NOTES for Luk 12:1-34

“You are worth more than many little birds”—for many people today these words sound like a revelation. When a human life is worth next to nothing (or worth a great deal of money), food inevitably becomes more important than the soul, and clothing more important than the body. The reality of the Kingdom of God frees us from this slavery to money, food, clothing, and the oppressive anxiety about tomorrow. The Lord simply tells us: “To Me, you are more important and more precious than all these things.” We are very good at seeing the ugliness of this world and the ugliness of those around us (and sometimes our own). But the Lord says: “To Me, you are more beautiful than the flowers of the field.” We tremble in fear for our well-being, health, and life. But He comforts us: “Do not be afraid; My Kingdom belongs to you.”

Speaking to the disciples about the Kingdom, Jesus describes it above all as a new life opened to those who seek it. But it can be found only in the case of absolute openness on one's own part. To live the life of the Kingdom, one must renounce one's own life. Not one's life-space as such, not that flow of life which the Bible calls the soul, but the attempt to appropriate this space and this flow for oneself, to regard it as one's inalienable property, belonging to oneself by right.

In the Kingdom everything is different. There life is shared. One life for all. It is not owned; it is given for use. And the measure of this use is limited by nothing except the spiritual potential of the person himself. As much of the life of the Kingdom as he can contain, that much he will receive. But it does not become anyone's own in the sense in which we are accustomed to use that word with reference to property relations in our world.

The life of the Kingdom is yours insofar as you can live by this life. And therefore Jesus advises surrendering oneself to the flow of the life of the Kingdom. Enter it like a river. And move together with it. Without trying, as people say today, to fix anything in place. Without trying to evaluate one's own states, achievements, or failures. Without clinging to anything that attracts and holds a person in this world. And certainly without trying to fit the life of the Kingdom into religious frameworks: the new life cannot be kneaded on either Pharisaic or Sadducean leaven. The Kingdom does not fit into any human frameworks, but it does fit into the human heart. If, of course, it becomes the person's chief treasure. For where the treasure is, there is the heart.

The coming Kingdom of God will require a particular path of faith from each person. Jesus tells His disciples, 'Do not worry,' yet He also condemns the thoughtless rich man who no longer has anything to worry about. The question cannot be resolved in terms of 'to work or not to work,' of whether or not to make an effort to care for ourselves and our loved ones. For what is at stake here is not food and clothing but hope—what a person relies on, the foundation on which that person stands. Christ's disciples still need to eat and drink; they do not turn into 'lilies of the field,' they remain human beings. But these people do not live by themselves, by their own efforts, or even by their own faith: they live by God, by His mercy toward them. Instead of our usual 'problems,' they set their hearts on the Kingdom, which becomes the measure and goal of all their daily labors and efforts.

Speaking about the Kingdom and about how to obtain it, the Savior, as can be seen, puts first the question of life, of what kind of life a person lives. Such an approach can be considered quite traditional. Indeed, in the Bible, when the subject is a person and his life or life force, the Synodal translation in this case usually says "soul," a clear line is drawn between the person as he was before the fall and the person as he became after the fall.

Before the fall, this force was connected above all with the breath of life that God breathed into the human being at creation. After the fall, it became connected mainly with blood, with the physiological essence of the human being, just as in animals, where it too is connected with blood. As can be seen, life is presented by the biblical authors as whole and indivisible. It is not divided into spiritual and physical in such a way that one of its components could be separated from the other. But the quality of life can differ, being determined by a person's spiritual state: the fuller and more intense his relations with God are, the more spiritual there is in the person's life, and the more his spiritual component prevails over the natural one, subjecting it to itself. In the Kingdom, as can be seen, a person's life is completely transformed.

Only one thing is important here: whether the person lives this life or not. If his life turns out to be part of the life of the Kingdom, then even the death of his physical body changes nothing in principle. After all, in the Kingdom nature in its former quality does not exist, and in its new, transformed state it is no longer something completely foreign in nature to the spirit, as it is in the untransformed world. And to the extent that a person's life in our transforming but still untransformed world belongs to the Kingdom, he need not fear losses at the moment of physical death, because death has no relation to the Kingdom. But if the whole life of a person remains connected only with the untransformed world and with untransformed bodily existence, he has nothing to count on: death will prove to be the only and final reality for him.

