NOTES for Mat 11:20-24

Jesus' comparison of the cities where He preached with ancient cities known for their looseness and immorality may at first glance seem excessively harsh. But it seems so only at first glance.

It would seem that one cannot compare people who, even if they reject the Messiah, are nevertheless religious and, in their own way within that religiosity, pious, with the immoral, for whom God's commandments are an empty sound. But things are not so simple. Indeed, every sinner who sins openly knows who he is and what he is doing. He may not think he is doing something sinful; he may not understand at all what sin and righteousness are. But he has no doubts or delusions about the essence of what he is doing. If such a person, under the influence of some internal or external factors, decides that what he is doing is sin, he has every chance to change the situation, because he does not mistake sin for righteousness.

That is why, as we can see, Jesus says that if the residents of cities known for their looseness and depravity had seen what the people surrounding Jesus saw, they would have repented of everything and turned back. They were not deceived about themselves. But those who heard Jesus and saw the miracles He performed were being crafty and deceiving themselves. Many of the Pharisees, for example, tried to assure not only themselves but others too that they rejected Jesus and His witness for purely principled reasons, and not at all from a desire to protect their own religious and theological tradition, which was dearer and more important to them than the Messiah and the Kingdom.

Such self-deception became a spiritual dead end. There was no reason to count on quick repentance and conversion here if sinners considered themselves righteous people and defenders of orthodoxy. Hidden sin is always more frightening than obvious sin. It is no accident that Jesus thanks the Father for revealing this to infants: the wise and understanding are too dependent on their tradition, while the "infants" are not burdened by it and perceive everything more simply and clearly.

As we can see, every tradition is spiritually ambivalent: it can help a person on the path into the Kingdom, and it can also hinder him on that path. And if one must choose, it is better to have no tradition at all than to have one that hinders, because no tradition, even the most ancient and profound, is worth more than the Kingdom.

The cities in which the Lord preached and performed miracles did not accept Him. Most of the Jews to whom the word of God had been entrusted hardened themselves against Christ. Does the terrible warning from the Gospel of Matthew not refer to them: "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them" (Matt 7:18-20)?

But it also refers to us. We too have heard His word and read the Gospel. And we call ourselves His people and preserve the faith handed down to us from the Apostles. But a tree is known by its fruit, and the fruit may fail to match the Gardener's expectations. Let us therefore be attentive to ourselves.

At the end of today's Gospel reading we hear an astonishing word from the Lord Jesus Christ, one that is rather difficult to translate into Russian. Our Synodal text offers the rendering "I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth". The Slavonic text is closer to the original, saying "I confess You, Father". In Greek the verb here is exomologeo, literally meaning "to agree, to promise, to acknowledge, to confess." The Latin translation gives us the verb confiteor, which chiefly means "to acknowledge, to confess." It is important to listen closely to this word, because its shades of meaning help us understand what the "confession" of the One God is, the confession to which we are called.

So the Lord turns to the Father with thanksgiving because the mystery of salvation, the mystery of faith, rejected by Capernaum and other cities, rejected by the wise and understanding, has been revealed to infants in faith, to people who are simplehearted and straightforward. This is truly a gift of the Father's good pleasure, mercy toward us. At the same time it is a manifestation of God's great wisdom, because one cannot come to the Almighty with pride and self-satisfaction. What translation options do we see, taking the possible shades of meaning into account?

"I praise You, Father" is the most capacious Russian option, chosen by the authors of the Synodal text. It is a proclamation of God's greatness and an announcement of His glory, His presence, and His rule in the world. This aspect was central in the Old Testament tradition and remains central in the New Testament tradition. "I agree with You, Father" is another option, and a very important one in our standing before God. After all, one can become a participant in God's life only by agreeing that God's work is beautiful. The aspect of acknowledgment is also important in this word. We confess what we have done, but here, of course, that is not what is meant. One possible translation is, "I confess my love to You, Father"; it is suggested by the excellent interlinear translation of the Russian Bible Society, published in 2001. And New Testament Greek also uses this verb in the sense of promising, of making vows. "I promise to be faithful to You, Father..." is how this shade of meaning can be expressed.

