NOTES for Joh 12:36-47

Everyone is familiar with the situation when you offer someone something important, beautiful, valuable, necessary, or tasty, and the person refuses. One of the most typical reactions can be formulated childishly like this: "Fine then, I did not want it that much anyway," or even more cheerfully, "That means there will be more for me." But speaking this way, we pretend that another person's neglect does not touch us and that we are "free people living in a free country," that something of one's own can be dear to each person, and that we respect another person's choice.

In reality, beneath this showy calm lies hurt that what is precious to you turns out to be unnecessary to others. Gradually this hurt can poison life even more: it begins to feel as though it was not the thing offered that was refused, but that you yourself are not loved, not respected, not accepted. And then it begins...

Glory to God that He is not like that at all! When we refuse what He shares with us - not merely something important to Him, but also that without which no person will be truly happy - He still says that He does not judge us (see John 12:47). Then He will add that each person will be his own judge (see John 12:48). And this is an astonishing truth: the Lord cannot deprive us of salvation; only we ourselves can deprive ourselves of it. He not only does not condemn us, He does not even judge us for it. It simply hurts Him very much...

The evangelist describes the reasons for unbelief in Jesus quite exhaustively. He divides all unbelievers into two categories: those who do not want to see the truth and those who are simply afraid. The second case is more or less understandable: in every age fear and cowardice have been among the chief obstacles on the path of righteousness, preventing those who walk or want to walk that path from making the right decisions. The first category is more complicated. It is probably hard to imagine a person who in ordinary life voluntarily blinds himself or simply closes his eyes so that, no longer seeing the reality around him, he can replace that vision with fantasies. And understandably so: in everyday life the consequences of such an act can be most unexpected and unpleasant. Yet in spiritual life many people apparently make just this choice, and quite often, although the consequences here are hardly less serious. Why is that?

The Athenian philosopher Socrates, who lived five centuries before the birth of Christ, seems already to have understood the reason for such behavior. He said that people often take a small good for a great one and a great evil for a small one, as well as the reverse, simply because what is large looks smaller at a distance than it really is. This applies to spiritual life just as much as to everyday life.

Giving up comfortable and familiar views and a settled worldview, especially a religious one, is at the very least uncomfortable. The day of Judgment seems so distant, so small compared with this discomfort, that... it is disregarded—perhaps in the hope that by the time it comes, things will somehow have settled down, worked themselves out, and resolved themselves, and that we will somehow enter the Kingdom after all at little cost, without any particular sacrifice or loss.

And it is best to get rid of those who, as the saying goes, care far too much. There will be no quiet life with them anyway. How to get rid of them is merely a technical question.

There are only two causes of unbelief: unwillingness to see the obvious, and fear. But if we think about it, it is not hard to understand that the root is one, and it is precisely fear. Only, as we see, fear comes in different forms. There is open, unconcealed fear: in such cases a person usually admits simply and directly that he refuses to see and hear certain things only because he is afraid. He understands that once he hears and sees something, he will have to draw certain conclusions from what he has seen and heard, and then change something in his life, and the changes can bring at least undesirable consequences. Here everything is clear: a person does not want to listen to Jesus or follow Him because he does not want extra problems. This is, of course, bad, but still not the same as in the second case. Here everything is fairly open, and the fearful person understands it all himself: he knows that he is being cowardly and realizes what his problem is. Besides, although overcoming such fear is not easy, in general it is not so difficult either: this is precisely an external fear; it binds a person from outside, frightening him above all with external consequences.

The second cause is more serious and deeper. Here too there is fear, but a different kind, an inner fear. From the outside such a person may fear nothing at all. He may not tremble at the thought of the consequences of his choice. But such a person can fear for his inner world, and fear very much.

Usually the first type of fear seizes a secular, unbelieving person who tends to rely on external things and to attach great importance to what can easily be lost in the event, for example, of persecution. The second fear is more characteristic of a religious person, for whom the chief value is his inner world. Such a person is certain that this world cannot be taken from him even if his life is taken, and therefore he has nothing to fear from outside. But from within, the world of a religious person is very vulnerable, and such a person constantly watches carefully to make sure that no one somehow destroys his religiosity. If he senses in someone's words a threat to his religiosity, he at once becomes blind and deaf, simply for the sake of self-preservation.

Only the Savior can free us from both of these fears, for He can unite everyone who trusts Him to the life of His Kingdom. And the breath of the Kingdom that has entered a person's heart cannot be taken away from that person or destroyed. Then fear disappears too, because there is nothing more to fear.

What amazing words Jesus speaks in today's passage from the Gospel of John! The unity of which the Church speaks is visible precisely here. More than that, these very words of Jesus help us touch the depth of the relationship between the Son and the Father. They are so inseparable that whoever believes in the Son believes in the Father, and whoever sees Jesus sees the Lord of Hosts Himself. And by God's mercy, light comes into the world to reveal the Father to us by illuminating our hearts.

Jesus is light. But why, why does this light irritate so many people? Perhaps the most logical answer is that it keeps them from sleeping... We love to sleep—the sleep of sin, the sleep of death. For very often our whole life passes as if in a dream, and we do everything almost automatically. But His light, like bright sunshine on a Sunday morning, will not let us sleep! We have to open our eyes and... look. Look at the world, look at those around us, look Him in the eyes. It is frightening and difficult, but this is precisely what life is. He comes and brings His light not to condemn us: “Just look how bad everything is! Do you see? There you are.” He gives light to save us, so that we may learn to look at Him, rejoice, and love.

