NOTES for Mat 8:28-9:1

Perhaps the hardest thing in today's reading is demons. Many people do not know what they are, many shift their own guilt onto them, and others see only them everywhere. How should we relate to this extremely difficult concept in Scripture? After all, even in the Lord's Prayer we say, repeating after Jesus: "...deliver us from the evil one." This means that understanding what this power is and recognizing its existence is a necessary condition for praying the Our Father consciously.

The first and main thing to understand here is this: demons, whatever mental form we give them, are creatures, just as we are. In this sense they are on the same ontological level as we are, or even lower, for we are in some measure joined to God and to His true being. Therefore, in any case, they are not stronger than we are, and there is no need to fear them. On the contrary, they fear God and in fact are subject to Him. This is shown to us very clearly today in the story with the Gergesenes: we see how obediently they are ready to come out when they see the true power of Christ. The apostle James says this exactly: even the demons believe, and tremble (James 2:19).

The second important observation, and it is visible from today's reading, is that they recognize God faster than ordinary people do. Why? This is very easy to understand: they are the ones who resist Him, and for that very reason they know Him well. So one should not simply recoil from the mentally ill, fearing them as if they were lepers; at times one must listen very carefully to what they say, because amid delirium one can discern flashes of meaning that are inaccessible to us.

And finally, when we are afraid and it feels as if demons are tempting us, we must call upon Christ in all simplicity, and that alone will be enough for them to fall silent, because they fear Him greatly. Better still, do not let go of the hem of His garment at all. Then, when asked whether we know demons, we will be able to answer with a clear conscience: no, we are not good with demons.

The incident described by the evangelists, when the residents of an entire city asked the Lord Jesus Christ to leave because His presence frightened them and interfered with their occupations, that is, their "business," could seem exotic. Of course, this is the reaction of pagans, and it is hard to expect anything else from them...

But in essence almost every person experiences something similar at certain moments. Fortunately, we do not always behave as the Gergesenes did, but temptations of this kind hardly pass anyone by. It must be said that history developed in such a way that, after the 3rd century A.D., almost no one dared openly ask the Lord Jesus to leave.

Instead, according to the "pattern" described by the evangelists, "nominal" or "three-time" Christianity is born in us. That is when a person meets God three times: at his baptism, wedding, and funeral service. It is important to keep in mind that nominalism is only secondarily a social and religious phenomenon that afflicts society. First of all, it afflicts the individual person, and the evangelists' account helps us see this not so much in others as in ourselves.

The demon-possessed men did not live in burial caves by chance, for submission to the will of dark powers is already a path toward spiritual death. Therefore the casting out of demons from the two unfortunate Gergesenes meant not only the healing of specific people, and not even only the triumph of God's power over the powers of darkness. It was another foreshadowing of Christ's coming victory over death.

It would be too simple to see in the fear of the local residents, shaken by the circumstances that accompanied the casting out of the demons, only displeasure at the death of the pigs and therefore at material loss. No, the people of the Gergesene region sense that the One standing before them is able to change their whole life. But this is exactly what they do not want, because familiar life is so understandable.

So often we too, indignant at evil that has become familiar, do not want to notice that we ourselves have grown together with it so completely that if someone tries to free us from it, we become uneasy. But if we choose Christ, we must be ready to accept what he brings us. Even if, as a result, we lose something like a herd of pigs.

It is no accident that there are so many stories of healing in the Gospel: every healing is a witness to the Kingdom. But, as can be seen, not everyone understands the essence of what is happening, even when everything happens right before his eyes. Hence the displeasure of the Pharisees around Jesus: Jesus speaks of the forgiveness of sins, and who can forgive a person's sins except God?

Yet even from the point of view of the ideas generally accepted in those days, the situation in this regard was not so unambiguous. The fact is that the question of a person's forgiveness of sins was connected above all with the day of Judgment and the day of the Messiah's coming, which in the Judaism of the Gospel era coincided. And the Messiah took a certain, though not fully defined, part in God's judgment, testifying for or against the accused; His testimony could become decisive. Then, depending on the outcome of the Judgment, a person received, or did not receive, the right to enter the messianic Kingdom.

Jesus, however, somewhat corrects these familiar ideas: He speaks of the Kingdom entering the world, giving everyone the opportunity to begin with a clean slate. He speaks of the forgiveness of sins with reference not to the Judgment, nor even to the judgments a person may pass through before the day of the final Judgment. He speaks of the fact that the sins of everyone who touches the Kingdom and shares in its life are forgiven precisely because that person begins a new life in the Kingdom, leaving the old one behind. And every healing is an act of faith, faith as trust in God and in the One who brought the Kingdom into the world. That is why Jesus says to the healed man: "...your sins are forgiven."

For the Pharisees, as can be seen, what is happening has no relation to the Kingdom. At best they see simply a miracle, an action of God which by itself gives the One through whom it is performed no right to substitute Himself for God, or His own determinations for God's judgment. Here passes the boundary between the world and the Kingdom, the very boundary that is so clearly visible from the Kingdom and often completely invisible from the world.

