NOTES for Joe 1:13-15; Joe 2:1-2; Luk 11:15-22

The Lord's Day, whose approach the prophet Joel discerns in the calamity that befell Israel, was from deep antiquity a central theme of prophetic preaching. Joel's words, like the words of the prophets before him, about the Lord's Day speak at the same time of two essentially important things: terror and hope. Both experiences are equally connected for the prophets with the coming arrival of God into the world, and both are inseparable from each other.

"Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble!" Joel exclaims, and he says that that day is a day of darkness and gloom, terrible for every living thing. The contact of God with this world in the prophet's eyes is like a consuming fire from which no one has escape. Joel sees a kind of global catastrophe in which the earth is shaken, the heavenly lights grow dark, and the whole visible world familiar to us collapses. "Who can endure this day?" the prophet exclaims in trembling.

This terror is a very exact and important experience, rooted in the prophet's deep awareness of the sinfulness of the world, its failure to correspond to the designs of the Almighty. The prophet Isaiah expresses it very vividly when describing the vision of God granted him in the Temple: "Woe is me! I am lost! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people also of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts" (Isa. 6:5). Only a creature unharmed and free from opposition to God can stand before His face, for everything lifeless disappears, unable to meet the manifestation of Divine Life. The prophets find the awareness of human unworthiness and terror before God's inevitable coming inseparably connected with each other.

Of course, one can consider the prophet's words exaggerated, referring to the Last Day of the world's existence, when "a new heaven and a new earth" will be created (Rev. 21:1). One can think that in describing terrible destruction the prophet pays tribute to human emotionality. Most likely, however, this is not so. When we think of God's coming, we have first of all Christmas in mind, and the angels glorifying God and announcing peace to people of good will. And therefore Joel's despair seems strange to us. But the prophet forefeels something quite different. The whole intensity of Joel's prophecy proves absolutely adequate at the moment of the Sacrifice on the Cross, when the Lord Himself dies for us. Joel's word about the darkening of the heavenly lights and the earthquake was fulfilled exactly on the Day of the Cross, and only because of spiritual dullness are we unable to share his feelings. For the world there is nothing more terrible than this sacrifice, when "He who hung the earth upon the waters hangs upon the Tree," and this is precisely what the prophet is trying to convey to us. All creation, nature and people, lose meaning and become ghosts when people do not accept God and kill Him. This is the catastrophe foreseen by Joel.

But, as to the other prophets, the Lord reveals to Joel that in this inevitable and just destruction of the world there is an unexpected and incomprehensible hope for people. "Turn to Me with all your heart... turn to God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relents over disaster." Despite all the prophet's pessimism about the fate of the world and all the limitation of his human ideas, this word breaks through, because with his heart the prophet sees the Invisible One. This mysterious pity of the Creator is opened to him, the pity proclaimed by the prophet Hosea: "My heart is turned within Me; all My compassion is kindled!" This pity of God is our only trust, the only thing that gives us a chance to survive our meeting with God. But for this, with all one's heart, with the whole depth of one's person, one must turn to God.

It is important that Joel, for whom the Temple, ritual, and the most detailed fulfillment of the Law mean so much, says that outward veneration is not conversion with the whole heart. "Rend your hearts and not your garments!" he says on the Lord's behalf. How sorrowful these words sound, whose meaning is that God needs us ourselves, not what we do or what we possess. And yet they alone point out to us the way to be saved from the coming fire. This word of the prophet anticipates Christ's call: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand."

Joel himself is still afraid to believe the mystery of hope opened to him and clearly understands how undeserved it is. "Who knows," he says, "whether He will relent?" These words very precisely convey what tension is required by trust in God's goodness, how following Him is truly like walking on water. And the prophet ends this part of the book with a call to do everything in our power: to appoint a fast, gather the people, infants and priests, bridegrooms and brides, and to weep in hope, so as sincerely to make the saving effort of trust.

We often spend a long time asking God to deliver us from some fault of ours, from a sin we lack the strength to fight, from temptations. If we also make efforts toward this, then the Lord, of course, helps us. If we do not make those efforts, then He does not help us not because He does not hear us, does not want to help, or cannot help, but because that would be violence against our will. After all, if we ask for something but in reality do nothing to fulfill our desire, it means that we do not fully want to change; we may simply be afraid of it. Therefore the Lord waits, and when we take even a very small, but still first, step, the Lord adds a thousand to it.

