NOTES for Mat 12:22-50

Has the Kingdom of God reached us? In the Gospel the Lord connects the coming of the Kingdom, on the one hand, with victory over the forces of evil, over Satan, and on the other hand, with the action of the Holy Spirit in people's lives. For it is by the Spirit that He casts out demons and heals diseases, and in denying this fact the Lord points to the danger of unforgivable blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. So the Kingdom of God not only awaits us beyond the grave, but is also realized here on earth, wherever people give the Holy Spirit the opportunity to act through them. The actions of the Spirit can be very diverse (1 Cor chs. 12-13), but the chief one is love. Therefore, to reach the Kingdom, little is required of us: first, complete trust in and openness to God, allowing His Spirit to act in our life; and second, attentiveness to His actions, allowing us not to quench His life in us, but on the contrary, to respond to it with thanksgiving.

The casting out of demons that led to the healing of a blind and mute man served, in the eyes of the people, as grounds for a conjecture, still preliminary, about Jesus' messiahship. But this alone would hardly have been enough, for Jesus Himself rejects the Pharisees' accusations by referring to the fact that their sons also cast out demons. And here we stand before a reality in relation to which we have to decide, and it is impossible to evade the choice.

When we encounter phenomena of the spiritual world, we have to decide whether this or that mysterious phenomenon is from God, or whether it is an imitation of miracles coming from the forces of darkness, or even simply ordinary charlatanry. Even today, various miracles or imitations of them, performed by numerous gurus and healers, bring them many admirers convinced that their wonders are given from above.

Here the Lord gives us a criterion: fruits. His miracles are manifestations of love; He never plays for effect simply to strike the imagination and nothing more. But the words about the doom of a divided kingdom are also very relevant for us, living in a divided world. For Christ, refuting the biased accusations of the Pharisees, does not deny that the forces of darkness can be at war among themselves, weakening one another. If there is hostility between factions of dark forces, then they are doomed. But mutual strife does not prevent them from causing evil to everything around them. And it is no accident that wherever evil rules, discord and universal hostility grow.

And it is evidently no accident that here, perhaps, the harshest words in the whole Gospel sound: about the unforgivability of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, about the only unforgiveness in the New Testament. For the Holy Spirit is God, who gives forgiveness. Therefore the one who blasphemes Him rejects the very possibility of forgiveness.

As can be seen, the main task of many representatives of the Pharisaic brotherhood, if not all of them, became to explain the miracles and healings performed by Jesus in such a way as not to recognize Him as a true Servant of God. Everything was brought into play, including utterly absurd explanations, as though Jesus, in healing, resorted to the help of some dark powers. It was not hard for Jesus to answer such accusations by emphasizing their obvious absurdity. But the issue was, of course, not the accusations themselves. The issue was the position of the accusers, and Jesus, of course, understood this perfectly. It is no accident that He said: "Whoever does not gather with Me scatters."

The issue, in essence, was not concrete accusations but the Kingdom. Jesus says directly to His accusers: if I cast out unclean spirits by the power of the breath of God, then the Kingdom has reached you, and now your further fate depends only on you; it will not be possible to remain neutral here. The moment of choice has arrived, the one some modern philosophers call existential: there is no escaping it, and it will determine the whole further life of a person. There is one Messiah, and one Kingdom.

This is not a theological or religious question, nor even a worldview question, but a spiritual and practical one. One can accept the Kingdom and live by its life, but then one must also accept the One who brought it into the world, and not define the possibility of such acceptance or rejection by any religious or theological criteria. Everything is simple: it is enough to see whether the Kingdom is here or not. And if it is here, to accept it as a fact, without trying to force it into any existing framework. Then the lives of those who accept it become part of the Kingdom: they "gather with Jesus."

If, however, despite everything, a person rejects the Kingdom, that rejection becomes the choice that determines his life, and not simply a theological or religious position he has chosen. Then the Kingdom is not for him, and he is not for the Kingdom. And then, according to the Savior's words, "whoever does not gather with Me scatters."

