NOTES for Act 17:1-15

The arguments used by the opponents of the Christians in the communities of the diaspora did not differ from those used by their opponents in Judea. And that argument was first of all political: they shifted the testimony about the Messiah and the Kingdom into the political sphere. What was this: a malicious lie or a mistake?

It is not simple to answer this question unambiguously, at least when the diaspora is in view. The fact is that messianism in general was far more influential in Judea itself than in the large and wealthy cities of the Roman Empire. And the wealthier the city, the fewer messianists there were, at least active ones. That is no surprise: in those days messianism was a religious and political movement, at least if we are speaking of traditional messianism. This means that when people spoke about a messianic movement, they always also had in mind the messianic war that would be inevitable in the end.

It was a war no one wanted: neither the Jewish community itself, which often lived quite well in a wealthy trading city, though not without problems, nor still less the Roman authorities, both local and central. Messianic political movements and messianic uprisings were in those days an integral part of the religious life of Judea, but by no means of the Jewish diaspora. Therefore the reaction of the local Jewish communities to messianic preaching in the cities of Macedonia and Achaia, as well as Asia Minor, was predictably negative. Of course, both Paul himself and his companions kept repeating that the matter concerned a Kingdom "not of this world," but this apparently did not fully dispel the fears of the local Jewish leaders. Hence their harsh reaction to the apostles as messianist preachers, and therefore as disturbers of the peace.

But one cannot, of course, exclude the simple desire to get rid of dangerous competitors through the hands of the local authorities, since there was a convenient pretext: the Roman authorities did not like messianists. And since they usually did not delve into the subtleties of internal Jewish debates, it was not especially difficult to frighten them with the possibility of an uprising even where one could not possibly occur. Here, of course, we must speak already of an open lie and a provocation, like the one organized before Pilate by representatives of the temple elite when the question of Jesus' execution was being decided.

After all, then too the question was shifted into the political sphere, and only in that way did Jesus' enemies manage to get what they wanted. Be that as it may, one thing is clear: moving questions of spiritual life into the political sphere is always spiritual degradation, and in any case it ends in nothing good. And who will use that degradation, and how, depends on the sincerity of a particular person's intentions. That very sincerity is what distinguishes a conscientious error from a malicious lie.

The events accompanying the apostolic preaching develop similarly in two different cities. Following the preaching in the synagogue, some Jews and some Gentiles accept the Good News, while at the same time a division occurs both among the Jews and among the Gentiles. Those who reject the message of Christ join forces against His disciples. The brotherly unity of Jewish and Gentile Christians is natural, but an alliance between zealous Jews and defenders of the purity of paganism appears unnatural. Yet in the struggle for the purity of principles, that very purity often suffers.

Although the separation between Jews and Christians had already begun, many Jews were still willing to listen to and receive the preaching. The apostles, who a little earlier had announced that they were turning to the Gentiles, continue to address the Jews and find a response among them. This often happens: you think it is already clear what sort of person stands before you, but he unexpectedly shows another side, and you see that everything about him is not as clear as it seemed a moment ago...

Notice that we do not know for certain whether everyone to whom the Apostle Paul preached in Berea was converted. It is quite possible that not everyone was. But they all showed nobility of mind as they examined the Scriptures, tested Paul’s testimony, and sought to understand the truth with open hearts. Such an approach to Revelation is perhaps one of the rarest human qualities. Most often, we either accumulate grievances against God, yet even an enormous and terrible list does not prompt us to demand an answer from Him personally; or we look with a certain embarrassment at grown and seemingly intelligent people who passionately try to explain obvious nonsense to us; or we believe that we have already learned everything—after all, if we have already been converted, why should some outsiders and strangers try to “treat” us? But the Lord, bringing us back again and again to the Book of Acts, shows us how a person should conduct himself before God. He must continually delve deeply into Holy Scripture, with an open heart, ready to accept everything the Lord wishes to reveal to him.

When one reads the Gospel, it becomes completely clear that the Synagogue and the Temple leadership treated Jesus in entirely different ways. For representatives of the Pharisaic brotherhood, which in those days was the core of the Synagogue, Jesus was, on the one hand, a Teacher, a Prophet, and perhaps even the Messiah; on the other hand, depending on how His activity was assessed by representatives of particular Pharisaic circles, He was a deceiver, an impostor, and a false prophet. But one way or another, the issue was an assessment of Him and His activity in essence, in a spiritual and religious context. Such an assessment could evoke respectful reverence or hatred toward Him, but His words and deeds left no one in the Synagogue indifferent.

The Temple's reaction was different. There, a miracle was considered not from the standpoint of its authenticity or falseness, but from the standpoint of whether it was appropriate or inappropriate, expedient or inexpedient; and both appropriateness and expediency were considered exclusively in political terms. The Pharisees said: He performs miracles that can be explained only by the fact that He is from God, but He does not meet our criteria for a man of God. How are we to explain this? The high priest frames the question differently: He performs miracles that are inappropriate because this may lead to an uprising, a revolt, whose consequence will be a punitive expedition by the Romans that will put an end to the very existence of Jerusalem and the Temple.

