NOTES for Mat 17:14-27

The Resurrection is the very heart of the Good News, but it is also the news hardest for us to grasp. When the disciples heard Jesus predict His death and Resurrection, they were "deeply distressed"; they heard only the words about death, and did not understand the words about the Resurrection.

This is not surprising: death and decay form the basis of our life experience; destruction, illness, and grief reign everywhere around us. So we do not doubt that death touched Christ as well. That is easy to believe, because it touches everyone. The Resurrection is harder: we are not always able to know this reality by experience. It seems too good to be true. It entered the lives of the apostles only when they saw the risen Christ with their own eyes. It can enter our lives in the same way it entered theirs: through the Paschal encounter, by faith and love.

Did the disciples really not have faith even as small as a mustard seed, since they could not cast the demon out of the young man? But we have read that earlier they had succeeded in doing this: the Lord Himself gave them authority over unclean spirits.

Apparently, the strength of faith is not simply the degree of our confidence in one or another truth about God or the world. The Lord connects faith and prayer, that is, communion with God, into one whole. This means that the issue is not confidence, but nearness to God, inward unity with Him. It is no accident that the Lord mentions fasting: when fasting, a person draws life-giving strength not from food, but from communion with God, living by His life. Such unity is not given to us once and for all. Today we may be closer to God, tomorrow farther from Him, although this is not always determined by our subjective feelings. Therefore, what separates faith from unbelief is not doubt about God's existence, but inner closedness to Him: prayerlessness, a lack of striving toward Him.

Having come down from the Mount of Transfiguration, Christ again plunges into a world where the forces of darkness overpower the suffering. But those to whom He gave power to resist darkness do not cope with the ministry entrusted to them. And so the man whose son is tormented by an unclean spirit appeals directly to Christ. Of course, Christ does not leave the request unanswered and drives out the demon. But He did not choose the disciples so that they would retreat before the forces of evil.

Here, immediately after the Transfiguration, we see the contrast between what is manifested by Christ and what the apostles do, or rather cannot do, in His absence. And then we see His anger directed at the disciples.

On the pages of the Gospel we encounter more than once episodes in which Jesus' appearance looks stern. For someone whose idea of Christ was once formed by sugary pictures, the reality of the Gospel may seem inelegant. But Christ's love is not sentimentality; it is real love that takes upon itself pain for the beloved. And often cries out from pain.

Meanwhile, His remark about fasting and prayer forces us to suppose that the disciples tried to act in some other way, perhaps by some "folk" methods, or, simply put, by methods far from genuinely biblical ones. If so, the angry rebuke of the disciples for their unbelief is all the more understandable. (Note that by calling the disciples a faithless and corrupt generation, Christ almost repeated the definition He had earlier given the Pharisees: an evil and adulterous generation. Thus the disciples were likened to the Pharisees.)

But after giving them a "dressing-down," He does not send the disciples away; He continues patiently to teach them.

Life is brought about by the word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Whoever wants to live must listen. That is why the most important prayer of the Old Testament, which we read today, begins with the words: “Hear, O Israel.” In today’s Gospel episode, the disciples were unable to cast out the demon and give life back to the afflicted boy. Probably this was because they spoke THEIR OWN words rather than God’s. If the words we speak are to be words from God, we need a constant connection with Him, the connection that the Gospel calls faith.

The Lord Jesus Christ’s words about the power of faith cannot not astound, because we immediately understand that we are not even close to this level. But the question is: the Lord wants to tell his disciples only this? He answers their questions why couldn’t they heal the obsessed boy, and Christ’s answer concerns the whole human’s life. A Victory over the spirits of Celestial wickedness is won says the Lord, by the power of faith, prayer and fasting. So, all human’s life can be a weapon to fight against evil.

And it’s also very important for us to realize that Christ’s words to the last turn are rebuke to the disciples and us, men of little faith. On the contrary they can be incentive for a person to search faith. Faith, evidently, is God's gift, it can’t be educated, it can’t be taught, it can’t be imposed – it can only be requested. But we should first of all really wish this gift if we want to get it. And we shouldn’t think in any case that we have everything okay at this point. After all, if we really believed as the Lord wishes – we could have Remove Mountains.

The Lord Jesus Christ’s words about the power of faith cannot not astound, because we immediately understand that we are not even close to this level. But the question is: the Lord wants to tell his disciples only this? He answers their questions why couldn’t they heal the obsessed boy, and Christ’s answer concerns the whole human’s life. A Victory over the spirits of Celestial wickedness is won says the Lord, by the power of faith, prayer and fasting. So, all human’s life can be a weapon to fight against evil.

