NOTES for Luk 11:42-46

Jesus was quite demanding toward the Pharisees and the "lawyers" (teachers of the Torah), condemning much in their life. He is plainly condemning first of all the distortion of the system of priorities in spiritual life, which outwardly manifests itself as religious formalism.

Of course, there is nothing good for spiritual life in formalism by itself: it distracts from what matters most. But something else is worse: religious formalism provides an excellent justification for self-assertion. After all, by fulfilling all the required formalities, the one who fulfills them thinks he has every right to be proud of himself and of his achievements in spiritual life. Meanwhile Jesus reminds the people listening to Him of what matters most: justice and the love of God.

It would seem that justice and love are, in a certain sense, directly opposite things. But on closer examination the connection between them turns out to be quite clear. Indeed, if we follow the prophetic tradition (and it was the prophets who spoke most often and most extensively about God's judgment and about justice), justice can and must be connected not only with court proceedings, but also with making a decision as such. Making a choice and a decision in one situation or another, evaluating his own or someone else's actions, a person who wants to follow the Torah must first of all evaluate his own and others' actions with respect to their conformity to the norms and laws of the Torah, in particular to the commandments of the Decalogue.

A correct evaluation of one's own and others' actions, as well as of the situation as a whole, the right choice, and the resolve to follow it are, properly speaking, the foundation of normal everyday spiritual life. Meanwhile religious formalities often not only fail to help here, but directly get in the way, distracting attention from what matters most and shifting it to secondary things. Instead of thinking about whether a given action or decision conforms to God's commandment, the religious formalist begins thinking about whether it conforms to religious rules. And religious formalism distracts from the love of God no less: after fulfilling the prescribed religious rules, the one who has fulfilled them begins to think that he no longer owes anything to anyone.

Love, however, never limits itself to the framework of law and obligations: the one who loves is always ready to do more for the beloved than he is obliged to do. And the point is not even that the religious formalist withholds something from someone, although, of course, in reality that is almost always how things stand. The point is that, remaining what he is, such a formalist builds his relationship with God in the same way as with his neighbor. And he is ready to receive from Him as much as is prescribed. But what is prescribed is plainly not enough for any of us for salvation, so the formalist will have to forget about salvation. And about the Kingdom too.

Some unsearchable fear creeps in when you think about this text and at the same time project it onto the present state of affairs in the world. "But He said: Woe to you lawyers also, because you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers". The point is not even that some of our spiritual fathers force us to fast too severely, or that someone lays too strict penances on us. It seems that none of this is really a sign of the present day. Perhaps somewhere there are priests who are strict beyond measure. But overall, this is not at all the spirit of our days. Any normal priest understands that simply being an ordinary decent Christian against the background of our maddened, corrupted, terrifying age is already a very difficult task, to say nothing of ascetic feats among laypeople.

But it seems that this is only the most direct meaning of today's reading, while it also contains deeper layers of meaning. Now these words of the Lord call to our memory other words as well. "They will put you out of the synagogues; but the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think that he is offering service to God" (John 16:2). Now the closeness of these two texts is strong.

Why will he think that he is offering service to God? Why do some "Muslims" think that by killing Christians they are offering service to Allah? Why do some "Christians" think that by dropping bombs on civilians in Iraq, on children and women, they are doing a God-pleasing, good, kind, and just thing? Why?

And the answer to this question, strangely enough, lies precisely in the words Jesus speaks today. We are obedient to "lawyers"; they guide us like donkeys on whom burdens are loaded, and we obey them. We even have such words as "spiritual leader." But it seems to me that this is some kind of oxymoron, nonsense, an impossible expression. In principle there can be no such concept as a spiritual leader. In the spirit only the Spirit can guide us, and everything else is not in the spirit, but simply criminal, a matter for court. But one must strain oneself, labor, read, think, pray. Here everything is simple: the mullah said that it is written in the Quran, if you meet an unbeliever, strike the neck with the sword (the 47th sura, "Muhammad"), so go kill Christians. But it turns out that in fact something completely different is meant; the passage is about a battle, but this requires going deeply into it, looking at different translations, simply having an integral vision and living communion with God. And Christians hear their children being killed to shouts of "Allahu akbar" and begin to hate, or even behave in such a way that the only word a believer can use toward them is "infidel." And they forget that Christ teaches love, not hatred; they forget because they turn not to Christ, but to presidents who call themselves believers, to leaders - in a word, to "lawyers."

One wants to say: people, look more carefully at the words the Lord speaks today: "that you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch these burdens with a single finger." Are we donkeys, that burdens should be loaded on us? Woe to them, yes; but we should not offer them our backs.

In the Gospel we do not find Jesus directing angry rebukes at thieves, extortioners, prostitutes, unfaithful wives, occupiers, and other sinners. The only group he rebukes is the scribes and Pharisees. What wrong had been done by these people who studied the law, taught others, and served as a kind of “conscience of the nation”? It seems to me that their gravest fault is expressed in verse 52. Called to lead people to the knowledge of God, they themselves passed by this most important thing in human life. If there is no knowledge of God, no amount of knowledge about God will have any meaning.