The Pharisees respond to the situation as consistently and thoroughly religious people. They ask themselves: how should we relate to Him and to what He is doing? Is He right, or not? The high priest's reaction, despite the religious duties laid on him, is the reaction of a secular politician, who asks himself and others: is what He is doing useful for us? Is this Man dangerous to us? And if He is dangerous, how can we stop Him? In one case, before us is a question about the meaning of what is happening, even if the answers are not always adequate. In the second, there is a purely pragmatic approach to the matter.

This is why, no doubt, Jesus still found supporters and followers among the Pharisees, but not among the representatives of the Temple leadership. The question of meaning, even when answered incorrectly, always opens a spiritual perspective for the one who asks it, although of course this still does not guarantee that the questioner will manage to make the right spiritual choice. Pragmatism, however, opens no perspectives except those that do not go beyond the bounds of the untransformed world. These perspectives have no relation to spiritual life. None at all.

The high priest's words that it is better for one man to die than for the whole people to perish are interpreted by the evangelist as a kind of prophecy that slipped from the lips of a person who meant something quite different. Indeed, Isaiah's prophecies know the image of the Messiah suffering because of the people's sins. Isaiah, however, does not speak of the Messiah's death. Here John interprets the high priest's statement in the spirit of a new, specifically Christian revelation and experience.

But his interpretation can hardly be considered only his own guess. Indeed, before his eyes was the story of Lazarus's resurrection. And the people's reaction to it. The high priest's words are only an assessment of the situation connected with this popular reaction. From the religious and political point of view everything is clear here.

The high priest and the whole temple elite wanted problems with any messianic movements least of all. Previously Jesus' activity had not attracted their attention because it was still comparatively not very noticeable, although the leaders of the Pharisaic movement had noticed it long before. But now, after an unprecedented miracle that drew equally unprecedented attention from a huge number of people by local standards, the matter was taking on an openly and vividly religious-political character.

Jesus was becoming noticeable enough that He could now be feared as the potential leader of a mass messianic movement. And such a movement threatened serious reprisals from Roman power. The high priest was no messianist and treated prophecy rather skeptically, but he was an experienced enough politician to understand the danger of political messianism.

Yet this was only the external side of the situation. There was another side, a spiritual one. During the whole time of the Savior's earthly ministry the Kingdom had never appeared to the world in such fullness and power as at the moment of Lazarus's resurrection. This event was truly absolutely unique in a world that did not yet know either the Resurrection or Pentecost. And the fallen world reacted. It rose up against the Kingdom entering it. It rose up in the person of earthly power, both secular and religious. But religious power began it. For religion is closer to spiritual life than anything else in the world.

But precisely it can also become spiritual life's chief enemy. The more human there is in religion, the more strongly it opposes spiritual life as such. And it is perhaps impossible to imagine a more obvious triumph of the human in religion than religious power, regardless of place, time, or religion. Therefore the temple elite inevitably had to be the first to challenge Christ and the Kingdom; otherwise it would have ceased to be itself. And then, of course, came the decision: let one man die for the people. That is what happened. True, in another sense. And not for one people, but for all humanity. For all and for each.

You probably noticed at once how sharply the Athenians cooled toward Paul when he began to speak about the resurrection. Greek philosophers were indeed prepared to acknowledge the existence of one good God and had a concept of the Logos as a kind of mediator between the One and the human mind. But the ideas that the Logos was a man and that the human body would rise were completely alien to them. Did Paul not know this? He was, after all, a broadly educated man familiar with Hellenistic philosophy. This means that he consciously runs the risk of being neither understood nor accepted—so important to him is the message of the incarnation of the Son of God, the Resurrection from the dead, and the victory over death. Without this there can be no Christianity; without this, preaching is meaningless. No compromise is possible here.

Many people today would agree with the motives of the chief priests and Pharisees: after all, they are concerned for the people's well-being and security and do not want to bring a Roman blow upon their compatriots. We have often heard the argument that it is better for one man to die for the people than for the whole nation to perish, with only the adjustment that the number of those proposed for sacrifice was many times greater than one. It brings to mind how, many years ago, a class of senior pupils was asked, “If a physicist and a mechanic were drowning at the same time, which one would you save?” The audience answered with one voice: “The physicist!”

But anyone who sees no problem in destroying one person is capable of destroying everyone else as well. Every person rejected in the name of a “higher purpose” is priceless, and together with that person Christ is rejected yet again.

The person who sacrifices others hopes to be among the survivors. But the reprisal did not help: forty years later, precisely what the members of the Sanhedrin had feared came to pass. Caiaphas did not intend his words to mean what the evangelist draws from them, yet John's words are not strained. Christ died for the people, not in the sense Caiaphas intended, but He died to save us.

