NOTES for Luk 6:46-7:1

For many centuries now the debate has died down and flared up again over what matters more: faith or works, theory or practice, which is primary and which secondary. Meanwhile, from the Gospel it is clear that formal religiosity has no meaning and will be rejected by God, and temples built for prayer that is not supported by deeds and by keeping the commandments of real, not verbal, love for God and neighbor will collapse. And not only temples, but we ourselves, praying in those temples, like the Pharisees, will prove bankrupt with all our knowledge of biblical interpretation and liturgics.

So let us hope not in our own education, but that our knowledge will become a launching pad for living deeds that we may not be able to imagine in advance. But the Lord sees us, and He knows at what moment and to what service to direct us.

If only we would recognize His will and not reject it.

What kind of faith did the Lord not find in Israel, as He said of the faith of the centurion from Capernaum? First, the centurion professes his faith in Christ’s divine nature. He does not expect the Teacher from Nazareth to heal by touching the sick servant or by any other means requiring His personal presence. The centurion says that he believes Christ’s will alone, expressed in His word, is enough to heal. In this way he professes His will as a creative power acting in the world beyond the bounds of physical laws, the laws of nature. Just as the hundred men placed under the centurion’s command obey him, so the whole world obeys Christ. One may think in this way of the almighty and omnipresent God, Creator of heaven and earth, or of the One Whom God Himself has sent into the world. Second, this faith compels the centurion to look first at himself. He thinks of God not as a means of solving various problems, but as a Person before Whom he will stand when Jesus comes into his house. That is why he says that he is unworthy of this visit. These two aspects of the centurion’s faith make him an example for us to follow.

We all believe that the Lord, who created this world, has complete power over nature. That is as easy to imagine as an officer commanding soldiers on a parade ground: at his command they all turn right, and at another they all turn left!

But do we believe that the Lord can heal a sick person before our eyes—just like that: He speaks, and the person recovers? “Well,” we might say, “in theory we believe that too...” Do we see the enormous difference between theoretical belief in God's omnipotence and faith in a miracle that directly concerns us? No such gap existed in the military mind of the Roman centurion: his faith was not theoretical but living—and a miracle occurred. Perhaps the Lord would not find such faith not only in Israel...

Today we return again to such a fundamental concept as faith. In the Bible this word most often means not simply trust in some information, but the ability at a critical moment to "take hold" of God, to lean on Him as on a firm pillar or rock.

Today's story about the Roman officer who asked Jesus to heal his servant, and whom Christ sets as an example for His disciples, illustrates this well. He is a military man, trained in army discipline, and he is absolutely certain that his order will be carried out, just as he himself is ready to carry out the order of his commander. In his relationship with God, such confidence rests not on discipline and military order, where a soldier is punished with death for disobedience, but on something no less strong: namely, on faith.

Strictly speaking, when Scripture speaks about faith, it is speaking about faith that is stronger even than death, so that the sick are healed and the dead are raised.

The parable of the house built on the rock concludes the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to Luke. It also concludes the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus explains what He expects from His disciples and what it means to be "sons of the Most High." In this parable He once again draws our attention to how important it is not merely to listen to and accept the truths of the Gospel, but also to act in accordance with them.

If, after hearing the Beatitudes, we calmly say, "Yes, this is very wise and beautiful," but do not embody it in any way in our life, then we will not be His disciples. Our Christianity will remain only an ethical system, one that can break under the pressure of trials. But if we truly live by His commandments, look at the world with His eyes, and do His will, then this will be a foundation that nothing will be able to shake.

How should we understand the parable of the bad or good tree? After all, all people, including us, sometimes bear good fruit and sometimes bad fruit. Here again there is a temptation to divide people, and ourselves, into good and bad. And sometimes it is even pleasant to say, "Oh, what a bad person I am!" as though that were useful for humility. But here we are judging again, and it is said: "Do not judge."

Here it is more about the inner, spiritual direction that stands behind our actions, and that direction depends on us. Therefore, in order not to be a bad tree, one must bear good fruit; and for the Lord's words to benefit us, they must be put into practice. This is the Christian's basic moral task: to do good, not to judge. Christ will judge.

Comparing the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and Luke makes it clear that Luke generally presents it in less detail. Of course, hardly any of the evangelists transmitted Jesus' words verbatim. At that time it was customary to compile the sayings of teachers and preachers, shaping them into a special kind of literary text and sometimes into entire collections. Even taking this fact into account, however, it is obvious that Luke singled out what he considered most important in Jesus' sermon. For the evangelist, the most important thing is the absence of condemnation. “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged”—these are the Savior's words that Luke considers most important in the whole Sermon on the Mount. Why these particular words? Matthew, for example, has many other themes that are no less important.

Yet the absence of condemnation really can be considered a measure of the quality of a person's inner life. This is not about making an assessment, of course, but precisely about condemning. It is entirely natural to assess a person's particular action in a given situation. Condemnation is another matter: it concerns not the action but the person himself. A person thus becomes the judge of another person, although God never appointed him to be such a judge. A person's path, its outcome, and its evaluation are the prerogative of God and God alone. Even if someone is clearly heading straight for the lake of fire, only God can sentence him to that lake.

Any human being can only state the fact that a sinner is moving in that direction. Why, then, do we pronounce judgment so readily where no one has given us the right to do so? Evidently because we do not see the situation as God sees it and do not use the same criteria—not absolute criteria but relative ones. We see a person not in the fullness of the life God has given him, but only in his particular present condition. We apply certain formal criteria, usually moral and religious, to this condition and naturally obtain a completely distorted picture of reality. But this is no surprise: as long as our life is determined not by the breath of life God has given us but by our own nature, nothing else can be expected.

If, however, we live the life of the Kingdom, such a distortion of reality simply cannot occur. If it does occur, it means that we are still far from the Kingdom, as the evangelist bears witness to us.