The Kingdom will in any case eventually transform our world, making it part of itself, but a person who has no relation to the Kingdom will have no relation to this triumph of the Kingdom, at least until the day of Judgment. That is why Jesus advises us to fear not the one who can kill a person physically, but the One who can deprive him of the Kingdom: after all, having the Kingdom, a person loses nothing even in the case of physical death; but having lost the Kingdom, he will sooner or later inevitably lose everything, including the physical life he preserved at such an inadequate price.

“I tell you: everyone who acknowledges Me before others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God. But whoever denies Me before others will be denied before the angels of God. And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven” (vv. 8, 9, 10). This quotation must not be broken apart; it can only be considered as a whole. We often make this mistake when we try, unsuccessfully, to understand the last two sentences (v. 10). They seem paradoxical and incomprehensible: is this the Lord's humility before the Holy Spirit, who is His hypostasis? Yes, we have witnessed Jesus' humility before the Father, who is also His hypostasis, so this explanation has a right to exist. Yes, it holds for the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, where the verses corresponding to verses 8 and 9, on the one hand, and verse 10, on the other, stand in different parts of the text and have no connection in meaning. Yet this idea of Jesus' humility does not exhaust the full meaning of verse 10 in Luke's Gospel. Its first part is very closely, and apparently deliberately, connected with verse 9—so closely that we apparently cannot separate them and quote verse 10 alone, apart from verses 8 and 9, without eliminating an idea distinctive to Luke. Thus, whoever “denies” Jesus before others will be denied, whereas whoever speaks a “word” against Him will be forgiven. At a glance, these seem mutually exclusive statements. Is there really some essential difference between denying and blaspheming that affects a person's fate so profoundly? In fact, there is. To deny, or “negaverit,” as we read in the Vulgate, means “to deny stubbornly, to reject persistently” (Petruchenko's Latin–Russian dictionary); and it is generally clear that one can reject only what is offered to one. But one can inadvertently blaspheme even against something one does not know. How often we speak skeptically about something we have never really encountered in our lives, something that has not yet come to us, simply on other people's word—the word of people we are used to trusting. But once the Holy Spirit is at issue, there can be no more talk of “not knowing”: the Holy Spirit enlightens everyone who has come into contact with Him. So the second part of verse 10 takes us back to verse 9: you are being enlightened, but you refuse—and that means you do so knowingly. What a wealth of new meaning comes from Luke's joining verses that were separate in the other two Synoptic Gospels! And like a refrain, the apostle Paul's stern warning resounds: “For it is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift and shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and who have fallen away, to be renewed again to repentance, if they for their part crucify the Son of God and expose Him to shame” (Heb. 6:4–6).

The Lord calls us not to be afraid to profess our faith before those who do not accept it, even if they threaten us with death for doing so. And we, living in a historical era when faith is not persecuted and, on the contrary, openly professing it and belonging to the dominant church is prestigious and honourable, often think that these words do not concern us, that this cup has passed us by. We remember that the twentieth century in Russia was an era when steadfast confession of the faith shone anew, and we look upon these people’s feat as though from the sidelines.

But this should not be so. Not a single letter of the Gospel should be alien to us or be perceived as having been written for someone other than us. We need only understand what it means personally for each of us in the context of today. Yes, for example, being Orthodox is now accepted in Russia. But are we ready to stand on the Lord’s side, rather than on the side of public opinion or our own peace of mind, when we see certain statements by people calling themselves Orthodox beginning openly to contradict the spirit of God’s Word? And to do so humbly, without imagining ourselves to be new prophets.

Today’s passage contains words that often cause perplexity: “Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” We are accustomed to the fact that, in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, all the Persons of God are equal in a certain spiritual way. But our Lord Jesus Christ is so meek that, even within the immutability of this equality, He humbles Himself before the Holy Spirit; even a small measure of such humility would suffice for us. Let us pray for it.

These words of Christ can be understood as a simple statement of fact: our life is arranged so that any human secrets of ours come out into the open. For that to happen, it is only necessary that someone need those secrets. It is important to remember this because often, though of course far from always, we do secretly what we are ashamed of. It is obvious, however, that trying to hide anything from the all-knowing God is rather foolish.