So the text of today's Gospel gives us several inseparably connected aspects of what the confession of faith is. It is praise of God, acknowledgment of His Truth and Wisdom, love for Him, and a promise of faithfulness to Him. This, apparently, is the worship in Spirit and truth to which we are all called. And it is also important that all of this, especially the promise of faithfulness, requires active service to the One whom we praise, by whose wisdom we are guided, whom we love, and to whom we are faithful.

Why do wisdom and understanding become an obstacle to salvation? Why was this God's good pleasure? We are used to seeing wisdom and understanding as a source of virtue. And this habit is not groundless, for every culture, and culture is precisely what forms our habits, is built on the multiplication of what is reasonable. This includes biblical culture: in it, understanding becomes an indispensable condition for knowing God, and therefore for salvation: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding" (Prov. 9:10). And this is very understandable to us.

But then Christ comes, and it turns out that something here is not right. Let us try to understand what exactly. Let us turn again to the book of Proverbs, this truly chief canonical book devoted to reason: "Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gains understanding, for her profit is better than the profit of silver, and her gain than fine gold" (Prov. 3:13,14). And again: "Get wisdom, get understanding; do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her, and she will preserve you; love her, and she will keep you. Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding. Exalt her, and she will promote you; she will bring you honor when you embrace her. She will place on your head an ornament of grace; she will deliver to you a crown of glory" (Prov. 4:5-9). In these quotations, the greatness of the human being clothed with reason is expressed in the most obvious way.

Greatness... Yes, but Christ calls us to humility, for He Himself is meek and humble in heart. And for what purpose? The weightiest answer would come from the same book of Proverbs. Precisely while singing of human reason, it suddenly says, as if by chance: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding" (Prov. 3:5). With Christ, this glimmer will become a radiant stream of light, the stream of love ready to humble itself before its Beloved, because it wants nothing else.

The inhabitants of the towns where Jesus' signs and wonders had been shown did not believe in Him, while among His disciples were "infants" - simple, uneducated people, often with an "imperfect" past: the sick, the unclean, the desperate, the "poor in spirit." This brings us face to face with the question of knowing God and receiving true faith. It turns out that miracles play a very small role in the inner upheaval that the Gospel calls repentance. God can be known only when He reveals Himself: the Son reveals the Father, and the Father brings people to faith in the Son. This revelation is a kind of inner miracle, a sign invisible to others and often even to the person himself. It happens in the experience of rest that the Lord Jesus gives to those who "labor and are heavy laden," in an intuitive encounter with the One who is truly meek, when a person's life becomes discipleship under Christ and the acquiring of a humble heart.

The Lord understands that we are always inclined to evade the need to make a clear choice. We find this almost physically unpleasant, and we begin to protest: Help, they are taking away our freedom! How can they do this?! What if we do not want to give an answer? This is an assault on the individual! But God does not play such games with us. He knows that freedom does not mean making no decision at all, and that what matters is not the ability to evade, but a courageous decision—agreement with either one option or the other. Of course, it is not hidden from Him that until the very end we can keep finding counterarguments and rejecting every option He offers: we do not like the place here, the time there, or the company elsewhere… Although He allows us to carry on misbehaving, He still waits persistently and with astonishing, incomprehensible patience—humanly speaking, “without losing His temper”—for the moment when we will finally make our choice. He is ready to wait until the very end, until the very last moment when we are still capable of an effort of will. All the more so because His will for our salvation must eventually be fulfilled!

The Pharisees refused to recognize either John the Baptist or the Lord Jesus Himself as messengers of God. Each of them, despite all their differences, displeased the Pharisees in some way. John the Baptist displeased them with his asceticism and his call to renew faith. The Lord... The Lord pleased them in nothing, in particular because He did not reject the repentance of sinful people whom the Pharisees considered doomed to perdition.