Jesus' words about blasphemy against the Spirit seem mysterious. But they probably seem so to us because our perception of the Gospel text is often overlaid with theological models—in particular, Trinitarian models, especially when the text mentions the Holy Spirit. Yet in Gospel times no Trinitarian theology existed, of course, and God's Spirit was viewed more from a practical spiritual standpoint—as an element of concrete spiritual and mystical experience, and above all prophetic experience. In the context of prophetic experience, the Spirit is experienced as the entirely real breath of God entering the human heart and renewing a person from within. There could be no mistake here: either God breathed in the heart or He did not. Since that was the nature of the matter, there could be no question of confusion or misunderstanding.

When theological theories and concepts are involved, mistakes are possible, of course. One can even fail to recognize the Messiah in the Messiah. In principle that too can happen, and not necessarily through a person's ill will; the reasons may vary greatly. But when God's breath and its action obvious to everyone are involved, there can be no mistake. Only someone who does not want to see can fail to see this action.

If the refusal to see also becomes aggressive, so that a person begins to revile God and His works, such a position naturally becomes a spiritual dead end for him. This is not because God is easily offended, but because rejecting God's breath automatically means rejecting the Kingdom that this breath permeates from its center to its farthest reaches. And rejecting the Kingdom clearly leads to rejecting life and salvation—a rejection about which nothing can be done, because it is made freely, without any compulsion.

The feeding of five thousand people with five loaves is a very vivid event. Of course, it anticipates the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper; it anticipates and is a type of every Eucharist celebrated by the Church. Today one detail seems important. In order for the miracle to take place, those poor five loaves and two fish were needed, most likely dried fish. The disciples had clearly already found out who had how much bread with him, and they had counted everything. Surely there was nothing else; these crumbs were the only thing found in that whole crowd, but in Christ's hands there comes from them food not merely sufficient but abundant. Yet those loaves did belong to someone. Someone unnamed, when the disciples asked, "Who has food?" answered, "Here, I have bread; take it." One would hardly think that these prudent listeners themselves had no need of bread.

Christians of the first centuries called what we bring to God in the sacrament of the Eucharist the "firstfruits" of creation. The firstfruits are a kind of pledge and sign that we bring to God everything created by Him. With them begins the miracle of multiplication, which makes something more out of created matter. By contrast, without the offering of these firstfruits, the abyss that separates God's world and this world remains impassable. We bring the firstfruits of the world and, in the words of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, receive from Christ's hands the firstfruits of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Each of us has something that can be brought to God, like those five loaves, or can be kept for ourselves. This is what the Lord is speaking about: "...whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it" (Matt. 16:25).

We usually take Christ's words that every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven, as a measure of the limits of God's mercy. It seems to us that there is something God cannot (or does not want to) forgive. And all our interest goes into understanding what kind of vile thing this is, if God refuses to forgive it.

Behind these words we lose the astounding, incredible thing Jesus says: every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people. It is important that this is not a modal category: may be forgiven. In the Greek original, as in the Russian text, it is simply the future tense. They will be forgiven. This, however, does not cancel another word of the Savior: ask, and it will be given to you. There is no doubt that forgiveness must be sought, that is, a) we must need it, b) ask for it, and c) practice it in our life. But how important for us is the promise that this hope of ours for forgiveness will be fulfilled. Limitation is the lot of creatures; forgiveness, as the work of God, cannot be limited.

What, then, stands behind Jesus' words that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven? Let us rephrase them for clarity. Water can moisten everything except water. Fire can burn everything except fire. Everything can be forgiven except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Forgiveness is not simply a gift, but, even more, the action and manifestation of the presence of the Holy Spirit; and if this presence is blasphemed, if we do not accept it, the fire of forgiveness does not ignite.

What, then, is "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" (v. 31)? First of all, let us remember that on the cross Christ prays for those crucifying Him: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing". Therefore only conscious sin can be unforgivable.

Now let us look at the situation in which Jesus' words are spoken. The Pharisees declare that Jesus, when performing miracles, acts by the power of the prince of demons. That is, good works, performed by the power of God, or in other words by the Holy Spirit, are attributed to Satan and not to God. At the same time, all ideas of good and evil, truth and falsehood, life and death are turned upside down. These people have already decided everything for themselves and are completely closed to repentance. What goodness, what mercy can such people expect from God? And because they do not expect it, they do not receive it. So blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is a conscious refusal of God's goodness and a refusal to accept His mercy and forgiveness.