But, on the other hand, these words of the Lord speak about the nature of the faith to which He calls all of us. And for us these words are very important, because they allow us to distinguish Christ's calling from that complex set of religious manifestations that takes shape in us as a result of joining Christian dogmatics with Hellenized natural religiosity. If in Christ all the fullness of the Godhead is revealed to us bodily, as the apostle Paul says, then in faith there is not and cannot be anything secret. And this inoculates us against the temptation of esotericism, against dividing spiritual life into the sacred and the profane.

And then the Lord speaks to the disciples about the fear of death and the fear of God, giving us the opportunity to trust in God's care for us. The Lord speaks about confession, in which the main thing is not so much the sum of theological definitions as devotion to the Son of God, crucified for us. And finally, the Lord speaks about love for the Holy Spirit. It is the insulting of the Holy Spirit that should be most bitter and terrible for us; it is precisely this that we should avoid. And then, in the most dangerous situations, we will not be left alone. In short, the Lord speaks about a faith that is truly life, deep and intense. As it is said: "The righteous shall live by faith."

Let us show first of all the way the Lord expresses himself here: "my friends"; and not my slaves, my servants, and neither my followers, He says "friends". Who are these friends? For us, there are the ones we love, with whom we wouldn't like to separate and to whom we wish all the best. Let's read now what Jesus is saying to His friends, forewarning them of disasters, persecutions, murders to come.

We would have certainly looked for the means to avoid the coming danger, and spoken of adequate care… The words of Jesus are unexpected: "be not afraid "; perhaps the misfortunes will pass by? No, they might not pass by, but we should not be afraid of death - the physical death, because the murder can do nothing more with us once we are dead; physical death is not yet the end. So, if it is necessary to consider something, it should be what separates us from the One Who gives eternal life, this something is sin. To consider or to take into account means trying to avoid it here and now. Because resurrection waits us after death and after resurrection is judgment, which is carried out by the Judge, Who gave His life for our salvation. And if we have no reverential thrill (what is called "the fear of God" in the religious language) in front of this Judge, our road with Him will be interrupted and we shall be cast into hell.

The Savior's words that on the heads of His disciples and followers "every hair is counted" can raise a number of questions. The main ones are two. The first is connected with the freedom of choice which, it would seem, a Christian in that case cannot have at all, and the second with the reality of Christians' life in the fallen world: can one think that there are no accidents in their life? At first glance the answer to the second question is obvious: Christians live in this world like all other people, and they are not spared either natural or social catastrophes. But is this the Christianity of which Jesus speaks?

Christianity was conceived as life in the Kingdom, and the Church as a community of people living in the Kingdom while remaining at the same time in this world. Not, of course, so that this world penetrates the Church and the Kingdom, but so that the Kingdom enters the world. And for this it is necessary that the life of each individual Christian and of the whole Church as a whole be determined by the laws of the Kingdom, if not completely, which is impossible before the full transformation of the world and man, then predominantly. Then all the hairs on a Christian's head will be counted according to the laws of the Kingdom.

According to the law of this world, such a thing is impossible in principle. The laws here are different, purely or mainly natural, even when the matter concerns man. Nature knows neither the individual person nor his value; it is based on the laws of large numbers. For the functioning of natural systems only the preservation of the species matters, not the individual specimen. And not all species exist forever; most appear and disappear.

So as long as a person remains within the framework of natural laws, he remains in the world of accidents, where anything can happen to any person, no matter how good, just, or even believing he may be. Indeed, faith, at least in the biblical sense, is not a system of views and convictions, but trust in God. It is a person's choice made in favor of God. The only choice possible for man, because in nature there is only chance, determined by the law of large numbers, and determinism, determined by causality. There is no freedom in nature, and a person can only choose whether to remain in a world where he will never be free and where anything at all can happen to him, or to trust Christ and leave the world, becoming an inhabitant of the Kingdom, where a person is truly free and where he is so important that all the hairs on his head are counted by God.

At the same time, no one takes freedom away from a person in the Kingdom. But there his freedom becomes significant, and choice receives meaning, unlike in the natural world, where choice has no meaning because it is always a choice among many accidents, none of which frees a person from the determinism that determines the very existence of nature. This is the main choice of man: acceptance of the freedom given by God in the Kingdom, or refusal of it in this world. There is no third option.