But what happens after that? The Lord helps us overcome a temptation, or even fully frees us from some sin or fault... and we stop there, quite satisfied. Most often we are satisfied with ourselves. At best, we thank God for it. Yet the Lord has freed a place in our soul for good, for His Light, for the Holy Spirit; but He never enters without being asked. He does not want violence, because He is Love, and love is possible only in complete freedom. He "stands at the door and knocks" and waits for us to call Him, to invite Him into the place where He helped us clear space for Himself. And if we do not call Him, the freed place in our soul again becomes clogged with dirt and dust, overgrown with weeds, and the second time it is often harder to pull them out by the roots than the first.

Why is the invasion of ruthless, unstoppable conquerors called the day of the Lord? Is not the Lord good? Why does the prophecy use such a strange comparison?

This is difficult to understand, although we are not surprised when evil brings retribution: while hoping to escape it and asking forgiveness, we still understand that we deserve punishment. But let us remember that, besides the danger of openly becoming an agent of evil, there is also the danger of growing accustomed to what is good, until, like the air, it ceases to be noticed or valued; then we may drift away both from the good and from its Giver without noticing it at all.

And if we adopt a detached view of God, if we imagine Him far from us, “somewhere up in heaven,” He may give us the opportunity to sense that the world is in His hands and that even amid every horror He is near and will not abandon us to the power of absurdity.

Jesus' short parable draws a clear picture for us. Life is not exhausted by the absence of evil; it is fulfilled by the presence of Good. This is where the beneficial role of law, even God's Law, ends: it points out evil and demands that we renounce it, but it neither defines the Good nor gives us the strength to do it. It is not enough to drive out sin, though even that lies beyond our strength; we must receive righteousness. Christ reveals this righteousness, not merely sinlessness. The Holy Spirit descends upon the apostles at Pentecost precisely to give them strength to practice righteousness. This is precisely why the baptism of repentance is completed by birth from above.

Jesus once said something similar to verse 23: “Whoever is not against you is for you” (Lk 9:50). At first this may cause slight confusion—these lines look so very similar, yet seem to convey completely different meanings. But their meaning is one and the same: to teach us to love. Only afterward do we notice that in one case Jesus addresses His disciples and instructs them, while in the other He addresses all people and speaks of their attitude toward Himself. If a person is not filled with love for God and does not act according to His will under the guidance of that love, that person does the opposite, squandering time, life, and the strength that the Lord gives. When similar words are spoken to the disciples, however, they concern our human relationships. The Lord calls us to love our friends and our enemies, to say nothing of those who show us no hostility, those who are not against us. He seems to speak of the potential inherent in human relationships for shared creativity, work, and life in community. He warns us against any preconceived views and impressions of someone we barely know.

In response to the outrageous claim by the Jews that He casts out demons by the power of their own prince, the Lord offers a rather simple argument. If, He says, this blasphemous idea is true, it means that the rule of that prince has ended and the Day of the Lord has come. If it is false, then all the more “the kingdom of God has come upon you.” Either way, such “explanations” cannot avoid acknowledging the accomplished fact of Christ’s coming. The Lord then says that, faced with this fact, each of us must make a choice: to be with Him or against Him. It is extremely important that there is no third, neutral, or intermediate option in our relationship with the Son of God: “Whoever does not gather with Me scatters.” In today’s circumstances these words are especially important, for they deprive the most widespread religious phenomena of our time of any foundation: external, nominal Christianity in the style of blessing offices, and magical practices in the style of “health at any cost.”

Apparently, the miracles Jesus performed gave His opponents no peace. They invented the most fantastic explanations for what was happening, simply to avoid admitting the obvious. According to the evangelist's account, matters went so far as to accuse the Savior of using the services of dark powers to perform healings.

The absurdity of the accusations was quite apparent, and Jesus answered His accusers easily. Yet, judging by subsequent events described in the Gospel, any answers were entirely useless: Jesus' opponents heard only themselves, not the arguments the Savior offered them. Something else is interesting: accusations of this kind have been heard repeatedly in Christian history, leveled against people who, for many different reasons, were unwelcome to the religious majority. The fact that this majority was formally “Christian” changed nothing: the pattern of perceiving unwelcome people, and of accusing them, remained the same.