Jesus speaks these words after the Pharisees accused Him of casting out demons by the power of the prince of demons. In other words, in their view, an evil force is the cause of a good deed. With this brief parable Jesus affirms: that does not happen. The Pharisees are speaking from deceit and dishonesty; they "fit" reality to a conclusion already decided in advance. For them, the evaluation of a fact is determined even before the fact. In addition, they are ready to change the criterion for distinguishing good from evil depending on circumstances and convenience.

Christ shows that by accepting such logic, they (and at times we as well) fall under the power of the one they call the father of lies. The criteria for distinguishing good and evil must be unshakable, because they come from God; therefore they must apply equally to the "tree" and to the "fruit." And any situation must be evaluated on the basis of the facts (the "fruit"), not on whether we like or dislike the "tree."

Both the scribes and the Pharisees ask Christ to perform a sign, and many among the people would, perhaps, have joined in such a request. It appears that the crowd not only knows in advance what such a sign should be, but also would like to dictate the conditions under which it is performed. Refusing to let the crowd see what it can imagine and is already prepared to interpret according to its own understanding, Christ gives another sign: His Resurrection. It will be rejected by many people, but it will still become a sign for the whole world, completely unexpected and impossible to fit into consciousness, yet grasped by faith. Signs by themselves may not lead to faith, but faith gives the ability to see the meaning of signs.

The words about what can happen after an unclean spirit is cast out apply not only to those who cast out demons "without proper qualification." Here we see a warning about the difficulties that arise on the paths of spiritual life, about its seriousness, and about the responsibility to preserve what has been received. For we risk handing the swept room over to seven more evil unclean spirits every time we voluntarily return to habitual sinful inclinations that had supposedly already been cast aside. It is hardly accidental that these words stand next to the warning about the inadmissibility of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Yes, the Lord is merciful. But is it possible to receive mercy while turning away from its Giver?

The scribes are typical people of science. They know what should happen, and they seek experimental confirmation of their guesses about Jesus. They would like to receive a sign that would free them from moral choice and, above all, from the need to trust, to "fall into the hands of the living God." Jesus speaks about the sign of the prophet Jonah and about His resurrection on the third day after the Crucifixion. Then He recalls the Ninevites, who repented after Jonah's preaching, and says that, against the background of the Ninevites' repentance, the scribes' search for proof falls under condemnation.

The point is that Jonah called things by their proper names in Nineveh. Evil deeds were called evil deeds, not necessary cruelty; violence was called violence, not a restriction of freedom for the sake of the interests of one phantom or another. The Bible says that the Ninevites were people too, although Nineveh of those times resembled the fascist regimes of the 20th century. And the human heart is capable of opening to the truth, to a serious moral assessment of itself. The Ninevites repented and turned away from their evil deeds. No miracles or signs were shown to them, but they recognized the justice of Jonah's assessment of their deeds, and they were saved. God gave the human person a moral center, the conscience, and we can be saved if we listen to its voice.

Indeed, faith is not so much a question of reason and proofs as a matter of conscience. And then Jesus says that ceasing to do evil is not enough to become a person of truth, a person of conscience. One must begin to do good, or else one will fall into even worse sins. On the path of truth one cannot stand still; one can only walk. If you are not moving upward, you are falling.

How frightening freedom is... Responsibility inevitably follows it. Free choice is our problem, our headache. Even choosing yogurt in a supermarket is unbearably difficult for us because, if we choose wrongly, we alone will be to blame, and we are afraid of being at fault. So, sometimes even subconsciously, we seek a lack of freedom, decisions forced upon us, proofs, and signs—like the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew's Gospel.

But refusing the freedom to choose is also a decision, and one for which we must answer. Refusing to see the signs of God's action in our lives and demanding ever more proof leave us in the wrong before God even when compared with repentant pagans.