The key phrase in today’s Gospel reading is, of course, the passage’s closing words: “Seek first the Kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you.” Christ’s preceding words, which lead to this conclusion, concern chiefly human nature. Speaking to his disciples about what should concern them, the Lord asks them a question: “Which of you, by worrying, can add even a cubit to his stature?” The self-evident answer—“no one”—implies that we cannot change the way a human being is constituted. It also follows that what matters in our lives is not our outward circumstances but our inward disposition, and that this is precisely what we ought to care about.

At the beginning of today’s passage, the Lord also says: “A person’s life does not depend on the abundance of his possessions.” The Synodal translation offers a paraphrase here; the Greek original can be translated literally as follows: “A person’s life [is] not in the abundance of possessions.” If life does not consist in outward circumstances or material security, what does it consist in? This is the central question Christ answers. A person’s life consists in the Kingdom of God; abiding in it is essential to being alive. The Lord calls us to entrust everything else to the care of the heavenly Father, who knows our needs.

This parable is humanity’s dream. To gather as much as possible, insure ourselves against every misfortune, cushion every possible fall, so that nothing can destroy our comfortable existence. The whole development of civilisation is built on this desire: after working, to gather everything into the barn and feel independent of what is happening. In conversation with people, one constantly encounters the conviction that this is possible and that, if this goal cannot be achieved, it may be regarded as a misfortune and complete defeat in the struggle for the barn.

Yet the problem is that this illusion is the first to perish—not only when it collides with reality, but even when we look more closely at what is happening around us. We need only look attentively, and it becomes clear that our only guarantee is not to build a barn, but to grow into union with God. It was precisely this state that Jesus Himself described as the life of branches on the vine, so that no storm could tear us away from Him. This is the only prescription He gives us for life in the world.

In the Gospel there are many parables told by the Savior about rich people, about wealth, about its meaning in life, and about life itself. Sometimes, as in this case, the parables were connected with a concrete situation: Jesus is asked to resolve what today would be called an inheritance dispute, and He refuses, declaring that such disputes are not His business. The parable becomes an illustration of His words, an explanation of His refusal to deal with the division of someone else's property. Meanwhile, the request addressed to Jesus was precisely evidence of His authority in the eyes of those who came to Him, recognition of the fact that He, Jesus, would be able to divide the inheritance justly and in accordance with the Torah. Among the Jews in antiquity, and later as well, people often brought questions to teachers of the Torah and learned rabbis that Gentiles usually resolved in courts. They resolved them, including problems connected with family, inheritance, and property law. In principle, anyone could be a judge if he knew the Torah, could make a decision corresponding to the Torah, and if the litigants trusted him. This kind of arbitration was widespread in Jewish society at all times.

So Jesus is asked to become such a judge in an inheritance matter, and He refuses. And after refusing, He then tells that very parable of what we usually call the foolish rich man. It can appear that by this parable Jesus only wants to tell us that it is better to be poor than rich, because that makes it easier to enter the Kingdom. In reality, however, everything is somewhat more complex. Different people experience poverty in different ways too.

The main point here is different: a person's real, genuine life does not depend on his possessions. A person's life, not only spiritual life but life in general, is determined not by what and how much he has, but by who and what he is. One can be poor or rich. The main question is what a person connects himself, his "I," with, where, to speak in Gospel language, his treasure is. For where his treasure is, there his heart is also. There is his genuine life.

If it turns out to be connected with what a person can easily lose, even simply by dying, then his life will end at the moment he parts with what he cannot take and carry away with him. Then the only and absolute reality at the moment of parting with earthly life will be separation, loss, and death. And the life, that life of the Kingdom which he could have lived in fullness, the person will never know. Here, however, it is his own choice. To each his own.

The request addressed to Jesus to settle a property dispute may seem somewhat inappropriate to us today. Yet rabbis and teachers of the Torah were often approached with such requests, and there was nothing unusual about them. Indeed, the Torah is a complete body of legislation, enabling any legal dispute, including a property dispute, to be resolved. In the situation described by the evangelist, the intention was apparently to settle a dispute on the basis of Jewish religious law rather than Roman civil law.

Observant Jews often acted this way: in synagogue circles, taking a case before pagan judges was generally considered bad form. They tried not to resort to Roman justice unless absolutely necessary, and most cases were decided by learned rabbis, renowned experts in the Torah, whose judgment was preferred to that of the Romans. Evidently, Jesus too is approached as an authoritative spiritual leader and expert in the Torah, capable of settling the matter justly. He apparently refuses firmly.

