NOTES for Luk 9:49-56

What is religion? And what is human religiosity worth? These questions have been debated for more than one century. Some see religion as the chief driving force of spiritual life; others consider it a terrible, destructive force, pointing above all to the forms militant religiosity intolerant of any dissent can take and the phenomena it can produce.

Jesus' disciples were undoubtedly deeply religious people, like most Jews of their age. By the time of the episode in the Samaritan village described by the evangelist, they had already spent at least a year with their Teacher. But then comes rejection, and the apostles' first, immediate reaction: cursed be this village! Let thunder strike its inhabitants! One could, of course, suppose that this was said in the heat of the moment, that it was merely an initial, spontaneous response. Jesus thinks otherwise. He tells His disciples: you do not know what spirit you are of. Apparently, these words were not spoken merely in the heat of the moment: this was no accidental mistake or slip of the tongue, but a settled attitude.

An attitude entirely understandable in terms of the religious beliefs of Jews in Gospel times. In that age, Samaritans were worse than pagans in Jewish eyes: like the Jews, they considered themselves God's people and worshiped the same God of Abraham and Moses. As one can easily imagine, the Jews could not forgive the Samaritans such claims. Pagans were simply different and had no connection with the God of Israel; Samaritans did have one and laid claim before God to the place rightfully occupied by the Jewish people. Religious feeling dictated only one response to such claims: hatred.

A hatred that seemed entirely justified to the religious mind: every religion is fundamentally all-encompassing, claiming the whole person and completely determining their worldview, behavior, and system of values. Naturally, no religion tolerates competition: interreligious tolerance usually appears only when religious fervor subsides. There may, however, be another reason: a person can be tolerant of another's religiosity not only when they have not yet grown spiritually into religious feeling, but also when they have spiritually outgrown it.

This is precisely what the Savior means when He tells the apostles that they do not know what spirit they are of. They think that by wishing to destroy their Teacher's opponents they are bringing the triumph of His Kingdom closer. In reality, they are only delaying it. Christianity is not a religion, but life in the Kingdom, and the Messiah came into the world not to destroy His enemies but to save everyone who can be saved.

Yet this is not easy to understand. Indeed, human effort alone cannot make it understood, and religious feeling is no help here; apparently, it can even obstruct understanding of the Kingdom the Savior brought into the world. Only the breath of God reveals to the apostles what the Kingdom is. After Pentecost, it will never again occur to them to establish the Kingdom and plant the Church by force. Even in the hardest circumstances and with the best of intentions.

We have to travel quite a long road before arriving at the simple thought that whoever is not against us is for us. It is easier to look for enemies than to live among fellow fighters and fellow workers. It is more pleasant to consider oneself the final authority on truth than to acknowledge oneself as one among many. It takes a long time to digest the knowledge that you are not the first but the last among those whom the Lord has called. Along this road we are always trying to turn away from “whoever is not against you is for you” toward “whoever is not with Me is against Me.” We try to equate ourselves with the Lord and take the place of the first and best disciple, the one who has understood everything and will immediately reorganize the world according to their own understanding. It is precisely from this that the Lord protects us when He sets before us a child's, an infant's attitude toward hierarchy, authority, career advancement, our place in the world, and, ultimately, toward what we know at all about Him and about ourselves.

We do not know what spirit we are of. Today the possibility of judgment does not surprise us; we easily judge not only in our own name, but also in the name of Christians, in the name of the whole Church. One often hears, "the holy fathers say..." or "the Pope said," and so on and so forth. In the name of the Church we accuse people of sins, without seeing the beam in our own eye. In every confession there have been periods when people were killed in the name of the Church: the Inquisition, the struggle against the Old Believers, religious wars... In this text we see that even while Jesus was alive, the apostles wanted to destroy in His name those who had not received Him.

This was a manifestation of love for Him, but not true love. Love for God is impossible without love for one's neighbor. We do not know what spirit we are of, but we know for certain that Machiavelli was wrong when he wrote that the end justifies the means. Love for one's Teacher and God cannot be imposed by violence. Nothing can be achieved by violence, especially not love. God and violence are incompatible. God died for every inhabitant of that Samaritan village that did not receive Him; He also died for each of the apostles, He died for Judas, He died for each of us, and apart from Him, no one can judge.