Today we understand the word "sign" as a miracle. Yet the corresponding Greek word, and also "sign" in its original meaning, which it has in Church Slavonic or Old Russian, means a "mark" or "signal." It turns out that the people listening to Jesus expect from Him some kind of sign that would speak... about what, exactly? About His messiahship?

That is quite possible: as people thought in those days, when the Messiah came, He had to prove His messiahship, including by certain definite signs, among which there had to be miracles, manifestations of God's power proving that God was truly with Him and that He was entrusting Him with the ministry to which He laid claim. More broadly, signs were expected in order to be convinced that it was truly God acting, and not a person acting by his own will. Such signs were expected and demanded from Jesus: by them His listeners wanted to determine who He really was before them. The demand would seem quite legitimate, if not for one "but": Jesus had shown more than enough testimony that God was truly with Him, as He tells the people around Him.

Israel had never before seen such manifestations of the Kingdom, of its breath, of its power, such visible signs of God's presence, and many who looked at the situation without prejudice agreed with this. Of course, the signs were not exactly the kind people expected, but they were plainly there. Many people's unwillingness to see the obvious made new signs meaningless: those who wanted to see had already seen, and those who did not want to see would not have seen anything, no matter what signs were shown to them. There was, however, something else as well: fascination with signs does not always bring a person spiritual benefit in itself.

A sign is only a pointer to the main thing; it must not become something self-sufficient and self-important. Signs are like a geographical map that depicts real terrain schematically: on different maps the system of symbols may differ, but if the map is accurate, it will in any case convey the geographical realities adequately. To reject a map with an unusual system of symbols merely because that system is unfamiliar means forgetting the purpose of a geographical map as such. That is why Jesus does not try to conform to the public's expectations concerning signs: what matters to Him is the Kingdom, not the pointers.

Why is this text so important for us? It warns us against one very dangerous situation. Let us note that, in general, Christ's commandments and the Gospel as a whole can in a certain sense be compared to road signs that warn of danger: for example, "sharp curve," "slope," or "ice." They really are bright symbols, carefully placed to warn us away from trouble.

What troubles, then, does the text given to us today by the Lord warn us against? There is something here to think about. What does a person experience when he understands that he has come through some temptation with honor? As a rule, he experiences a certain pride; there is no getting around it. And perhaps, to some extent, this is normal. But the question is precisely one of measure, the eternal question of measure: as soon as the measure is exceeded, a crack opens into our inner space, where the place once occupied by sin has not yet had time to be occupied by anything else.

Yes, our victories should be precious to us, but we must not forget the main thing: after Christ conquered, He Himself was conquered, nailed to the Cross, crucified. So we too, after conquering evil in ourselves, are in fact wounded by it, sick with it. And we need to guard our inner space very carefully, as someone going outside after a severe sore throat must wrap his throat well and put on warm socks.

In this episode Jesus may at first seem hard-hearted. Indeed, it is strange to see a preacher so absorbed in spreading His teaching that a crowd of admirers becomes so much dearer to him than his relatives that he is ready to trade his own Mother and brothers for them. Yes, any demagogic speaker in such a situation would look unattractive.

But when we consider the Gospel account carefully, we will have to admit that Christ's words contain no renunciation either of His Mother or of His brothers. After all, He called those who do the will of the Heavenly Father His brothers and mother. And did not Mary open herself to God with the greatest fullness? Did she not become the Mother of Christ precisely because she fulfilled the will of the Heavenly Father? The brothers are a somewhat different matter: they did not have Mary's spiritual experience and did not immediately recognize Jesus as the Christ. But the time will come when they will see and accept what is still hard for them to accept now. Then they will become brothers not only by kinship.

The Lord Jesus Christ offers us an incredible gift in today's passage from Matthew's Gospel. It might seem sufficient for us if He merely freed us from enslavement to evil. On our own, we would hardly desire anything more than deliverance from death. In the highest manifestations of the human spirit, we might conceive of serving God in His creation of the world in which He settled us. But the Lord is not content even with this.

He wants everyone who comes to Him to become a member of His family. He nourishes us with His Blood and Flesh so that we may become of one blood with Him. And since Jesus Himself and His All-Pure Mother are wholly obedient to the Father's will, He calls us too to fulfill that will and thereby become His brother and sister and mother.