He does not consider it necessary for Him to act as a judge. This is not because Jesus disregards the Torah: He Himself said that He had come not to destroy it but to bring it to fullness. Apparently, however, this fullness is not directly connected with the Torah's legal dimension. It concerns the inner Torah, the righteousness that brings a person to the threshold of the Kingdom. In refusing to judge, Jesus does not show contempt for justice or the administration of it, but establishes the Kingdom's primacy over all the laws and norms of this world, even those deriving from the law God gave.

Indeed, the Kingdom has no need of legal regulation; there is no need here for legislation of the kind required in the untransfigured world. By refusing to hear and decide particular cases, the Savior thus wishes to establish priorities from the outset. He has brought into the world not a new, perfectly just judicial system, but the Kingdom, where no judicial proceedings are needed at all. Not because justice is foreign to the Kingdom, but because the relationships of the untransfigured world, in which people cannot reach agreement without courts and judges, are foreign to it.

Family relationships in our world are complicated. There are no perfect parents in the world, just as there are no perfect children. We are full of anger, resentment, and disappointment in those closest to us, and we pour all of this out on them. It is hard for us to accept the imperfections of our family members, and harder still to accept our own imperfections. But Christ’s words—“If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him”—hold immense hope for us all. For despite all the damage done to our nature by original sin, the relationships within our family can become a reflection, an image of God’s Fatherhood.

These words can be a source of reflection not only for parents but also for children. We often fail to realize how many good gifts we receive from our parents. We forget to thank them; we take soup, clean clothes, the warmth of home, and arms opened to welcome us for granted. Yet these simple things contain not only our parents’ love for us, but also the breath of the Lord’s Love, a reflection of the Kingdom.

The rich man about whom the Lord speaks in today's parable rejoices in an abundant harvest because it gives him the chance not to worry about daily bread or be anxious about his future. This wealth creates the illusion of independence, and it feels as though there is no need to be afraid. At the same time, no room remains at all in the person's heart for the grace-filled experience of dependence on God. The size of the wealth in this case is not so important: you can feel like a rich man dependent on no one on the day of a microscopic paycheck; the only difference is the length of this illusion.

Yet a person's life is still essentially dependent on the Creator, and therefore the Lord calls the attempt to free oneself from this dependence madness. A person who relies on earthly wealth tries to drown out the feeling of dependence on God. If, however, one does not do this, then the experience of knowing that you live only because God so wills can become for you a truly exceptional means of finding humility, and therefore of finding God.

One remarkable detail draws attention in this text. The rich man talks to himself. It is precisely to his own soul that he addresses the words: "rest, eat, drink, be merry." And this contains the key point that allows us to understand the text correctly.

To talk to oneself is madness. But not simply madness; it is the worst madness in the world, because it means that, for the person, God does not exist in principle. It means that the place of God is occupied by the person himself. A person accustomed to living before God cannot talk to himself at all, because how can one talk to oneself when God is near?! After all, we usually call mad not simply people who talk to themselves, but those who talk to themselves when other people are nearby. But when there are no people nearby, God is nearby. This means it is no lesser, but even greater madness (though society usually considers the opposite) to talk to oneself, even silently, when no one is nearby.

And what good would there be, someone may say, if he had addressed those same words not to himself but to God? Would his sin have been any less because he addressed God with the same self-confident boasting? But the whole truth is that this is impossible. Even if a person tries to boast before God, as if declaring his independence from Him, very soon, if the person is truly addressing God, God softens his heart and turns him to Himself. Only when a person talks to himself can God do nothing.

Jesus' parable of the rich man who gathered a good harvest is well known, and its meaning seems quite clear. Indeed, the Old Testament books contain many references to the insecurity of wealth accumulated on this earth.

Of course, the chief argument has always been the mortality of the person accumulating riches. Everything amassed—and this did not always mean material goods alone—could naturally be passed on to heirs, successors, those who would carry on the work begun: in short, to posterity. But the argument that “it all remains for others” offered little comfort. Ecclesiastes had already observed that someone departing for the next world can only guess how those very people will use what has been left to them.

With regard to the Savior's parable, one should add that, judging from His other parables, the field and the harvest signify respectively the world and the spiritual fruits that ripen within it toward the end of our age of the coming Kingdom. Evidently, this is not simply about material wealth, but about what might provisionally be called spiritual savings, which a person can, of course, also “store in a barn,” even if it is not a physical one.

