NOTES for Luk 4:31-36

The evangelist notes an interesting nuance in his account: at the sight of the possessed man's healing, his release from the power of dark forces, the people around Jesus are seized by terror. Not joy, not delight, not reverence, not the fear of God, which still presupposes reverence first of all, but precisely terror, terror before a strange, incomprehensible, and therefore frightening power. It would seem that when we are speaking of the manifestation of the Kingdom, of the breath of the Kingdom, and even of the power of the Kingdom, which showed itself in the healing of the possessed man, there should be no question of terror. And yet terror is present; that is the reaction of those who saw the healing. What is the matter? The answer to this question may be found in the talk among those around Him, mentioned by the evangelist: Who is He, that even the forces of darkness fear Him? Evidently, the people seized by terror at the sight of the healing see nothing in what is happening except power, a power surpassing even what was considered irresistible: the authority of the spirits of darkness.

Of course, those around Jesus were religious people; no others were to be found near the synagogue. But, as we can see, religiosity by itself guarantees nothing when it comes to the spiritual world and spiritual life. It is no secret that in every age religious people have often feared the manifestation of dark forces in their lives even more than their nonreligious contemporaries. And one can understand them: unlike nonreligious people, or people who do not believe at all, religious people know something about the spiritual world, at least by hearsay, and sometimes from their own experience. They also know about the existence of dark spiritual forces and have no reason to doubt their reality. But religiosity by itself does not guarantee firm and stable personal relationships with God.

Then the forces of darkness become a reality for the religious person, while God becomes an abstraction. Perhaps the people around Jesus understood the matter in just this way. And in Jesus Himself they saw not the Messiah who had brought the Kingdom into the world, but only the Possessor of a power greater than the one they already knew well: the power of the spirits of darkness. The reality of the Kingdom remained foreign to them; they never sensed either its breath or its love. But they did notice its power.

Without love, however, that power really does become frightening for a person. For a human being, there would perhaps be nothing more terrible than a God who suddenly stopped loving him, if such a thing were possible. But fortunately for humanity, that is completely impossible. Still, a person who does not know God's love, who does not sense the breath of the Kingdom, can quite well imagine God's power deprived of God's love. And that mirage will become terror for him, just as it became terror for the witnesses of Jesus' healing of the possessed man.