NOTES for Luk 12:54-59

The Savior's words, addressed to people who, at first glance, are believers, make us think about what we notice and what we do not. Or, more precisely, what we want to notice and what we do not want to notice. Both today and in every age there have been many people, even believers, who more or less sincerely assured both others and themselves that, when it comes to spiritual life, they are doing everything possible, but not everything, they say, is within their power; and if that is so, what more can be asked of them? You cannot do more than you are able. Meanwhile, Jesus, addressing the people listening to Him, people who demand from Him certain signs proving His messiahship, advises them to pay attention to themselves.

The principle is simple: if you truly knew yourselves, Jesus tells them, then you would recognize Me as well, and you would not need any signs. And in the condition in which the people listening to the Savior were found, no signs would have helped them. The issue here is not necessarily that the people listening to Jesus were deliberately deceiving Him or themselves. The issue may also have been that His hearers were not, in the spiritual sense, themselves.

They were not their true selves - just as we very often are not our true selves. We do not live the true life that God gives us, and therefore there is nowhere for the life of the Kingdom to enter us. Indeed, our natural life is a stream that comes from God and is bound up with His breath, with that breath of life which defines our existence as people created in the image of God. And if we do not allow the stream of our life to flow freely, if we drive it into frameworks we have created - the frameworks of theories, concepts, religions created by us - then there is nowhere for the breath of the Kingdom to enter.

To live the life of the Kingdom, one must first become oneself. Then very many things become obvious which, as long as our life does not flow freely, cannot be proved to us by any miracles. This is what Jesus says to those who demand from Him proofs of His messiahship: become yourselves, and you will see everything yourselves. No better proof can be devised: every proof is by definition external, while here the issue is what comes from within, what a person becomes convinced of himself. Then he no longer needs any miracles: everything is clear to him without them.

Jesus' words about the division He brought into the world trouble some readers of the Gospel, especially today. Unity seems more appropriate to us now than division; we would like all divisions between people to disappear. Unity seems better than division to us by definition.

And so it is when secondary matters are concerned. From the Gospel's perspective, as from that of spiritual life in general, all our divisions—cultural, linguistic, racial, even religious—are essentially secondary. They do not touch what matters most: our relationships with God and their dynamics. From the Gospel's perspective, as from that of spiritual life in general, it is precisely the dynamics of our relationships with God and our neighbors that are central; everything else is secondary. In this respect, people fall into only two categories: those whose lives contain a relationship with God and its associated dynamics, and those whose lives do not.

Of course, a complete absence of relationship with God means the complete destruction of the person, often followed by physical destruction as well. But we can speak of these relationships developing and growing stronger, or of their gradual deterioration, their tendency toward complete breakdown. Ultimately, in the context and perspective of the Kingdom entering the world, we must speak of striving for the fullness of the Kingdom's life or of self-isolation: an attempt to shut oneself away and create one's own small, closed world, becoming its king, its sole master and ruler. The fallen world exists in precisely this isolation. Thus the central Christian division is between those seeking the life of the Kingdom and those content with the life of this world, the fallen world.

Here division really is absolutely inevitable. These two spiritual directions are incompatible, not because some people are “spiritual” and others are not, but because some seek life and move toward it, while others are content with a life of dying, a gradual sinking into the death that reigns in the fallen world. These are not different views or convictions, but opposite directions of spiritual movement, which inevitably divide those who choose them. After all, people going in different, opposite directions cannot remain united.

Today's reading touches on another theme, one very important for understanding what life in the Kingdom is. But the meaning of what Jesus says becomes clear only in the context of the situation of that transitional era which began with the coming of the Savior and in which we live. It could be called the era of the advancing Kingdom, and it will be completed by Jesus' return. But since we do not know the exact timing of this return, readiness is required always, every day and every hour.

In fact, this is the meaning of the parables Jesus tells (vv. 36-48). When the Gospel speaks about the nearness of the Kingdom, what is meant is not the date of Christ's second coming, but the fact that the Kingdom has already entered the world, that its presence for us today is no longer future but present; and if we notice nothing of the sort, it is only because we do not want to notice. Of course, sometimes for those to whom God entrusts ministries connected with the Kingdom, the apparent remoteness of the time when the process will be completed has a relaxing effect, like the effect produced on the unrestrained servant in the parable by the thought that the master was far away (v. 45).

It is not surprising that those who knew everything and, despite everything, allowed themselves to relax are called to a more serious account than those who knew less (vv. 47-48). What is interesting is something else. In the world there are those who know more and those who know less, but, as one can see, there are none who know nothing. It is no accident that Jesus compares the signs of the advancing Kingdom to the signs by which people in those days recognized a coming change in the weather: they were just as obvious and just as understandable to everyone, so that it was simply impossible not to notice them at all and understand nothing (vv. 54-57).

That is why the coming of the Kingdom divides people, and the division, as one can see, does not run along any national, class, or religious border, but across all borders, separating those who accept the Kingdom from those who reject it, people sometimes living not only in one country and one city, but even in one house (vv. 51-53). And this happens not because God needs divisions, but because the Kingdom is an absolute reality; it is impossible to enter it partly or halfway, and even entering it "almost completely" will not work: one enters the Kingdom either to the end and without looking back, or one does not enter at all. That is why in the Church, according to the word of the Apostle Paul, there can be "neither Greek nor Jew": if the Church remains the Kingdom and does not turn into a religious organization, one among many, then only one division remains relevant for it: between those who accept the Kingdom and those who reject it. All other divisions are conditional and relative; this one is absolute, as absolute as the division between eternal life and eternal death can be.

The coming of the Kingdom of God is a mystery perhaps no less profound than the mystery of the Kingdom itself. The Lord therefore calls the disciples to keep watch, lest they miss or sleep through the Kingdom's coming into their lives. This probably does not refer merely to constant readiness for death or for Christ's Second Coming.

Christ also enters a person's life when that person least expects it: at any moment we may find ourselves facing a vitally important choice or a decisive encounter. Woe to the person who fails to notice Christ at the moment when he is called to take part in bringing about God's Kingdom. It is not that God will take offence and punish him, but that, by passing this Kingdom by, he will miss the most important event and the most important encounter of his life. Therefore, as the final Encounter approaches, the Lord calls people not to miss His presence even now, here on the way towards the triumph of God's Kingdom.