Yet even spiritual hoarding is apparently no better than material hoarding. Even achievements in the spiritual field, if a person tries to keep them for himself, hold out no promise of fullness of life. The fool does not share in the life of the Kingdom; he dies like any other human being, and no riches or savings, even spiritual ones accumulated in the “right” field, can help him in any way.

Only one thing, it seems, can help him: finally to stop speaking exclusively to “his own beloved self,” to “his soul,” and to turn to God, opening himself to Him. Of course, this will also mean opening all his barns, with everything that has accumulated in them. But in return, the Kingdom will open to the one who has opened himself and opened his stores—and with it, the fullness of life.

Stability and confidence in tomorrow are viewed as one of the main achievements of civilization. Nothing outrages people as much as the loss of this good. No scientific knowledge, education, or understanding of the structure of the world helps a person who wants only one thing: that his desire to live in a static world be fulfilled once and for all. The world must be unchanging; it must freeze at the moment when I feel most comfortable. The ancients teach us that one cannot step twice into the same river. Physics unsuccessfully tries to explain to us the instability of the smallest elements of creation. But people who are physicists, people who are historians, all of us, continue to demand that today be the same as yesterday, that everything be stable. Because such a world can be controlled. In it we can manage without God. Yet He explains everything to us more simply than all the sciences. We cannot prolong our life against His will. And this will always be a reminder to us that confidence in tomorrow is confidence in God, who loves us and gives us life.

What does it mean to "be rich toward God"? We can reflect on the words of the apostle Paul: "To me, the least of all the saints, this grace was given: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ" (Eph 3:8). "The unsearchable riches of Christ." What are they? But they are called unsearchable precisely so that we would not understand this fully, and therefore would not fully understand what it means to be rich toward God.

Our holy teachers say that this means doing works of mercy, giving away one's material possessions and one's labor, and that is understandable and beautiful. But, truly, this is not quite enough. It is possible to fall into such an abyss on this path if you are not now "the one to whom it has been given from above" to do such works. We have all witnessed such sad stories in life. A person appears to have everything: kindness, self-denial, and the desire to give everything away; yet after several years of "holy" life, he falls into the abyss. Why? Because the things we have listed, summing up, let us say, St. Philaret's teaching on the words "be rich toward God," are still not enough. After all, this wealth toward God, wealth for God, wealth of God remains unsearchable. It is deeply symbolic that in our language these words have the same root.

But let us listen to what the apostle says next. "And to bring to light for everyone what is the stewardship of the mystery hidden from eternity in God, who created all things, so that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known through the Church to the rulers and authorities in the heavens, according to the eternal purpose that He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him." (Eph 3:9-12) In fact, here the description of what this wealth is has been revealed in full measure. It is hard to retell, hard to try to convey these words in our own words, to bring them closer and make them more understandable. But the main point appears to be that this "manifold wisdom in the heavens" is acquired, which, as we see it, is this wealth, only through "boldness and faith in Him."

One of the paradoxes of Christianity is that although the Lord calls everyone, His Church is always a "little flock." Christ says, "Go and make disciples of all nations," but at the same time, "You are the salt of the earth," and there is never much salt.

But here the matter is still something else. When we are few, we feel weak and uncertain. It is always more comfortable to go with the flow, to feel strength and protection. And Jesus says that even in our small number, which is a consequence of our being "not of the world," we should fear nothing, because the security and meaning of our life are given not by human powers, but by the fatherly love of Almighty God.

In the Sermon on the Mount, the Savior speaks in some detail about what Russian translations usually call "care." The corresponding Greek word means not simply care as something one has to think about in life, but something that hangs over a person, poisoning his whole existence.

This is no longer simply something that needs to be thought about and dealt with in due time, but a heavy, all-obscuring problem that cannot be solved so easily, and perhaps cannot be solved at all, but that, while remaining unsolved, does not let a person live and constantly turns his attention back to itself. As a result, all of a person's thoughts revolve around this unsolved, perhaps unsolvable problem, while life passes him by. This often happens because a person does not distinguish what is within his power from what is not within his power. Obviously, a person cannot add to his height, no matter how much he wants to and no matter how much time he devotes to this "problem."