Of course, such accusations were leveled against very different people. Nevertheless, all the accused could be placed in one of two categories: some were atheists, though fairly rarely, or agnostics, much more often; others were Christians whose religiosity, if they had any, did not fit traditional frameworks. Apparently, the two types share one thing: their representatives are equally successful at breaking down the traditional religiosity characteristic of their age. Actual Satanists were virtually never among the accused: they very rarely act openly, just like the one they serve.

Nor, however, is there any need for them to do so: fierce defenders of religious tradition successfully do their work for them, convinced that they thereby serve not the devil but God. Yet, as the Gospel account shows, what is being served is not God at all, but one's own religion, which, when made an absolute, changes its spiritual character into its opposite. It is no surprise that after such a spiritual reversal, black begins to look white and white black.

Of course, atheism and agnosticism also break down religion. But a militant atheist, and even an agnostic, may sometimes find it easier than a religious person to accept the reality of the Kingdom the Savior brought into the world: such people either have no ideology at all, or one that is too rudimentary. Religion, however, can and does produce elaborate and well-grounded ideologies. For such an ideology, the Kingdom naturally poses a far greater threat than atheism: atheism can only very rarely destroy a religious worldview completely, whereas real experience of the Kingdom does so almost instantly.

The intensely religious Paul ceased to be religious immediately after his brief encounter with the Risen One on the road to Damascus. People who worship their own religion sense and understand this perfectly. They take their measures, declaring everything that does not fit within their religion to be demonic: such a declaration immediately places the threat beyond the bounds of the inner, psychological world each person inhabits. Yet those who embody what does not fit traditional frameworks still remain. Then the cross or the stake is called upon to defend traditional religion, depending on the age.

Today's reading includes two episodes joined by the evangelist into one account. It begins with the disciples' question about prayer, in response to which Jesus offers them, and through them all of us, the "Our Father" (vv. 1-4). Luke, as one can see, focuses chiefly on the importance of asking, and of asking persistently, as a necessary condition for receiving what is asked (vv. 5-13). It would seem that God is not a human being who needs, like a forgetful or unfriendly steward, to be reminded again and again of what is requested. On the other hand, persistence in this case turns out above all to be evidence that a person remembers his request and that it is truly important to him. Indeed, is it worth granting a request that the one who asks forgets the very next day? One can ask this way only for trifles; important requests are those that a person who truly cares about them is ready to repeat again and again, confirming the seriousness of his intentions.

The same seriousness is at issue in the second part of today's passage. The point is not only that the very idea of casting out demons by the power of their ruler was absurd (vv. 17-18, 21-22). The point is also that for those arguing, everything Jesus did was a kind of game, something remotely resembling their own disputes, which were undoubtedly fascinating but, in essence, demanded no commitment. This explains the demand for a sign that would prove Jesus right (vv. 14-16).

The proof had to be theologically correct; it had to correspond to the "right" ideas of the "right" rabbinic school in order to be accepted. And until such proof was presented, anything would do as an explanation of what was happening, including absurd claims about the "prince of demons." But Jesus Himself was not going to play these games, because for Him everything He did was absolutely serious. And He tries to explain to His listeners the full seriousness of what is happening (vv. 24-26). The games are over; what is at stake is a person's spiritual life and spiritual death.

But professional disputants, as one can see, have no concern for that. What matters to them is whether Jesus will manage to outargue them or not. And in their disputes they lose the Kingdom without noticing it. For the Kingdom is not a game; it is serious. And forever.

It would probably not be wrong to say that the central message of Christ's preaching is the message of the Father. In many other parables, the Lord portrays God in a way close to Jewish ideas and perhaps sometimes necessary for us: as a King who has absolute power over His subjects. But in today's parables He appears only as a father who loves his children whatever they may be like, or as a friend ready to help even at the most inconvenient moment.

Jesus' listeners know from their own experience that, however gloomy and unkind a person may be, he is still capable of showing tenderness and care towards what is dearest to him—his children. They also know that people are able to help one another in need even when it is unpleasant for them. Now, Jesus says, understand one simple thing: God is better than you, kinder and more generous—can He really be a worse Father to you than you are to your children? In this light, the prayer “Our Father” becomes not simply one possible form of addressing God but an astonishing revelation of the mystery of the Father's love, stronger and more tender than anything else in the world.