Surprisingly often, people reading this passage for the first time ask, “Why does Jesus hurt His Mother so much?” But He is not hurting the Most Pure Virgin with these words; He is offering us the possibility of being raised up to Her level.

It would seem that we ought to be reading something that glorifies the Mother of God, yet we read Jesus’ harsh words about renouncing blood kinship. But this passage is one of the highest praises ever spoken of Her. Jesus says: “...whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother.” Among the people surrounding Him, no one is worthy of such words except His Mother. For perfect obedience, the fulfillment of the Father’s will, is expressed most fully and humbly in Mary’s own words: “Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

What has Christ's coming given us? Salvation from evil? Yes, of course... but evil and suffering did not vanish from the world by the wave of a magic wand. Jesus Himself not only endures terrible sufferings on the Cross; He endures them innocently. And He also says that those who want to be His disciples should likewise take up their cross and follow Him. In what, then, does this salvation from evil consist?

Perhaps this is too human an approach. In one of the Gospel readings Jesus reminds us that if you have merely been freed from an evil spirit, but its place in your heart remains unoccupied, in the end something even worse will overtake you. Salvation only from what we consider bad is, alas, too little. Too little for a person who looks the truth in the face. But, fortunately, it is too little for the Creator as well.

And therefore He offers us something immeasurably better: adoption. We can enter the family of Jesus of Nazareth and become His adopted brothers and sisters. More than that, the possibility of an exceptional, essential union with Him is open to us, the same as His Mother's. To be brothers of Jesus, and therefore to be adopted by His Father and His Mother, to share His divine-humanity with Him, only one thing is required: to say to the Father as Jesus Himself says, "Not My will, but Yours be done."

Salvation from the unpleasant, the bad, the evil is a human approach. Such escapism is hardly proper to God. He does not flee from evil, but confronts it on the Cross and conquers. You may seek comfort and sweet piety, but then from the hell of violence you will go straight into the hell of hypocrisy; or you may agree to adoption by the Heavenly Father. Yes, this is a difficult path, at times painfully difficult, and your adopted Brother, Jesus, died on it. But by becoming His brother, you will also share His victory over evil. The choice between defeat, flight, and victory is yours.

As can be seen, Jesus' attitude toward blood ties is, if not always negative, always restrained and critical. Such an attitude seems surprising if we consider the role that tribal and clan identity played in Jewish society. In fact, belonging to the people of God itself was defined by clan and tribal lines. Yet Jesus pushes family ties into the background.

One might, of course, think that Jesus is a man of another era, the era of Hellenistic civilization and great empires. In that era a person's origin meant less than his personality. But the issue, as can be seen, is still not only the era, especially since Jewish society remained very conservative with regard to clan and family ties.

Jesus, of course, does not say by chance that his relatives are those who do the will of God. And the point here is not only that he needed like-minded people and helpers. The point lies in the very essence of blood relationships. They are certainly a powerful binding factor among people in a fallen world, and in this lies their strength. But in this also lies their weakness: by binding people to one another, they also bind them to the untransformed order of things, including them in that order as firmly as nothing else can. Then it turns out that for the sake of the Kingdom blood ties must, if not be broken completely, at least be pushed into the background.

It would seem that such a decision rules out the very possibility of doing anything for the salvation of one's loved ones. But that is not always so. In order to save others, one must first oneself share in the life of the Kingdom, whose breath alone is saving. As long as relationships that were purely natural do not change their quality, such sharing will remain impossible. On the other hand, the spiritual transformation of a Christian's life often objectively disrupts former blood ties if relatives do not walk the same path with him: if one of them is ready to build relationships with a neighbor according to the laws of the Kingdom and the other is not, relations between them will in essence become impossible. But the one who has not yet begun his path into the Kingdom will have the opportunity to make use of the support of his Christian relative if and when he does begin that path, because that relative will be ready for new relationships and will "catch" them as soon as the person taking the first step feels the need for them.

Such blood ties, transformed by the breath of the Kingdom, can become not a brake but a help for spiritual life. And Jesus, knowing this, does not cling to the old, but offers his followers a new life with renewed relationships.