhat differently in form but exactly the same in essence. The history that had ended in the Babylonian defeat then was now leading the people to the catastrophe of the year 70. Therefore the Savior's "woe" sounded very timely. Only very few, unfortunately, heard Him. And then the history of ancient Judea ended as it ended. Rejection of the Messiah and the Kingdom is always the path to catastrophe. As is the rejection of God.

It is especially Pharisees and scribes, those for whom any relation with God is turned to the fulfillment of the commandments and numerous rules and standards deducted from these commandments that caused the biggest indignation of Jesus. The Real God, the Living God becomes superfluous in such an approach of the law: it is sufficient that once He has giving His law, He can disappear and not show up again. And in this case, the one who abnegates to have a direct relationship with God becomes an unauthorized interpreter of God's commandments; he changes gradually God's laws into human’s precepts (see Mk 7:6-8) and thinks that their observation leads to salvation. All this is completely the opposite of God's plan concerning His relations with men – the fulfillment Jesus came in this world for. But the particular wrath of Jesus towards the lawyers is not due to the fact that they took the way of self-justification leading to death, rather that they made themselves spiritual authorities of Israel, proclaiming their way leading to justice and salvation, teaching others to imitate them and of therefore move away from God.

It will be a big mistake to think that legalism passed away with Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ time. Apostle Paul in his entire sermon fights against the offences of legalism, because this virus penetrated into the new Church very rapidly. And today, we meet in every confession, in every Christian community the same claims of the " key of knowledge”, the same substitution of real relationships with God in the tideway of living streams of Church's traditions - the mindless execution of rules and customs accumulated by one or another denomination during its short or long existence. Thus let us try not to violate these rules, by preserving concord in our Church, and looking at the same time for something better - which is meeting with Jesus Christ and filling in with Holy Spirit, what will make of us carriers of love towards God and towards people in our heart.

It is especially Pharisees and scribes, those for whom any relation with God is turned to the fulfillment of the commandments and numerous rules and standards deducted from these commandments that caused the biggest indignation of Jesus. The Real God, the Living God becomes superfluous in such an approach of the law: it is sufficient that once He has giving His law, He can disappear and not show up again. And in this case, the one who abnegates to have a direct relationship with God becomes an unauthorized interpreter of God's commandments; he changes gradually God's laws into human’s precepts (see Mk 7:6-8) and thinks that their observation leads to salvation. All this is completely the opposite of God's plan concerning His relations with men – the fulfillment Jesus came in this world for. But the particular wrath of Jesus towards the lawyers is not due to the fact that they took the way of self-justification leading to death, rather that they made themselves spiritual authorities of Israel, proclaiming their way leading to justice and salvation, teaching others to imitate them and of therefore move away from God.

It will be a big mistake to think that legalism passed away with Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ time. Apostle Paul in his entire sermon fights against the offences of legalism, because this virus penetrated into the new Church very rapidly. And today, we meet in every confession, in every Christian community the same claims of the " key of knowledge”, the same substitution of real relationships with God in the tideway of living streams of Church's traditions - the mindless execution of rules and customs accumulated by one or another denomination during its short or long existence. Thus let us try not to violate these rules, by preserving concord in our Church, and looking at the same time for something better - which is meeting with Jesus Christ and filling in with Holy Spirit, what will make of us carriers of love towards God and towards people in our heart.

When Christ says, "Woe to you...," one is tempted to say that these words are addressed, of course, to His immediate listeners. Yet always and at all times His words are addressed to us ourselves, and only to us. Of course, it is pleasant to think that the words about God's love for the world apply to us, while no one likes hearing rebuke. And nevertheless, inside each of us lives that very lawyer who is always trying to appropriate the "key of knowledge." In words we may recognize another person's right to a different view, to a different way of confessing God, to a style of thinking unlike our own, but somewhere inside there is always a quiet but distinct little voice speaking: "But I know that in reality they are all wrong. After all, only I know what is correct."

Let us leave the origin of this voice outside our reflection; one thing is clear: it belongs to the human person in general. Sometimes we like this voice so much that we give it the right to speak out loud. And this is much more terrible than any failure to fulfill the law. Because the whole essence of the New Testament, the whole essence of the Good News, is in the change from Law to Grace. The Lord offers us a completely different way to see the world and live in it: to love our brother to death, to the cross, to weep and rejoice together with him. Only in this way, and not through observing rites, fasts, and internal church rules, can we be with God, on one side with Him. And if we stand before God, are we not all wrong to the same degree? But fortunately, His love for us is determined neither by our righteousness nor by our understanding.