And it’s also very important for us to realize that Christ’s words to the last turn are rebuke to the disciples and us, men of little faith. On the contrary they can be incentive for a person to search faith. Faith, evidently, is God's gift, it can’t be educated, it can’t be taught, it can’t be imposed – it can only be requested. But we should first of all really wish this gift if we want to get it. And we shouldn’t think in any case that we have everything okay at this point. After all, if we really believed as the Lord wishes – we could have Remove Mountains.

It is striking how the account of Christ warning the disciples about everything He was about to suffer stands next to a scene that shows one episode in Christ's relationship with the disciples. Christ's words about His sufferings saddened the disciples, but they do not appear to have been received by them as they should have been. It cannot be ruled out that some of the disciples tried to throw such unpleasant information out of their heads. The very composition of the narrative appears to emphasize this: a brief account quickly gives way to a story told in detail.

Why did the collectors of the temple tax turn to Peter, and not directly to Jesus? By this time He must already have become so respected among the people that the collectors found it awkward to approach Him casually. And so Peter, in the Teacher's absence, speaks on His behalf. But in this way an ambiguous situation arises: although Peter has been placed at the head of the apostles, he still has not been placed in the Teacher's position. Peter, however, answers without consulting Christ, even though He is nearby.

Christ does not repudiate what Peter has said and does not put him in an awkward position before the collectors of donations. But to Peter himself He opens another mysterious facet of the disciples' calling: those who follow Christ are called sons of the Heavenly Father, for the collection of offerings for the temple is likened to the collection of taxes from which royal children are exempt.

But shirking obligations should not cause anyone to stumble. The fact that the sons are free and are not obligated to do many of the things that are obligatory for others still does not mean that they should fail to take those around them into account.

So what does God want from us? That we should live, that we should live in love and not be stiff-necked (what an apt word for all of us). Yet we keep searching for a “good life”—in the sense of material prosperity... It appears that after Jesus began His preaching ministry, He never even held money in His hands. But He lives in love, and for the sake of that love He is prepared to do something senseless—to pay a tax to His own Father. And yet He uses even this as a prophetic action: the Father sends Him the money for the Temple tax.

The question of paying the tax has several aspects. On the one hand, there is the purely historical and legal aspect. Modern exegesis offers several interpretations here. It may have been the Temple tax established by the Law of Moses, or perhaps the Roman tribute, as many Fathers of the Church believed. On the other hand, there is a spiritual question here. We have firm ideas about justice, about what is right and what is not. But we must think about this from an eschatological perspective. Here, within the confines of earthly reality, people’s concrete needs are more important. The Lord also points us to the means of obtaining the resources for these needs: earning them through our labor. On the one hand, a miracle took place. On the other hand, Peter was a fisherman. He had to go and cast a line, that is, to do his usual work. And it was then that the miracle took place.

What does Jesus mean when He speaks of children as ideal inhabitants of the Kingdom? And what do adults lack in this sense? Of course, when we think or speak about children, we first remember what is usually called "childlike spontaneity," as well as "childlike innocence." But on closer examination the picture is not so simple: a child's psychology is no simpler than an adult's, and anyone who has ever encountered manifestations of childish cruelty can easily doubt that innocence.

But there is something that children certainly have, and that is trustfulness. Even sly and malicious children sometimes show astonishing trustfulness, although, of course, they can be trained out of it if someone wants to. Still, in order to train a child not to trust, especially not to trust his own parents, one has to work very hard. And this, as we can see, is precisely the trust Jesus speaks about when He sets children before adults as an example.

Of course, this too is only a parable: childlike trustfulness, especially in relations with parents, belongs to the order of things that has not yet been transformed; it is a purely natural attachment. And if it remains only that, it will inevitably disappear over time. Then, of course, parents will wonder why their child, so trusting and affectionate in childhood, has suddenly grown distant from them. Jesus, of course, uses the image of childlike trustfulness, which as a rule is quite organic to a child, to describe the goal that everyone seeking the Kingdom must set for himself.

The point, of course, is not to return to childhood in the form of naive religious infantilism or frenzied "spiritual" "obedience" to people from whom a normal person would prefer to keep away. The point is to learn to trust God and the Savior as naturally and organically as a child trusts his parents (in a normal case).

