NOTES for Isa 41:13-20; Mat 11:11-15

The prophets of Israel speak much about the Messiah and the messianic Kingdom. Isaiah of Babylon was no exception: in his writings the Messiah and the Kingdom appear with a clarity found nowhere else in the Old Testament. Yet he also uses entirely traditional imagery, rooted in the pre-exilic period and connected with traditional ideas about the messianic Kingdom. One such image was the desert transformed by God's breath and blossoming under its influence.

This is how Isaiah sees the Kingdom (verses 17–20). It is open to all who seek living water in the desert of the fallen world (verse 17). Yet this Kingdom becomes a reality only within the history of God's people, as that history's natural and logical fulfilment (verses 13–16). Here is the answer to the question the prophet repeatedly asked himself and God: what are God's people? What is the meaning of their history? Is it like the history of any other people? If not, how does it differ?

The answer came from God: God's people are not like others. But not in the sense of some special historical destiny. What distinguishes God's people, their uniqueness, is not within history but above it. God's people are to receive the promised Messiah and lay the foundation of the Kingdom. This is both their principal task as God's people and the distinctive character of their historical path.

This distinctive character does not lie in some unique historical task God assigns to His people. It lies beyond history, where God's eternity touches history and enters it. To become the place where God enters history and meets humanity: this is the Jewish people's principal task. In the process of fulfilling it, they become God's people. For its sake they receive from God a new, a second historical life: their history cannot end until this principal task has been accomplished. It can be fully accomplished only on the day of the Messiah's coming and the Kingdom's manifestation.

From the beginning, God intended the world to be His Kingdom. It must become that Kingdom again: its Creator will accept nothing less. And the Messiah and God's people are to be His helpers in accomplishing this task. Then there will be hope for the future and meaning in history, both for the Jewish people and for all humanity. And, most importantly, for every individual—at least for the person seeking the Kingdom.

How pleasant it is to read these words. Certainly, this is how you see it: a big and good God, as a dad, holds my hand and says... But how's that – holds my hand? Does God have the hand? Indeed God is not as a man, He is invisible and inconceivable, and one can’t feel Him: God is Spirit, as the evangelist John shows it. It is thus such an image. But to whom then are these words addressed? Indeed, the "right hand" can also be an image. Probably, such is the case; because the entire context is that God here through the prophet Isaiah addresses His people. But what is the "right hand" for all the people? Or who is? Apparently, it is the one who governs, the king. Well then these words mean that God promises His real King, the One, Who will always be with Him hand in hand. It is a prediction about the Messiah.

We know that this prediction is fulfilled, and the King, the Son of Man came, did everything according to God's will, rose to the Father and stayed with us at the same time. And it means that near to us is the One, Who has the hand, with which He can hold each of us by hand.

These lines say a great deal about the astonishing humility of John the Baptist. Though he was the greatest prophet, a great ascetic, and a teacher respected by all, he saw himself only as the forerunner of the One who was to come after him. Many took him for the Christ, saw in him the Savior for whom the Jews had waited for long centuries. He may have been offered certain benefits and honors due to the Messiah. And he rejects all this, assigning himself the modest role of the one who prepares the way for Jesus.

Elsewhere John says that the time has come for him to "decrease." His words are alien to false humility; he does not belittle himself, but on the contrary soberly accounts for who he is. The question of what your calling is, what your role in this world is, is very difficult and painful for many. The life of John the Baptist helps us believe that everyone is called to recognize and accept his mission. To live the life that would truly become a preparation of the Lord's way.

We may already have grown used to the idea that everything in the world depends on God. And this is truly so: the Lord Himself tells us that all the hairs of our head are numbered, and not one of them will fall without His will (Matt. 10:29-31).

But here, as often happens in Christianity, there is a paradox: we are free. God does not force us to be dependent on Him. One may say that He is "unable" to prevent us from going toward what we very strongly want. Each of us is the prodigal son, and He is the Father who, with immense patience, love, and pain, allows His children to make mistakes (see Luke 15:11-32). And we may be aware as much as we like that God holds everything in His hand, that He sees everything, that everything depends on Him, but at times this cannot move our stubborn will even a single step...

Yet the Lord still waits for this step from us, even if it is a timid one. We can make the effort of which Christ speaks, we can submit to God (James 4:6-7), we can overcome our pride, for God has promised to give us strength for this. And every time we take this step toward Him, and not toward the place where our desires, often opposed to God, lead us, we win, solely by God's power, a small victory that is nevertheless the most important one in life.

Our first reaction to these words will be ambiguous. How can this happen in Heaven? We just don’t understand Jesus; He puts entirely a different accent on these words. We underline the words “violence” and “violent” when we read today’s text. In that the miracle of the New Testament, now violence is not fruitless as before, when access to God was closed by our sins, the way is open now, and if we follow it, then we will reach the Kingdom. The most important – to redeem us from sin slavery, and this redemption accomplished by Christ is been giving to us freely. But we have to do something, we have to make some efforts in order to receive it. Which effort? The mention of John the Baptist preaching about repentance here s isn’t fortuitous. This effort is expected from us also –effort in repentance, in our turn from sin to God, and then the Kingdom of Heaven as a little grain will be sown by God in our heart and will begin to grow.

Two aspects stand out in the prophecy of Second Isaiah that we read today. The Lord says of Himself that He is the cause of all things: “I, the Lord, am the first, and with the last I am the same.” Cyrus, the Persian king, the “man of righteousness” as the prophet calls him, becomes a prefiguration of the Messiah and Deliverer because he accomplishes what God has determined. And to His people, who believe in the Deliverer, the Holy One of Israel, God says, “Do not fear, for I am with you.” God's people may be small and weak (“you worm Jacob, you few men of Israel”), but strength does not lie in this. “I am with you,” says the Lord, “I will help you.” This is the only truly reliable support and protection.