Jesus says these words in response to the disciples' strange proposal to call down fire from heaven and destroy those who had refused to receive them. “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of,” the Savior exclaims bitterly. And these words contain a very important aspect of our faith.

With Christ's coming into the world, as with the moment when each person comes into contact with Him, judgment begins. According to the Lord's own words, judgment consists in this: the Light has come into the world, and everyone's deeds and intentions become visible in that Light. Each of us chooses between the Light and repentance, or darkness and self-satisfaction. Difficulties and dangers await us along this path; despite how obvious the choice appears, making it is far from easy. And often, very often, we find ourselves unable to follow Christ.

And now the Lord says that He did not come to “catch us out” in our unreadiness to receive Him and condemn us to destruction. No, the purpose of His coming is to save human souls. This is one of the most important reasons why He so often and so insistently warns His disciples against judging and condemning others. And this is an astonishing hope for us, who are unworthy of His sacrifice.

How close the apostles' reaction is to us. On the one hand, there is nothing surprising in this, since we are all human, and besides, being like a future apostle is a very good thing. On the other hand, in what way are we like them? Precisely in the fact that we are human, and in our "common human" reactions. The disciples, burning with zeal for the Teacher, are offended that people did not want to receive Him. Someone treated their Teacher the same way any other people would be treated: a traveler was refused shelter. And now "righteous anger" is raging before us, since these simple fishermen surely did not calmly speak the words about calling down punishing heavenly fire, however unemotionally this is set out in the Gospel (see Luke 9:54). And these simple people consider themselves entitled to avenge such inhospitable treatment of their Lord. They may be moved by the words of Christ when He sent them out to preach: "And if any place will not receive you and will not listen to you, when you leave there, shake off the dust from your feet as a testimony against them. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town" (Mark 6:11). And then it was about them, while here it is about their Teacher. So the punishment must be corresponding!..

And if we imagine Joseph behaving this way when no one wanted to admit him and Mary, who was about to give birth? How many people and houses would have been burned with fire?

It is astonishing that in this case the disciples have faith that fire will come at their request. And the question does not sound like this: "Will fire come down from heaven if we ask?" but "Do You want us to say that fire should come down from heaven and destroy them?" (Luke 9:54).

And how wonderful it is that faith in God and in the truth that "whatever they ask will be given them by My Father in heaven" is accompanied by dialogue with the Lord. Because He rejects the disciples' proposal and rebukes them (Luke 9:55), directing their paths along the right way.

Today we read a small selection of short accounts about Jesus, assembled by the evangelist to show how extraordinary His Message is and how incompatible it is with normal human ideas. In the coming Kingdom of God, everything will be different from what is customary on earth: the most important and respected will be those who are least valued in human eyes (for children had no rights before reaching adulthood and were regarded as their parents' property, like slaves, yet Jesus holds them up as an example to the disciples). Jesus forbids His disciples to divide people into “ours” and “not ours,” although this is a fundamental principle of human society (for comparison, watch the news on television). His Kingdom lies outside our system of values and proves more important even than the sacred duty to bury one's father, more important than a comfortable home and family. It takes hold of a person entirely—the one who asked Jesus about His Kingdom has already “put his hand to the plow,” already begun the paradoxical path toward God...

Today's reading is entirely devoted to the theme of the Kingdom and to how the people around Jesus understood it, including His closest disciples. And once again we encounter a complete failure, even on the apostles' part, to understand what the Kingdom is and what its laws are. The very question of primacy, of who is greatest in the Kingdom (v. 46), loses all meaning there. Jesus was able to explain this by pointing the disciples to a child, whom the problem of primacy, because of age, does not yet concern at all (vv. 47-48).