In several episodes, the evangelist records different sayings of the Lord about life in the coming Kingdom of God. Jesus did not preach in a vacuum—around Him were believers, some devout and some less so. Naturally, they all understood somewhat differently what God is and how one should live with Him. Yet in the sayings recorded by the evangelist one can trace two principal “types of religious life”: on one side, a person with a clear, simple eye, filled with light like the light of a lamp visible to everyone in darkness; on the other, the formal piety of people who remember when to wash their hands and when to pay the tithe, but sometimes forget—not out of malice, but solely because of the limitations of human memory—such things as forgiveness, mercy, and trust in God. Naturally, both kinds truly are “types,” distinct ideals of spiritual life; nevertheless, they depict quite clearly the two directions in which a disciple of Jesus Christ may set out.

Today's reading is devoted to the central theme of the controversy that unfolded between Jesus and part of the Pharisaic brotherhood - the theme of the Kingdom and religiosity. To understand the situation, it is important to keep in mind that this is not about some specific form of religiosity. The religiosity of the Pharisees, of course, had very concrete features characteristic of the era; but on the other hand, the Pharisaic mentality can be regarded as the quintessence of religiosity as such, and in a certain sense any other religiosity known in history (at least in the history of the Abrahamic religions) can be compared with Pharisaic religiosity as with a standard.

But the point is that Jesus was not the founder of a new religion. Christianity is not a religion, but life in the Kingdom, and the Savior is constantly trying to convey this thought to His interlocutors. It is no accident that He answers so fully the Pharisee who invited Him into his house, when the man asks about the ritual washing of hands before a meal (vv. 38-44). The question of ritual purity is the central question of any religion; it defines a person's belonging to a religious community and his religious standing.

Jesus, however, speaks of purity not as a religious condition, but as a spiritual one. The possibility of abiding in the Kingdom is determined not by a person's qualities, moral or religious, but by his relationships with God and with his neighbors. Religion and morality can cleanse a person outwardly; careful performance of religious duties makes a person religiously impeccable; he conforms to all the prescriptions of the Torah if it is understood only as religious legislation that has no relation to a person's inner life.

One can call this religious formalism, but that would still not be the whole truth, because the same Pharisees tried to fulfill the prescriptions of the Law not only formally; they were simply completely sure that, after carefully paying the tithe, they really were clean before God (v. 42). Jesus, however, speaks of almsgiving for a reason (v. 41), of something that no law can regulate: only the refusal to try to formalize everything in one's relationship with God can make a person think not about his religious duties and rights, but about his relationships with God and with people. Then such a person will also not attach special importance to status, so important in religious life (v. 43). And the main problem here is that the way into the Kingdom is not some special, new religion, but the rejection of every religion as such. This was unacceptable even to the "scribes" - teachers of the Torah (v. 45). But Jesus replies by noting that rabbinic theology, like all traditional theology in general, is occupied with justifying that same religiosity, which, incidentally, does not obligate the theologians themselves to anything (v. 46).

Worst of all, it is religion and its defenders that in every age have opposed God's witnesses and tried to get rid of them. So it was before, and in Jesus' time nothing had changed (vv. 46-52). And here it turns out that fully religious, learned, and outwardly devout people condemn to the cross the One whom, by their own assertions, they had been waiting for through many centuries. Choosing between religion and the Kingdom, they, as is clear, choose religion. And they remain with their own choice.

The Savior's words addressed to the Pharisees and teachers of the Torah, who in those days were usually called "scribes," may seem too harsh, just as they seemed to some of His listeners. But the question was too serious, and things had to be called by their proper names. The accusations are serious: in essence, Jesus reproaches both the religious leadership of the Synagogue of that time (the Pharisees) and the outstanding teachers of the Torah for not observing themselves what they call others to observe. A strange accusation, it would seem: after all, in the Gospels it is precisely the Pharisees and teachers of the Torah who are shown as zealots for the Torah; they are the ones who constantly reproach Jesus for violating one or another of its prescriptions. But Jesus clearly identifies the problem: external religiosity devoid of spiritual content. This very religiosity became the main problem of synagogue spiritual life in the Gospel era. Many Pharisees adhered to such religiosity, and many teachers of the Torah taught it to the people.

There was, of course, an alternative, but only a few represented it. The New Testament books have preserved the names of some of them for us: Nicodemus, Gamaliel... But they did not determine the general atmosphere of synagogue life at that time. And so it turned out that calls to spiritual life were accompanied by instruction in a life that was not so much spiritual as religious. People were taught not how to acquire inner wholeness and inner light (the very "clear eye" of which Jesus speaks), but how to observe ritual prescriptions. Of course, these prescriptions also did not appear for no reason, and behind them stands a certain spiritual experience that gave rise to them; but by that time the experience had already been forgotten, while the prescriptions remained.

And now the people are offered a life of religiosity alone, without spiritual content; prescriptions without communion with God. Meanwhile, the teachers themselves feel like masters of the Torah: after all, they are the ones who comment on it and interpret it; people come to them for advice; it is their authority in the eyes of ordinary people that is unquestioned.

Not all of them, of course, were like this, but there were enough of them for a vast number of people to become locked inside a circle of formal religiosity with no possibility of leaving it. And every free word from God, any breath of God's Spirit in this environment, is perceived as something unnecessary and even dangerous: it undermines the monopoly of teachers and interpreters over the Torah, and therefore over spiritual life. It is no accident that Jesus tells those who build monuments to the ancient prophets that they are no better than their fathers, who killed those same prophets. They have no need of living spiritual life, just as their fathers had no need of it. And that means they have no need of the Kingdom either.