In reality, of course, behind this stood an unwillingness to accept the Good News, first of all because the Pharisees most wanted to look better than everyone else in their own eyes. The Gospel gives neither them nor anyone else such an opportunity. The Lord applies to them the image of children who do not weep at sad songs and do not rejoice at joyful ones. God, the Lord is saying by this, tries to communicate His word, His will, the Good News to the Pharisees in this way and that, by many different paths. But they react to nothing, and this reveals precisely their unwillingness to respond to God's call.

The point is not what John the Baptist is like or what Jesus Himself is like. Those who seek the Word of God will in one way or another be able to find and accept it, the Lord concludes with His words, "wisdom is justified by her children": some came to Christ through the Baptist's preaching, others recognized the Savior in Him for themselves... Whoever has ears and wants to hear will hear.

In our time this Gospel fragment remains exceptionally relevant. People often say: "I would believe, but..." Something is always unsatisfactory to the person who does not want to believe. Either there is too much bad in the Bible, since the truth about history is written there, or Christians are bad, or the commandments are strange... Christ's words apply precisely to such a position.

Speaking about the realization of the Kingdom of God, the evangelist clearly emphasizes Christ’s own central role in it. He proves to be the principal content of the Baptist’s proclamation—for it was precisely for this that people from all over the country came to him, not to watch the wind sway a reed in the wilderness! He stands at the center of the proclamation in the towns of Galilee: with His coming Capernaum is “exalted to heaven,” but when it refuses to hear His preaching it is “brought down to hell.” Finally, He gathers the divine law and the divine will in Himself. This can be seen in the vocabulary of the final verses of this chapter. “Weary and burdened” was what pious people called themselves when they took upon themselves the “burden” of keeping all the commandments of the Law. Thus, this is not at all about the working class going to church after work to soothe the soul through worship. Jesus, however, calls the disciples to take Him upon themselves as their “burden,” to live by Him and to serve God through Him, because unlike the fixed and unchanging commandments of the Pentateuch, His “burden” is easy and light: He has an individual approach for everyone, and in addition there are faithfulness, love, and forgiveness.

Today's reading tells us much about wisdom in the sense in which Jesus understands it. It begins with an episode describing John the Baptist's strange, at first glance, perplexity over the Savior's ministry (vv. 2-6). Indeed, the question was asked by the very man who first pointed to Jesus as the Messiah-Christ (Matt 3:13-17). And for Jesus Himself this episode became the occasion for bitter words about human wisdom. The issue is not the limitation of human reason: there is nothing terrible in such limitation in itself, for from the beginning God did not intend man to be omniscient. The issue is how and for what purpose a person uses the reason given to him by God. And fallen man, it turns out, most often uses it for self-justification and self-assertion.

The Old Testament authors look at wisdom as the art of building relationships with God and with people, as the science of righteous life. But it often happened that it degenerated into something like intellectual games serving only for entertainment and, in this sense, little different from children's games (vv. 16-17). Worst of all was that these games, taken with complete seriousness, at a critically important moment blocked the "wise men" from the living Truth that had come into the world, and blocked them from the Kingdom.

What kind of Messiah did believing Jews expect in those days? There were many messianic theological concepts, but it happened that the real Messiah did not fully fit into any of them. Even John the Baptist himself may have expected something different from the Messiah-Christ whom he had recognized.

In any case, it is impossible to please those for whom their theories are dearer than the truth: if He fasts, then He is possessed; if He does not fast, then He is a glutton, a drunkard, a sinner (vv. 18-19). Here only one thing matters: does the person being evaluated meet the criteria of "one of us," does he fit within the framework of the concept or not? If not, then one can always find reasons to declare such a person "wrong," a sinner, a violator of the Torah, and a servant of Satan. And supporters of the "right" theory will always be able to justify its "rightness" (v. 19). Only at the Judgment such "theorists" will have a harder time than those who simply sinned without any theories (vv. 20-24). This is, in general, not surprising: the wise person who has used his wisdom for evil bears greater responsibility than the one who makes no claim to any wisdom.