Of course, on a purely natural level (whether we are speaking of physiology or psychology), such relationships are impossible for an adult: fallen man is selfish by nature. They can become possible only in the process of the transformation of human nature, which begins from the moment of the first contact with the Kingdom and ends with the complete and final renewal of human nature at the end of time. And such transformation is important not only for the person himself, but also for the Kingdom: after all, the Kingdom is founded on relationships - the relationships of its inhabitants with one another, of each of them with Christ, and of Christ Himself with His heavenly Father. And the stronger such relationships become, the fuller the Kingdom will be.

It is not so easy to distinguish prophecy from prediction, and in response to the Lord Jesus Christ's words about the Resurrection, the disciples ask Him about Elijah's coming. After the disciples see Moses and Elijah speaking with Him at the Lord's Transfiguration, they remember Malachi's prophecy and ask the Lord Jesus their question. Perhaps the disciples understand the prophecy too literally. This is the first thing the Lord tells them, pointing out that this prophecy was fulfilled in John the Baptist, the prophet in the spirit and power of Elijah. This is how the disciples understand Christ, and this view was generally accepted in the apostolic age. Later interpreters, however, considered Christ's answer incorrect and began to insist that Elijah would come before the second coming, just as John came before the first.

But the main point in Christ's answer is something else. He shifts the conversation from what God was supposed to fulfill, and whether He fulfilled it, to how people receive His messengers. In modern terms, the problem is not whether God fulfilled Malachi's prophecy with enough precision, but that people did not recognize His messenger, did not receive his preaching, and killed him. The meaning of prophecy, then, is not literal fulfillment, but that we may become participants in the foretold work of God.

It is not so easy to distinguish prophecy from prediction, and in response to the Lord Jesus Christ's words about the Resurrection, the disciples ask Him about Elijah's coming. After the disciples see Moses and Elijah speaking with Him at the Lord's Transfiguration, they remember Malachi's prophecy and ask the Lord Jesus their question. Perhaps the disciples understand the prophecy too literally. This is the first thing the Lord tells them, pointing out that this prophecy was fulfilled in John the Baptist, the prophet in the spirit and power of Elijah. This is how the disciples understand Christ, and this view was generally accepted in the apostolic age. Later interpreters, however, considered Christ's answer incorrect and began to insist that Elijah would come before the second coming, just as John came before the first.

But the main point in Christ's answer is something else. He shifts the conversation from what God was supposed to fulfill, and whether He fulfilled it, to how people receive His messengers. In modern terms, the problem is not whether God fulfilled Malachi's prophecy with enough precision, but that people did not recognize His messenger, did not receive his preaching, and killed him. The meaning of prophecy, then, is not literal fulfillment, but that we may become participants in the foretold work of God.

“Elias truly shall first come...” This would seem to be a statement founded on knowledge of Scripture. Yet for some reason it does not enable people to recognize the coming of Elijah in the deeds of John the Baptist. Apparently the issue is that there are different kinds of knowledge of Scripture: knowledge according to the letter and knowledge according to the spirit.

It is noteworthy that Satan also quoted Scripture when he tempted the Savior. “The devils also believe” (James 2:19). This means that demons too can profess everything a good person professes. Yet there is some essential difference. It is immeasurably important for all of us to grasp what that difference is and understand it truly and deeply. For one of our most painful experiences is to encounter people among our brothers and sisters in faith who are in fact terrifying.

If Elijah and John are compared according to the letter, they may indeed seem to be two completely different people. Elijah kills pagan priests; Elijah is all storm and fire. We need only recall how Jesus' disciples James and John ask Him whether, like Elijah, they may call down fire to destroy the ungodly (Luke 9:52-56). John the Baptist, although he certainly speaks stern words of rebuke, nevertheless washes everyone who comes to him. This means that he grants forgiveness and acts through mercy, not violence. These two men would seem to be complete opposites. And yet Christ says that Elijah comes in John...

But consider the spirit of these two men. Clearly they are related and brought infinitely close by their very prophetic nature, with all its anguish over betrayal of God. Something else also unites them: both are human beings, no strangers to the torment of doubt. Elijah asks to die (1 Kings 19:4), while John too, awaiting death, suffers the agony of despair and doubt. If Jesus is not the One, then he must fight for his life, arrange an escape, and so on; if He is the One, then John must accept death. In essence, it is the same question of life and death.

It is noteworthy what Elijah says when he asks to die: “Take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.” Such humility may be compared with the humility that moves John when he says, “whose shoes I am not worthy to bear” (Matt. 3:11). The self-understanding of both prophets can be joined in a single formula: “I am only human.”