The Lord mysteriously tells us, His disciples: "The light is with you for a little while longer." Yes, of course, this refers to His imminent death on the cross, for the Word, like a grain of God's sowing, must die in order to bear fruit. And He died - of this, unlike His resurrection, no one doubts - and the light He brought into the world went out forever for the world.

But not for those who believed Him! He promised that those who believe in Him would be sons of light, bearers of this light revealed to the apostles in the Resurrection. And this is both a promise and a task: not to remain in darkness despite His death, obvious to all; to "walk in the light," that is, to live in His presence, believing that He is alive. Then His death, through us - and this is astonishing - will bear much fruit for the world and open access for all to the Kingdom of Light...

Jesus’ words that the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified were spoken in response to the news brought by the disciples that the Greeks wished to see Him. The Evangelist mentions neither who these Greeks were nor whether the meeting took place; apparently, it did not. Most likely, this is one of the instances in which Christ does not give the answer expected of Him, but says what His listeners actually need to hear. It is possible that even at this moment the disciples do not fully understand that the Teacher must pass through suffering, and to them the Greeks’ interest is evidence of new opportunities for preaching. They think in quantitative terms, but Christ is preparing for the self-sacrifice that will change everything qualitatively. For the salvation of divided humanity, including the Greeks, He goes to His death, after which the disciples’ preaching will be able to succeed.

One might object to the words, “Now the ruler of this world will be cast out,” by saying that evil still reigns in the world today. But the forces of evil no longer possess the authority they had before Golgotha. The agony may be long and violent, but the enemy has already received the mortal blow.

There are turning points in human history that may remain outwardly unnoticed, yet still be the true cause of major historical events. When “some Greeks” ask the apostle Philip to arrange a meeting with Jesus, just such a turning point arrives, and the Lord says of it: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

The fact is that the entire history of the Old Testament religion unfolded amid a glaring contradiction between the universal character of the divine revelation given in it and the narrowly national character of the religion itself. To be a participant in the Covenant with God and to be a Jew by blood were regarded as one and the same thing. The prophets repeatedly proclaimed that the day would come when the Lord would call all nations to Himself, but this time was associated with the future coming of the Messiah. And now that day had arrived.

It is in this universal context that Christ’s words, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to Myself,” should be understood. This is why the Greeks’ desire to meet Christ becomes such a turning point in history.

When the Greeks come to Jesus, they ask Philip for help. For some reason he goes to Andrew. It is hard to think the apostle was afraid to approach the Teacher himself. It is just as unlikely that Andrew was Christ's personal secretary, in charge of the Teacher's schedule. The matter is something quite different.

Something unusual is happening. For the first time, other peoples responding to Jesus' preaching are mentioned, even if they believe in the same God as the Jews. The community of Christ's disciples is encountering something new. And therefore Philip behaves very naturally: he does not hurry to act on his own. Jesus sent the apostles out to preach not one by one, but two by two (see Mark 6:7).

Who knows: perhaps Philip went to Andrew precisely because he was "paired" with him? Besides, Philip surely remembers how Christ said, "Where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am among them" (Matt 18:20).

The Lord lays the foundation of the Church in this way: not scattered believers, but disciples coming to Him together. When we do not understand what to do, when we want to know God's will, we should not rely exclusively on how we ourselves hear it. God has given us His Church to help us: He has given us elders, He has given us brothers and sisters with whom we can turn to Him together. And so His word is fulfilled: "If two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven" (Matt 18:19).

When it comes to the Savior's earthly ministry, we understand that something unique is at issue: indeed, He alone was destined to be born and to live His earthly life as the Messiah; this was given to no one else. And yet His life became a kind of spiritual model suitable for every one of His followers. Moreover, there is simply no other model that allows one to enter the Kingdom, and apparently there cannot be, at least in our world that has undergone the fall.

This model is very simple in theory and not so simple in practice: a person must agree to part with his own life in order then to receive it again, but now as another life, in a new quality suitable for the Kingdom. The one who loves his life ("soul") as it is, in its present condition, cannot count on the Kingdom. The demand appears excessively harsh, but as we can see, this harshness is caused precisely by the specific nature of the fallen world, of which the life of each of us is a part. Even Jesus Himself, over whom original sin has no power, was not, during His earthly ministry, completely free from this specific nature: He, being fully and to the end an inhabitant of our untransformed world and part of it, became subject, if not to sin, then to death - though, of course, not in the same way as we are: death was possible for Him, not inevitable as it is for us.

And the only thing that can help us is readiness to renounce our life in its present quality, what Jesus calls "hating one's own life." It is worth remembering that in biblical language love and hatred denote not the emotional states we often mean by them, but an attitude of acceptance or nonacceptance toward that to which our will is directed. Nonacceptance of life, including first of all one's own life, in its present quality and state, and readiness to part with it for the sake of another, new life, constitute the necessary preliminary condition for beginning the path into the Kingdom: the path during which our former life will be remelted into a new one, fit for eternity.