Jesus performs an unprecedented miracle: the raising of Lazarus. This event, however, is perceived by people very differently: for some it becomes a sign of God's blessing, and for others, a dangerous manifestation of extremism. The Pharisees fear that this strange preacher from Judea, by His miracles, will attract the people to Himself and start an uprising that will be suppressed by the Romans, thereby putting an end to political freedom and religious life. Their earthly logic is entirely understandable: common sense suggests acting exactly as they did, sacrificing one person in the interests of the majority.

At times the Lord proposes that we do something that does not fit within generally accepted frameworks. His plan can appear insane to us, contradicting our ideas about the order of the world. It is hard for us to accept that His will can involve the disruption of familiar peace and quiet, the loss of what was achieved with hard labor, even death - and death on a cross. But precisely this "final" fall of Jesus, from the Pharisees' point of view, became salvation for the whole universe, because divine arithmetic differs from earthly arithmetic.

How comforting it is to hear the words of the prophet Ezekiel, especially when you realize that your heart is full of evil thoughts and your life of evil deeds. Through the prophet, the Lord says that the people will have one King, and therefore one will uniting a multitude of people. Finding a place in every heart, this will shall renew it, heal it, and cleanse it of sin. That heart will no longer defile itself with idols, abominations, and every kind of vice. The Lord also says that He will gather His people from everywhere, while in the Gospel of John we read that the sacrifice is offered not only for God's people, that is, for the Jews, but also for all of us, the scattered children of God. Jesus dies on the cross and rises again in order to gather into one all who live on earth and to widen the bounds of the "people of God." Moreover, the Lord promises to be our God forever; all that remains for us is to desire to become His sons, to cross the threshold into the "people of God," and to remain there forever.

Death puts many things in their place. It cannot be deceived, it cannot be laughed off, before it all are equal, and no one can escape it. Therefore it is not surprising that a person compares the most serious and important things in strength with death - a worthy comparison: "love is strong as death" (Song 8:6). Religious faith, as the most serious content of many people's lives, has more than once been set alongside death; thousands of martyrs chose to die rather than renounce their faith.

So death is a kind of boundary at which the final testing of faith takes place. This is not necessarily one's own death - Lazarus's sisters faced this test just as he himself did. They kept faith, but not to the end. There will be a resurrection of the dead, but not now, Martha thinks.

That is why these words sound strange to her: "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live." And victory over death takes place, even before the final triumph of Pascha, and before we ourselves can be convinced by experience that love is stronger than death.

Today's reading gives us another testimony to the triumph of the Kingdom that Jesus brought into the world. In every age and among all peoples without exception, death's triumph over life has been perceived as something unjust and contrary to what ought to be. Attempts to regard death like a Stoic or a natural philosopher, viewing it with philosophical calm and accepting it as something regular and inevitable, and therefore normal, have generally failed. At the moment of coming face to face with death, it still inspires only horror and revulsion. Other feelings connected with the causes and circumstances of a death are often mixed with these, of course, but those feelings have nothing to do with death itself: their source is precisely those causes and circumstances, not the fact of dying.

The Bible explains this attitude toward death: death entered the world as a consequence of the Fall. It is part of the world's evil, which must inevitably disappear once the world, transformed by God's power, becomes part of the Kingdom. By weeping when He sees those who mourn (vv. 32-36), Jesus confirms that death is not an imagined tragedy of human life but a real one.

This, of course, is not the end: resurrection, Judgment, and the Kingdom lie ahead. In Gospel times every believing Jew knew about the resurrection (vv. 23-24), yet death still remained a state contrary to human nature; it contradicted God's design for human beings and their destiny. The Kingdom therefore proves incompatible with death.

It is no accident that Jesus says He Himself is the resurrection (vv. 25-26): He bears the fullness of the Kingdom within Himself, and death retreats before the Kingdom. Of course, a return to one's former life, not yet transformed by God's power, in the former world, which has not yet become part of the Kingdom, can hardly be considered the end of the journey. This is not yet the resurrection that believing Jews awaited. But death and the Kingdom are incompatible, and so even someone not yet fully transformed finds in the Kingdom the fullness of life available to him.

No one can contain more life than he is able to contain, but in touching the fullness of God's life, each person receives the measure of life available to him. Lazarus had not yet reached complete transformation, but he was entirely capable of living the life that every healthy person lives in our still not fully transformed world. He receives the fullness possible for him as he comes out into God's light from the tomb in which he was buried (vv. 38-44). Then everyone could see plainly that the Kingdom had truly entered the world and, with it, so had the resurrection that until then was thought to lie only in the future.

One might think that so vivid a demonstration would have melted and converted every heart, but apparently nothing of the kind happened. Some truly came to believe (vv. 45-46), while others became even more firmly opposed to Christ and the Kingdom. But the evidence was too plain, and those who rejected the Kingdom were left with no choice, in the logic of their persistent rejection, but to conclude that they had to rid themselves of the One who brought the Kingdom into the world (vv. 47-53). Thus rejection of the Kingdom leads the Savior of the world, sent by God, to the cross.