Sometimes there is no strength to begin some task, no strength to reassess one's position - civic, religious, whatever it may be - and simply no strength to get up. There is no strength because we have spent it on something or because an illness torments us; it does not matter. Sin or sickness - does it matter? Perhaps sin, perhaps sickness. Often no line can be drawn between them.

We very much want this, we very much want clarity, but we do not have it - and we do not need it, for there is only good and evil, and only between them is a strict demarcation line needed. But there is no need to classify either one or the other. We will be told: we do not know whom to go to - a doctor or a priest. It is worth going to both, but it is important to remember: we are going to God so that He may heal us.

Today people speak much about cooperation between the priest and the psychologist. And this is good: the time of divergence between types of activity has passed, since a fundamental limit has been reached, and before us is a time when convergence slowly begins again. This will enrich everyone, for in every phenomenon of the visible world there is the imprint of the Creator - but it is revealed from different angles. To see here not a "flat" picture, but a "three-dimensional" one, costs great labor - but this labor is blessed

Today the evangelist Matthew tells us about the healing of the paralytic, which Mark and Luke also mention. Its essential feature, apparently, is the words that the Lord Jesus Christ says at that moment: "Take heart, child! Your sins are forgiven you." These words provoked sharp rejection from the scribes, but by the miracle itself the Lord confirmed His authority to forgive sins. For us, what matters most is the connection between suffering and sin.

The many healings performed by the Lord Jesus Christ by no means always imply that diseases and sufferings are caused by the person's own sins. It is enough to recall the healing of the man born blind. But for the paralytic, it is precisely God's forgiveness that becomes the source of healing. This means that the cause of his suffering is sin. This is important because, when we come into contact with suffering, we experience its irrationality and meaninglessness very painfully, and we rarely manage to remain on the boundary between bewilderment and complaint. Seeking an explanation, a person almost inevitably asks the question, "Why does God allow this?" But as we see, God did not create death and suffering, and it is not Him but ourselves whom we should blame for them.

In essence, it is separation from God as a result of sin that makes us subject to death. Therefore forgiveness becomes for us the gift of freedom and the restoration of what was lost. The Fathers of the Church constantly remind us of this.

Christ can heal physical illness, and He has already healed many sick people, but this time He chooses to begin with the forgiveness of sins. This is the main thing needed not only by this particular paralytic, but by everyone who comes to Christ. To this day many who come to church for healing receive it, yet even then we are so reluctant to admit that our most serious illness remains our habitual, long-standing sin. Christ does not refuse at all to heal bodily illnesses, yet already in the healing of the paralytic He clearly showed what should follow what.

Meanwhile, by publicly declaring the forgiveness of sins, Christ truly bore witness to Himself as God. The Pharisees do not accept the works Christ performs and are ready to accuse Him of blasphemy, but they are right that no one except God can forgive sins. From this point on, the crack grows between the educated scribes, who do not want to entrust themselves to Christ, and the simple people, who understand the subtleties of the law less well and often do not understand who Jesus is, but are drawn to Him.

For the scribes, distrust will cancel out their knowledge; for simple people, trust will fill in theoretical gaps and lead to a deeper understanding of the meaning of revelation.

Today's reading brings us back once more to the main theme of all four Gospels: the theme of the Kingdom. Before us are two stories: the stilling of the storm (vv. 23-27) and the healing of the possessed, the demon-possessed (vv. 28-34). The events appear very different, since in one case Jesus is dealing with a force of nature, and in the other with people and dark powers. But in essence, in both cases the point is how the Kingdom of God, which Jesus bears in Himself, transforms the world around Him.

To those around Him it appears that He possesses some superhuman abilities or some special powers given Him by God, and that for this reason He can work miracles that no one else can work (v. 27). But in fact the issue is not powers or abilities. The world around Him is being transformed; that is why the storm grows calm and the demons cannot endure it and run away (v. 32). No power, not even the power of God, affects the world in this way: it can, of course, change many things in it, but in this case the point is no longer simply change, but complete transformation, so that the very laws of creation change. According to the laws of the untransformed world, a storm cannot grow calm without a cause. Strictly speaking, in that world it does not grow calm, but in the Kingdom there is no storm; and then everything depends on which reality the person in the midst of the storm becomes a participant in: the reality of the fallen world or the reality of the Kingdom. And here everything is determined only by faith, by trust in the One who brought this Kingdom into the world (v. 26).

But if there is no faith, even manifestations of the Kingdom by themselves will not replace it. This was the case with the Gergesene demoniacs: the manifestation of the Kingdom was plain, and the demons, naturally unable to endure it, felt this very quickly (v. 29). But with the people everything turned out to be less simple. It was hard not to believe the eyewitnesses' story (v. 33), but this story clearly made a paradoxical impression on the local residents: they asked Jesus to leave them in peace (v. 34). And the point was hardly that they felt sorry about the lost herd.

Of course, the inhabitants of those places were pagans and hardly thought much about the Messiah or the Kingdom. But they did understand one thing: Someone had entered their life and had brought in Something with which living as before would become impossible. If He remained among them, their whole life would change radically. And this, evidently, they did not want.

Here Jesus encountered the chief obstacle on His path: people's unwillingness to receive the Kingdom that He offers them. And then He leaves. For if a person refuses the Kingdom, the Savior has nothing more to give him.