According to the laws of our world, still not transformed, the great person is the one who is great by his own greatness; in the Kingdom, as it appears, one's own greatness means nothing, and the less a person relies on it, the more the greatness of the Kingdom shines through him. That is why there is no need to impose this Kingdom by force, as the apostles thought of doing in one Samaritan village where Jews, as usual, were not welcome (vv. 51-54): in that way one can only demonstrate one's own force and prove one's own importance, but it is impossible to bring people closer to the Kingdom by such a method. It is no accident that Jesus tells the disciples that they are not acting in the spirit of the Kingdom: for the Kingdom, any violence is unacceptable; no one can be driven there by force, because to enter it one needs above all a relationship with God and with the One whom He sends, and that relationship must not be imposed but freely accepted.

A Kingdom imposed by force is not the Kingdom, but only its phantom, which can destroy a person but cannot save him. And since the Kingdom is not a place but a relationship, it is not limited by any structure. Even the apostolic community does not limit it, if one looks at that community not as a fellowship of people living in the Kingdom, but as a kind of organization for promoting the idea of the Kingdom of God. That is why everyone who bears witness to it in Christ's name, revealing to those around him its power and effectiveness, finds his own place in it, even if formally he has no relation to the apostolic community (vv. 49-50). Thus, dispelling the myths of mass religious consciousness that were so widespread in those days, Jesus strengthens in the hearts of His disciples those ideas about the Kingdom that must help them live through His death on the cross and receive His resurrection.

As can be seen, Jesus keeps explaining to His disciples, through different examples, what the life of the Kingdom is and what it is like. And the Evangelist gathers these examples together, making a kind of digest that contains short descriptions of them. Here are the disciples arguing over who is the greatest in the Kingdom. Well, after the Teacher, of course. Here are the same disciples eager to call thunder down on a Samaritan village where they are not received. Not for their own sake, of course, but for the Teacher's sake. And for the truth, naturally.

And here are people they meet along the road. One is ready to go, but Jesus tells him: I have nowhere to invite you. To another Jesus Himself says: Follow Me, and that man asks permission to bury his father, and receives an answer that sounds merciless. As does another one: the answer is softer outwardly, but in substance it says: leave it, forget everyone, or else you will have to forget the Kingdom.

What is this: a particular kind of selectiveness? Yes, of course: Jesus sees every person's heart; it is as transparent to Him as it is to His heavenly Father. But there is also something common here. The Kingdom is open to everyone. But on one condition: it must be first in the life of the one who wants to reach it. In the Kingdom people do not live out their remaining days; they live. And those who refuse to go, in one way or another, want to live out what remains. To stay with those who are living out what remains. They do not understand that one can go on living out what remains, alone or with others, endlessly. In the fallen world there is no real life; here there are only its remnants. And one has to choose: either gather up these remnants and try to squeeze the last out of them, or go where there is life in abundance. Without trying to drag along the remains of that imitation of life that can be found in the fallen world.

But there, in the Kingdom, the laws are different. There are no bosses and subordinates there; there are ministries that must be carried, and whoever knows how to do this better is the greatest. The one who is greatest in the Kingdom does not receive the best places, but the more responsible ministries. And there is no need there to prove anything to anyone. In this world too, the Kingdom does not need to be proved to anyone.

It can be shown, of course. But proving it is pointless. For proof, especially with heavenly thunder involved, always presupposes a desire to persuade by force. To make someone accept, to make someone believe. And then it no longer matters what the irresistible arguments will be: in any case they presuppose that a person yields before the inevitable, whether it is a force from which there is no escape or an obviousness that cannot be evaded. The Kingdom, of course, is both force and obviousness. But it is a force one can walk away from, and an obviousness one can choose not to notice. God does not impose Himself, and the person is free. To the free, freedom; to the saved, paradise.

These words are addressed not only to those who are just setting out to follow Jesus, but also to the disciples themselves—and to us. Does the thought never “occur” to us as to which of us is the greatest? Or do we never feel the urge to “forbid” someone who thinks differently? Or to ask God to send fire from heaven upon our enemies, “as Elijah did”? Do we always know what spirit we are of? Many of us have not only “put a hand to the plough,” but have already ploughed half the field. And yet are we looking back again?

