NOTES for Luk 12:2

These words of Jesus can be considered as a simple observation of facts: our life is made in such a way that any of our human secrets comes out; somebody just has to need these secrets, for this to happen. It is necessary to remember that, because we very often like hiding what we are ashamed of (even if it is not always the case). However, it is clear that trying to hide something from the Omniscient God is quite stupid.

But, these words of the Lord are telling us of a certain faith, and He invites all of us to have this faith. These words are very important for us, because they allow us to separate Jesus’ call from that complex set of religious demonstrations which is formed in us in result of the junction of Christian dogmatic and the Hellenistic natural religion. If all the plenitude of God is shown to us in Jesus bodily as says Apostle Paul, then there is nothing (and cannot be) hidden in faith. And this gives us the vaccination against the temptation of esotericism, against the division of spiritual life between sacred and profaned.

Further, The Lord speaks to His followers about the fear of death and the fear of God, giving us then the possibility to hope in God's custody. He speaks about confession, in which the main thing is not so much the quantity of the used theological terms, as fidelity to the Son of God, crucify for us. And finally, the Lord speaks about loving the Holy Spirit. It is especially insult against the Holy Spirit that must be very "bitter" and horrible for us, and it is exactly what we need to avoid. So, we shall not be alone in difficult and dangerous situations. In brief, the Lord speaks about faith, which is indeed a deep and intense life. As it is said: "the just shall live by faith".

Speaking about the Kingdom and about how to obtain it, the Savior, as can be seen, puts first the question of life, of what kind of life a person lives. Such an approach can be considered quite traditional. Indeed, in the Bible, when the subject is a person and his life or life force, the Synodal translation in this case usually says "soul," a clear line is drawn between the person as he was before the fall and the person as he became after the fall.

Before the fall, this force was connected above all with the breath of life that God breathed into the human being at creation. After the fall, it became connected mainly with blood, with the physiological essence of the human being, just as in animals, where it too is connected with blood. As can be seen, life is presented by the biblical authors as whole and indivisible. It is not divided into spiritual and physical in such a way that one of its components could be separated from the other. But the quality of life can differ, being determined by a person's spiritual state: the fuller and more intense his relations with God are, the more spiritual there is in the person's life, and the more his spiritual component prevails over the natural one, subjecting it to itself. In the Kingdom, as can be seen, a person's life is completely transformed.

Only one thing is important here: whether the person lives this life or not. If his life turns out to be part of the life of the Kingdom, then even the death of his physical body changes nothing in principle. After all, in the Kingdom nature in its former quality does not exist, and in its new, transformed state it is no longer something completely foreign in nature to the spirit, as it is in the untransformed world. And to the extent that a person's life in our transforming but still untransformed world belongs to the Kingdom, he need not fear losses at the moment of physical death, because death has no relation to the Kingdom. But if the whole life of a person remains connected only with the untransformed world and with untransformed bodily existence, he has nothing to count on: death will prove to be the only and final reality for him.

The Kingdom will in any case eventually transform our world, making it part of itself, but a person who has no relation to the Kingdom will have no relation to this triumph of the Kingdom, at least until the day of Judgment. That is why Jesus advises us to fear not the one who can kill a person physically, but the One who can deprive him of the Kingdom: after all, having the Kingdom, a person loses nothing even in the case of physical death; but having lost the Kingdom, he will sooner or later inevitably lose everything, including the physical life he preserved at such an inadequate price.

“You are worth more than many small birds”—today these words sound like news to many people. When the price of a human life is a penny—or many pennies—food inevitably becomes more important than the soul and clothing more important than the body. The reality of God’s Kingdom frees us from this slavery to money, food, clothing, and the oppressive anxiety about life. The Lord simply tells us, “To Me, you are more important and more precious than all these things.” We are very skilled at seeing the ugliness of this world and the ugliness of the people around us, and sometimes our own. But the Lord says, “To Me, you are more beautiful than the flowers of the field.” We tremble with fear for our well-being, health, and life. But He says, “Do not be afraid; My Kingdom belongs to you.”

Speaking to the disciples about the Kingdom, Jesus describes it above all as a new life opened to those who seek it. But it can be found only in the case of absolute openness on one's own part. To live the life of the Kingdom, one must renounce one's own life. Not one's life-space as such, not that flow of life which the Bible calls the soul, but the attempt to appropriate this space and this flow for oneself, to regard it as one's inalienable property, belonging to oneself by right.

In the Kingdom everything is different. There life is shared. One life for all. It is not owned; it is given for use. And the measure of this use is limited by nothing except the spiritual potential of the person himself. As much of the life of the Kingdom as he can contain, that much he will receive. But it does not become anyone's own in the sense in which we are accustomed to use that word with reference to property relations in our world.

The life of the Kingdom is yours insofar as you can live by this life. And therefore Jesus advises surrendering oneself to the flow of the life of the Kingdom. Enter it like a river. And move together with it. Without trying, as people say today, to fix anything in place. Without trying to evaluate one's own states, achievements, or failures. Without clinging to anything that attracts and holds a person in this world. And certainly without trying to fit the life of the Kingdom into religious frameworks: the new life cannot be kneaded on either Pharisaic or Sadducean leaven. The Kingdom does not fit into any human frameworks, but it does fit into the human heart. If, of course, it becomes the person's chief treasure. For where the treasure is, there is the heart.

The coming Kingdom of God will require a special path of faith from a person. Jesus tells the disciples "do not be anxious," but immediately condemns the frivolous rich man who no longer has anything to be anxious about. The question is not solved on the plane of "to work or not to work," whether or not to make some effort to care for oneself and one's loved ones. The point here is not food and clothing, but hope, what a person relies on, the foundation on which he stands. Christ's disciples will need to eat and drink; they do not turn into "lilies of the field," they remain human beings. But these people live not by themselves, not by their own efforts, not even by their own faith; they live by God, by His mercy toward them. Instead of our usual "problems," they direct their hearts toward the Kingdom, which becomes the measure and goal of all their daily labors and efforts.