NOTES for Luk 12:48-56

For us, as for the disciples of Jesus who heard the terrible words of today's reading, it is hard to accept such a prospect. They were waiting for a Messiah who would come as a liberator and bring triumph to Israel. The Romans would fall, Israel would be free, and the world at last would be wonderful and good. But Jesus, by His perfection, by the fact that He is the Truth, became a stumbling stone for everyone and for each person. His very presence becomes a cause of division. No one remains on the sidelines; everyone has to decide Who has come.

But even if one accepts Jesus as the Messiah, the division does not end there. Children and parents, brothers and sisters - all of us stand on different sides of Him; all of us see different things and try to consider what we ourselves have seen as the most important thing. Some see wrath, some mercy, some love, some light. Each considers it necessary to secure the primacy of his own view of God. This is how our damaged humanity shows itself when it comes into contact with His perfection. The apostles faced this, and it continues to this day. On the other hand, we have already been warned of the danger. And the one who is warned is armed: he can keep himself from becoming a conduit of division.

"I came to cast fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!" These words from today's Gospel reading can be very hard to understand and accept for people accustomed to finding in their religiosity only comfort in life's sorrows, peace, and rest. But the world of church hymns pleasant to the heart, the world of vigil lamps, candles, and icons, is not the whole of faith. Faith is continuous struggle, an unending battle against sin.

We often get used to the fact that sin is present in our lives and stop noticing it. But there is also a special state, when the heart burns. Then every sin, even the smallest, touches the soul like a burned wound. It is the state when grace descends and you stand like Moses at the burning bush, and the Spirit of God scorches your face. It is the state when there is so much warmth in you that you simply cannot help sharing it. It is the state when not a single minute can be empty, because then the fire begins to consume you yourself. Do you remember the wonderful meeting on the road to Emmaus? "And they said to one another, Did not our heart burn within us while He spoke to us on the road and while He explained the Scriptures to us?" (Luke 24:32). This is the kind of fire the Lord is speaking to us about.

How polysemous are the evangelical images; cut from their context, they put out of countenance. Isn't in this same Gospel we read that the followers of Jesus wanted to make fire to come down from heaven, and Jesus prohibited them (see Luke 9:54-56)? It is then about another fire here, serving not to destroy, but to save people. May be it is about the fire of Pentecost (See Acts of the Apostles 2:3), or about the fire of purification (Is 4:4; Rev 3:18); or may be about the fire of faith in our hearts, of which mother Mary (Skobtsova) remarkably said: "Christianity is fire, if not, it does not exist ". Is this fire burning in us, are we hot or simply lukewarm (to see Rev 3:15-16)? As our heart burned when The Lord offered us the first meeting with Him (see Luke 24:32)! Haven't we cooled down, haven't we abandon our young love (see Rev 2:4)? It is indeed our responsibility to preserve this fire, which Jesus made come down on earth.

These words of Jesus 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 every division between people to disappear, and unity seems to us better than division by definition. And so it is when secondary matters are concerned. From the Gospel's perspective, as from the perspective of spiritual life in general, all our divisions—cultural, linguistic, racial, even religious—are essentially secondary and do not touch what matters most: our relationship with God and its dynamics. It is the dynamics of our relationships with God and with our neighbors that matter most; everything else is secondary. In this respect, people are divided into only two categories: those whose lives contain a relationship with God and the dynamics associated with it, and those whose lives do not.

A complete absence of relationship with God naturally means the complete destruction of the human personality, often followed by physical destruction as well. Yet one can also speak of this relationship being formed and strengthened, or of its gradual degradation and tendency toward total destruction. Ultimately, in the context and prospect of the Kingdom entering the world, the question must be one of striving toward the fullness of the Kingdom's life or of self-isolation: an attempt to shut oneself off, create one's own little enclosed world, and become its king, its sole master and ruler. The fallen world exists precisely in such isolation, and therefore the fundamental Christian division is the division between those who seek the life of the Kingdom and those who are content with the life of this world, the fallen world.

Here division really is absolutely inevitable. The two spiritual vectors just described are incompatible—not because some people are “spiritual” and others are not, but because some seek life and move into life, while others are content with a life-that-is-dying, a gradual descent 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. People moving in different, mutually opposite directions cannot, after all, remain united.