But the most interesting thing is precisely that the "problem" turns out to be a "problem" in quotation marks. At least in the overwhelming majority of cases. Of course, people can have a manic desire to become taller, but here one should speak rather of some kind of deviation and of a problem that is, if not mental, then psychological. Such problems usually arise where a person wants to control everything and everyone.

Strictly speaking, that is how the fall once began: a person decided to become god in his own, even if small, world, and in order to become god in it, he had to control it completely, letting nothing take its own course. And our desire to be god of our own, even small, little world and of our own life still brings us many problems. There are things that by definition God, not we ourselves, should determine in our life, but in the fallen state it is very hard for us to accept this.

It seems to us that even our height is not God's business, though He created us with the height we have, but ours. Perhaps the example Jesus gives exaggerates the situation a little, but it looks like only a little. And this desire to become god of our own life kills us: spiritually, psychologically, and sometimes physically. The only way out of such a situation is to let God into our life. And to rely on Christ, for it is not by chance that He calls to Himself all who "labor and are heavy laden."

The information density of this phrase requires a detailed analysis:

1) " Fear not ", God pronounces these words several times when He addresses people. There is no place for fear in God’s presence (see 1 Jn 4:18).

2) "Flock". Offending, isn’t it? But we have to remember all the passages, where the Lord speaks about Himself, as being the Shepherd of the sheep.

3) "Little". It seems that Christians are always in minority. And this is indicated by the words of Jesus on the salt of the earth and the light of the world (see Mt 5:13-14).

4) " Your father ". God's paternity and our adoption - one of the most joyful revelations in the Bible.

5) " Good pleasure to give ". The kindness of God's will - the kernel of our faith, of our confidence in Him. And His will is to really GIVE to us and not to take from us.

6) " The Kingdom ". This means that we could also be part of this reign, responsible for managing this world. Let us note the internal multi-variety of the paradoxical character of all the phrase: "Fear not" - Although "little", "flock" - but "your Father ", "little flock" - but the “Kingdom”.

Today the Lord reveals to us a very important thing about the goal of human life. He says that a person sets this goal for himself, and we ourselves are responsible for making it something worth living for. If the goal of all our activity is purely earthly well-being, the result will be sad. But, the Lord says, the heavenly Father Himself was pleased to give us nothing other than the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore we can choose it as the goal of our life. Such a goal requires readiness and watchfulness from us, because we set it and seek to attain it not by ourselves, but as servants of the one Master. This is the choice given to a person: being closed in on oneself and one's petty interests, or taking part in the Creator's design. Making this choice is hard; it requires considerable spiritual effort. But which of the two alternatives offered is low and meaningless, and which is lofty and beautiful, is generally obvious.

"Fear not, little flock!" That was also the title of an article by Fr. Georgy Chistyakov, which contains the following passage:

"If we analyze Sacred Scripture on the basis of what linguists call the 'frequency' of the use of a given word, we discover that almost 370 times in it there is the call: 'Fear not!' It is addressed now to Abraham, now to Jacob, now to Gideon in the Old Testament, now to the apostles and the myrrh-bearing women in the Gospel. This call is constant and insistent. God does not say: do not be afraid of this or that. He addresses us with extreme simplicity: do not be afraid. Never and of nothing! Of course, fear is embedded in our nature from the beginning - as are many other things. But some natural traits must be developed, while others must be outgrown. Overcome. God addresses precisely our animal memory: 'Fear not, little flock!' - and even more sharply: 'I send you as sheep among wolves.'" ("Ogonyok," 1999).

Everything here is said with the utmost precision and unity; it is hard to add anything. Still, one can recall these well-known words of the evangelist: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has torment. The one who fears is not perfected in love" (1 John 4:18). For us this is paradoxical; with us everything is usually the other way around: the more we love, the more we fear for the beloved. But that is only the beginning of love. After all, if the Lord is all-good, and the final "station" will be the state when "God is all in all," then what is there for us to fear? Only to endure and wait remains, and to endure and wait means to believe. But the fearful thing stands clearly before our eyes, while the angelic world is hidden. How can one not be afraid? How can one not want to eat, not want to sleep, and so on... It is impossible. And precisely because of this impossibility, this is something utterly true.

