NOTES for Mat 17:22-27

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.

The question of paying the tax has several aspects. On the one hand, there is the purely historical and legal aspect, for which modern exegesis offers several interpretations: it may have been the Temple tax established by the Law of Moses, or it may have been a Roman tax, as many Fathers of the Church believed. On the other hand, it is also a spiritual question. We have a firm conception of justice, of what is right and what is not, but we must consider this from an eschatological perspective. Here, within earthly reality, people's concrete needs are more important.

The Lord also shows us how to find the means to meet those needs: earn them through our own labour. A miracle certainly took place here, but Peter was a fisherman; he had to go and cast his line—that is, do his ordinary work—and only then did the miracle happen.

The didrachma was the tax Jews paid for the upkeep of the Jerusalem Temple, comparable to the money we give to support our churches and clergy. But now the collectors of this tax come to Jesus himself, who is, in fact, the owner of this Temple. In what Jesus says and does at this moment, two points seem important to me.

First, he says that an earthly state collects taxes from outsiders, not from its own citizens. A remark, as it were, about the tax police... Jesus is thereby telling Peter that the Son of God and his disciples, whom he brings into adoptive sonship with the heavenly Father, are not outsiders but members of God's household, as the apostle Paul will later write, and that the demand for tax therefore does not apply to them. In this way the Lord reveals his unity with the Father.

But here is the second important point. If any of us were in Jesus' place—what a strange thought, really!—we would simply tell these collectors to go away. The Lord himself, however, says: ‘...so as not to offend them.’ The Greek text reads: ‘...ina de mi skandalizomen autos.’ ‘Not to offend’ means not to hurt their feelings, not to quarrel with them. For Christ came to people, not to kingdoms, and not quarrelling with these particular collectors is more important than insisting on a particular idea. For them, the refusal of two Jews—Jesus of Nazareth and Peter of Capernaum—to pay the didrachma would have offended their religious sensibilities. Avoiding this is so important that a miracle is performed for its sake. For me, this is a model for our attitude, for example, towards the Slavonic language in the Orthodox Church. There are people for whom a change of language would be precisely ‘skandalizomen,’ an offence. Well, perhaps others should ask God for the gift of understanding languages.

And one more thing: suddenly, quite unexpectedly, we see that Jesus possesses the full power of God's omniscience and omnipotence. Go and catch a fish... After all, that fish had to pick up this stater from the bottom and bring it to the Creator...

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.

Today's reading includes three very different episodes. The first describes the healing of a possessed boy (vv. 14–21); the third and final one concerns the two-drachma coins collected as a temple tax (vv. 24–27). At the center of the narrative stand the Savior's words about His approaching death on the cross and Resurrection (vv. 22–23).

Yet for all their differences, these accounts have something in common. The third episode is particularly revealing in this respect. It concerns a special temple tax that was obligatory in Judea, while elsewhere, wherever there were Jewish communities, including Galilee, it was more a matter of voluntary self-assessment. Jesus understands perfectly well that neither He Himself nor His disciples are obliged to pay it (vv. 25–26). Nevertheless, He tells Peter to pay, not wishing to put a stumbling block before those around them (v. 27).

Here Jesus does something He does not need to do for Himself and is under no obligation to do, something He has every right to refuse. He refrains from refusing solely for the sake of the people He came to save. One might call it a small thing, but life is largely made up of just such small things. Prayer and fasting, too, are ordinary, everyday matters for a believer. While believing Jews of the Gospel era regarded prayer as the fulfillment of a commandment and therefore obligatory, fasting was entirely voluntary and regulated only by tradition. Jesus' disciples were hardly neglectful of prayer and fasting in principle.

But what is familiar often becomes so taken for granted that it can imperceptibly recede into the background. And when prayer recedes into the background, failure is inevitable—as happens to the disciples when they try to heal the possessed boy (v. 16). Jesus does not mention fasting by chance: Jewish tradition knows fasting only as complete abstinence from food and drink during the day, and such a fast would inevitably shake a person awake from spiritual slumber. Then a small thing would no longer seem small, but would prove to be what it really is—one of the most important elements of spiritual life. Yet fasting can in no way be regarded as a religious obligation: it is precisely an entirely voluntary self-restraint that a person may choose for a neighbor's good—or may not choose, in which case help may prove impossible. And here there remains only one step from the small to the great.

Indeed, Jesus Himself was under no obligation to die on the cross for our salvation. If He does so, it is likewise entirely of His own free will and out of love for us—the very love that shows itself in everything, in great things and small.

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.

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.

Jesus never tires of reminding his disciples about faith. Yet these reminders sound a little strange to Christians today: Jesus speaks of faith that is small, minute—a mustard seed is no larger than a poppy seed. Against the background of our constant prayers for faith to increase, grow and become stronger within us, such words even seem somewhat odd: does this mean that the difference between little faith and great faith is not so great after all? Paradoxical as it may sound, the answer may be yes—provided, of course, that we understand what Jesus means by faith. Certainly, for him faith includes trust and confidence that one has chosen the right path. But there is something else: faith as a particular spiritual state of the person. A state in which only what a person believes in remains real for them. This does not, of course, mean that a believer should close their eyes to reality. It is simply a matter of what their will is directed towards: ultimately, it is the will that determines a person's spiritual condition and the quality of their spiritual life. From a psychological perspective, the will could—with certain qualifications—be considered a mental process, with all the characteristics of such a process. One of the main characteristics of the will, like any mental process, is intensity: it is the degree of intensity of one's intention that determines the subjective perception of one's faith as ‘strong’ or ‘weak.’ But this psychological dimension of the will has no direct bearing on the will as a spiritual phenomenon; it is merely its psychological projection. The will itself, however, as a spiritual state and relationship, cannot be characterised quantitatively: it is neither strong nor weak. Either it is there or it is not. If it is there, its manifestations at the psychological level may vary, from very intense to quite faint. If it is not there, a religious person may sometimes try to recreate it by purely psychological means, which, however, usually becomes tiring quite quickly. But Jesus does not need imitations; he needs faith, a will that has become wholly a relationship. A will with which any miracle is possible. And without which the Kingdom is impossible.

In this story we encounter a calamity that human strength has failed to overcome. This often happens to us. What are we to do? “Bring him to Me,” says the Saviour. The Lord shows us the way when it seems that we have exhausted every means and that nothing else can help. The disciples ask why they themselves were unable to cast out the demons. “Because you have little faith,” or “no faith,” as some manuscripts say.

This answer makes us reflect on what our own faith is and how its measure is to be taken—whether it is small or great. Recalling the Saviour's following words, “I tell you, if you had faith even the size of a mustard seed, and if you said to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ it would move,” and seeing that nothing moves at our words, we are often inclined to belittle our faith. But we must not forget the distinctive language of Jesus, full of symbols, hyperbole, and vivid poetic images. In rabbinic literature, teachers capable of interpreting the most difficult passages of Scripture were called “movers of mountains.” When we say that faith works miracles, we must also understand the “miracles” themselves in accordance with the spirit of the Gospel, not the spirit of our sinful desires.