The apostles ask Jesus one of those questions whose answer was meant to flatter their pride. They evidently considered themselves special, “advanced,” particularly close to the Teacher, and therefore more important than other people. But Jesus’ answer proves completely unexpected, overturning all their assumptions and reducing every kind of vanity to nothing. It turns out that on the divine scale, what the world regards as small becomes great and what it regards as unimportant becomes important. The disciples looked for the answer among adults like themselves, people made wise by experience, whereas they simply needed to look at something entirely different. To enter the Kingdom of Heaven, it is useless to develop to the utmost those qualities that society values. Christ calls us to be “born from above,” becoming altogether different. It is astonishing that the image closest to us, showing what such a new person should be, is a helpless child who can simply be “taken and placed before Him.”

A child, a little one... this being is so beloved by the Lord. And if this child is made lowly not only by childhood but also by illness, then here is an angel in the flesh, reaching heights on earth utterly beyond our reach, while we stand looking up from below. Once, an eight-year-old child gravely ill with cancer said before an extremely difficult operation: “Don't be upset with me if I die.” Such manifold lowliness brings one close to God like nothing else. We have somehow grown accustomed to treating children's spiritual lives condescendingly. We say they should not fast or go to confession before a certain age. In most cases, that is probably right. But here is what the prophet Joel writes: “Yet even now, says the Lord, turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning. <...> Gather the people, call an assembly, invite the elders, gather the children and the nursing infants...” (Joel 2:12, 16). He says that children and nursing infants should take part even in penitential assemblies—not, of course, to torment their flesh, but so that in the mirror of their transparent souls the Lord may see our love for Him.

Another child, a perfectly healthy four-year-old, once told this story of her own invention: “Once there was a girl. And she was killed. Then she was killed again. Then they took her to the hospital, and the doctors gave her injections, but they didn't cure her. Then they took her to Christos (that's how she says it for now), and He cured her. And she began to dance. The end of the story is coming soon.” This child does not yet know that a doctor may fail to cure someone, because in her four years she has had nothing worse than the flu. Yet somehow she has already reached the understanding that what is impossible for man is possible for God (cf. Matt. 19:26 or Mark 10:27). We adults find this enormously difficult to understand, but for children it is what they live by, something that seems to come “of itself,” simply through receiving the Holy Mysteries of Christ and by other paths unknown to us. That is precisely why we hear: “Out of the mouths of babes and nursing infants You have established praise, because of Your enemies, to silence the enemy and the avenger” (Ps. 8:2). For their mouths, though they do not yet know the law, are full of grace. And grace triumphs over the law (cf. “mercy triumphs over judgment,” James 2:13).

Continuing to reveal the essence of the way of the Cross that He offers, the Lord speaks to us today about self-abasement. The Evangelist reports that a thought arose among the disciples following Christ as to which of them might be the greatest. A very human thought, unfortunately not foreign to many who follow Him in every age. We need to experience God's love; we need to feel that God accepts us. Christ responds to this need by saying that He came to seek and to save the lost.

A lost person still has to rise from the dead and be cleansed of many sins. We often imagine that God lies in wait for us as we clumsily scramble along this path, mildly irritated by our slowness. In fact, He came into this world to accept us as we are and lead us after Him along the path of holiness. Every person must experience all this personally; life is impossible without it.

Yet under the influence of sin, the human soul distorts this need to experience God's love, turning it into what psychology calls positive self-esteem. We depend on how we assess ourselves and how those around us assess us, and this is expressed precisely in the thought that “arose” among the disciples: which of them might be the greatest. We do not know exactly whether they were asking who was closest to the Teacher, who was more righteous, more intelligent, or simply more resilient... Unlike Christ's disciples, we ourselves generally measure one another by more primitive things, even by money.

What matters is how Jesus answers the disciples. First, He does not reject the very idea of greatness, so dear to people, but offers a different scale by which to “measure oneself.” Above all, this means not striving after one's own greatness but, counting oneself last, being zealous for other people; and because He Himself humbled Himself utterly to save us, this scale becomes a scale of likeness to God. Second, as in everything Jesus says, for example about forgiveness, He proposes that, in order to experience God's acceptance of us, we ourselves should accept others, especially the weakest and least significant. Therefore His words about those who receive a child and thereby receive the One who sent Him become a direct and exact answer to the disciples' thoughts about greatness.