“You will not get out until you have paid the very last penny,” the Lord tells us today. And this can be very hard for us to hear. Schooled by prayer books, we often find it easier to think of ourselves in self-abasing terms. We imagine that we have now attained poverty of spirit. I am a beggar. I am the thief on the cross. I have nothing, I have been given nothing, and nothing can be required of me. We begin to revel in this state so much that we think the first beatitude has come upon us.

In fact, however, all this can end in an instant. The Lord will call you and say: “Where is what I gave you? What did you do with it? What did you squander it on?” Even material poverty comes in different forms: there was Xenia of Petersburg, who gave away everything she had, and there are ordinary drunkards who have simply drunk everything away. That sounds rather crude, because we are speaking of something purely material. But if we apply this metaphor to the spirit, we find the very same laws at work there. The medieval mystic Meister Eckhart spoke of poverty of spirit in these terms: “If someone now asks me what this is, ‘a poor person who wants nothing,’ I will answer and say this: as long as a person has something toward which his will is directed—even if his will is to do God's will—that person is not poor in the sense meant here. For this person still has a will with which he wants to please God's will; and this is not yet the real thing.”

So as long as you want to be poor in spirit, as long as you are trying on this role, you are not that person. And if you are not poor in spirit, then something can be required of you. If such thoughts about poverty of spirit have come into your mind, if you pray, even from a prayer book, then you have been given a great deal; you have come into contact with the Spirit, and that is greater than the greatest thing there can be, for God does not give the Spirit by measure (John 3:34). That means a very great deal is required of you. Only when everything has been exacted from you will you be poor, and not a moment before.

In answering the apostle Peter's question about the parable of people waiting for their master's return, Christ speaks of two things of great importance in our relationship with God. The first is faithfulness to God, readiness to do His will in whatever He sees fit to entrust to you. In several parables, the Lord uses this image: a master or king who has gone away, leaving his property in his servants' care. We may suppose that this image contains something essential about the position and tasks God assigns to us. And we can carry out this charge, which gives meaning to human existence, either according to the Master's will or at our own discretion. It is of the fruits of this choice that the Lord speaks: “Blessed is that servant whom his master, on returning, finds acting in this way.” This is said of the faithful steward, faithful precisely to the Master's charge.

The second important point lies in the words: “...from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required.” First of all, this concerns God's people, old and new, those who truly know the Master's will, plainly declared to them: “O man, you have been told what is good and what the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love deeds of mercy, and to walk humbly before your God” (Mic. 6:8). In a broader sense, however, these words concern humanity's unique place in creation: to be God's image and likeness, part of the Body of Christ.

A person gets used to everything. To good things quickly, to bad things more slowly, but still gets used to them. That is why the apostle Paul gives so much attention to how those who have acknowledged their liberation from sin will live their life.

Our salvation is accomplished in eternity, but we receive it in time. It is easy to get used to the astonishing gift of freedom from sin and life in grace, and just as easy to return to existence under the old laws. The Gospel reminds us how repulsive life is for the one who "knew, but forgot" the price at which our life was paid for. The issue is not that we must fear punishment for returning to sin. Our task is never to get used to the fact that our life and grace were paid for by the price of Christ's blood.

We constantly put off repentance until the last moment. Right now one can still sin, but on such and such a day I will go to confession and repent there; or when I am dying, then I will repent; or in general, when the Lord asks me at the Judgment, then I will repent!

We deceive God. After all, we know that He is with us all the time, that He sees us all the time. We know that we must always strive to imitate Him, not out of fear of punishment, but because with our sins we drive nails into His palms. And we can ask forgiveness right away, so that it will not seem to us that we can "store up" sins and then dump them on God. God carries our burden on Himself all the time, so that it will not be too heavy to bear.

But we can help Him carry at least a small corner of the Cross, for His Cross is made up of our crosses.

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.

All of Jesus' earthly preaching speaks of the approaching Kingdom. And He gives very much attention to our readiness to enter it. The coming of this Kingdom includes judgment and division, because in it one cannot be lukewarm and cannot serve two masters. And while we are on the way to it, we have an opportunity, perhaps the last one, to make peace with the one who will accuse us at the judgment. It may be our conscience, it may be people whom we have wronged, and it may also be the Lord Himself, as in the parable of the Last Judgment (Matt. 25). And the more the sprout of Christ's Kingdom grows in our hearts, the sooner we need to run to make peace with our adversaries, so that we come to judgment with them already as friends.