We cannot help reflecting on another dimension of the sacred text, following the apostle Paul's reflections in chapters 10–11 of the Epistle to the Romans. These prophetic words are spoken at a time when Israel is returning from dispersion to the Promised Land and trying to settle there again. This meets fierce opposition from the peoples who had inhabited Palestine while Israel was in exile and dispersion. “This is our land; we have lived in Palestine for a long time...” they said. With zeal worthy of a better cause, these peoples resisted by every means the resettlement of Jerusalem and Judea.

Then, at the end of the fifth century BC, the Lord said to Israel concerning them: “Behold, all who are incensed against you shall be put to shame and confounded; those who contend with you shall be as nothing and shall perish... those who war against you shall be as nothing at all.” Could this be why those who oppose Israel's existence fail even in our day?

Traditionally, it is held that John did not doubt Jesus' messianic calling and sent his doubting disciples to Him so that they could see for themselves. Other interpreters allow that John himself may have doubted it. Be that as it may, it is hardly accidental that he sent two of his disciples to Jesus: they were to become witnesses to Christ's words, and under Jewish law there had to be at least two witnesses. And then they heard an answer that still puzzles some readers of the Gospel: why did Christ say neither yes nor no? Why instead did He need to speak a long phrase listing His works?

Apparently, He answered this way so as not to confuse ahead of time those who were not yet ready to hear a direct confirmation. But the verbal message that Jesus asks them to convey to John contained a list of the signs of the Messiah's coming that had been foretold in the Old Testament, and this means that Jesus was quite definitely confirming that He is the very One who was to come.

Christ gives John a high evaluation. But next to it stands the indication that the least in the Kingdom of Heaven will be greater than John. Such a definition may sound like belittlement. But anyone who, confident of his own salvation, decides on that basis to exalt himself above John will be deeply mistaken. Those who enter the Kingdom of Heaven transformed will surpass John as he was on earth. But he himself in the Kingdom of Heaven will surpass himself as he was in the earthly world.

There is a note of bitterness in Christ's words about John the Baptist and the way people received his preaching. The Lord reproaches the people: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” Drawn by the prophet's unusual personality, people come to him but do not accept the substance of what he was sent to proclaim. The Evangelist John also records these words of the Lord Jesus about John, likewise addressed to the people: “He was a lamp that burned and shone, and you were willing for a short time to rejoice in his light” (John 5:35).

The scale of what we come to God for and of what He calls us to sometimes differs strikingly. In Christ's words today, we hear that this gap is tragic for God. God acts, sends prophets, comes Himself and accepts the Cross for our salvation, so that we may share with Him the fullness of His eternal life. Yet we think only of being healthy and remember Him only when life goes wrong.

And the effort by which the Kingdom of Heaven is taken from the days of John until now, of which Christ speaks today, is first and foremost the effort to rise above the petty scale of our human daily concerns. Everything was told to us up to John the Baptist, and now the choice is ours: to live in our little human world, bounded by our brief lifespan, or to become part of the immense work of salvation that God is accomplishing in the world.

In the immediate historical context, Jesus' words about John are significant insofar as in those days there were many people who considered John the Messiah. In any case, he corresponded much more closely to widespread popular ideas about what the Messiah should be than Jesus did. And in the days when the Gospel texts were taking shape, Palestine had fairly numerous communities of followers of John the Baptist who considered their teacher the Messiah. Against this background, the story of the disciples sent by John to Jesus in order to ask Him one more question about His messiahship was important as John himself bearing witness that he made no claim to any messiahship.

But the matter, of course, is not only history. The Savior's words are important above all because, on the one hand, He gives a brief and concise characterization of John himself and, on the other, He evaluates quite harshly the people who surrounded both John and Himself. According to the Savior, John's witness still belongs to the previous era, the pre-Christian era, when there was still no question of the Kingdom entering the world. But John, more vividly than anyone else, bore witness to the Messiah's imminent coming, while also understanding what needed to be done in order to enter the Kingdom. Of course, in the Kingdom there is a different measure of fullness, and therefore everyone who belongs to the Kingdom is greater than John, who still belongs to the untransformed world.

But to enter the Kingdom, effort is necessary; the Kingdom is "taken by force," and "those who use force seize it." And many of those who first listened to John and then to Jesus did not want to make such efforts. They simply felt good near John, and then near Jesus.

Fire in the Bible is a symbol of purification, sacrifice, and sanctification, a symbol of what can completely change a person's very nature by transfiguring and sanctifying it. Yet many thought the fire had been given to them only so they could warm themselves and rest in its warmth. The point here is not that this is bad, but that when fire is used this way a person does not change at all: he feels good for a while, but the fundamental problems that poison his life and keep him from sharing in the Kingdom do not disappear. And then all the efforts of those who carry fire into the world and bear witness to it prove fruitless. One may admire Jesus' words and Jesus Himself as much as one likes, but if the admirer still remains outside the Kingdom, one can say that all his admiration was useless. The Kingdom with its life passed him by, and admiration, even sincere admiration, does not save.

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.

Today the Lord speaks about Old Testament prophecy: all the stories, prophecies, and promises about the Kingdom of God continued until John; now the time of their fulfillment begins. Now the Kingdom is real in Christ, accessible to every person who believes in Him and follows Him.

His surprised disciples were accustomed to speaking of the Kingdom as something expected, something that does not yet exist. Strangely enough, we too often speak of the Kingdom of Heaven, of life with God, as a kind of posthumous reality, or as something that must be revealed in the age to come, after the Second Coming. But Christ says that the Kingdom has already been opened - and those who are ready to make some effort can enter it.