I will accept all, take all that You give,
Whatever You give, whatever You send me.
Let wild folly come to pass,
Let dark falsehood envelop me.
Grant that I may hear You amid the lie
And not confuse Your voice with another.
Help me, strengthen me, uphold me
With Your careful breath.
(Yuly Shreider)

"Let wild folly come to pass" - somehow these words really are frightening. Still, as another poet said, "We do not need to fear this darkness, and we will not pretend to be happy" (B. Okudzhava).

The Saviour often speaks of the master's return—meaning, as one may readily guess, Himself—as an unexpected event. Although this unexpectedness may itself be expected, judging by Jesus' words it is quite possible that those waiting will be unprepared to meet the One they await. Why is this? Much can of course be explained by uncertainty about the time: it is not easy to keep oneself constantly ready; this demands too much inward strain.

Jesus Himself does not regard that argument as an excuse. He says plainly that if the householder knew when the thief would try to break into his house, life would be much easier—but, alas, that is not how things are. Nevertheless, if the householder wants to protect his house, he must always be on his guard. So must the servants awaiting their master, unless they want trouble from their unexpectedly returning lord. Clearly, a Christian's spiritual life requires constant spiritual alertness, without which one cannot remain in the Kingdom. Of course, one could say that any serious spiritual or ascetic system requires the same of its adherents. It could hardly be otherwise: this is a spiritual path, on which all kinds of unexpected things are possible.

Moreover, without maintaining spiritual alertness, we can forget about moving forward: every step on a spiritual path requires effort, as does the very ability to hold the new position reached through that effort. Otherwise, if a person relaxes spiritually, they can easily slide back to their former state. But spiritual alertness has special significance for life in the Kingdom. In the age of the advancing Kingdom, every inhabitant of it inevitably stands on the boundary between two worlds. Without the necessary efforts, one can easily fall out of the Kingdom's spiritual realm and find oneself wholly under the power of the evil in which the untransformed world lies.

Then there can no longer be any question of readiness to meet the Risen One. One cannot prepare for that meeting in a single instant: a spiritual process involving the transformation of human nature is required. For that process we have been given the time between the Saviour's coming into the world and His future return in glory. What the meeting will be like depends on how we use that time.

What, we may wonder, do the Savior's words mean about the murdered prophets to whom the murderers' descendants erect monuments? Why is He so certain that, had His contemporaries during His earthly life been in their ancestors' place, they would have done the same? Does this mean that nothing had changed in the life of God's people during the centuries since the prophets' deaths? Probably not: much had changed, and some of it may be considered extremely important spiritually. Anyone who has read the Bible knows, for example, how often the prophets—especially those before the exile—rebuked the people for apostasy, worshiping pagan gods, and taking part in pagan cults and rites.

Yet Jesus, who reproaches His contemporaries for many things, does not reproach them for this. Apparently, paganism among the Jews was ended once and for all during the exile, which may be considered an unquestionable success in the spiritual life of the people as a community. But besides paganism, that life had other problems, born of religion itself, which has always been a spiritually ambiguous phenomenon. Indeed, from religion's very beginnings, it contained, on the one hand, a search for God and sparks of divine revelation, and, on the other, ritualism and even magical thinking, brought into it by fallen humanity's mentality and patterns of behavior.

Later, it is religion that gives God's people the forms in which the revelation they have received takes shape. But it also becomes the source of many problems, above all because every religion is by nature all-encompassing: it always demands the whole person, determining their spiritual life and their life in general down to the smallest, least significant details. Whatever does not fit within the bounds of their religion, a person perceives as a threat to what we would now call their religious identity—and therefore to their spiritual and psychological, and often even physical, existence.

Revelation, however, while borrowing religion's language, has never fitted entirely within religious boundaries. Thus, any thoroughly and consistently religious person proves hostile to any new, living revelation, perceiving it as a threat to their religion. This is how the prophets' contemporaries regarded them, and how the Savior's contemporaries during His earthly ministry regarded Him and the Kingdom. For a thoroughly and consistently religious person, only past revelation is safe, already fitted by religious tradition into its own framework.

One can even erect a monument to those who expressed such “traditional” revelation: they too deserve some credit for religious tradition's existence in its present form. But present revelation that does not fit into tradition remains as hostile to the religious person as the revelation they now regard as part of tradition was to their predecessors. And a religious person who seems to honor the prophets may well reach for stones if someone like them appears before their very eyes.

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.