NOTES for Luk 12:35-59

The coming of the Kingdom of God is a mystery perhaps no less profound than the mystery of the Kingdom itself. The Lord therefore calls His disciples to keep watch and not to miss or sleep through the coming of the Kingdom into their lives. This is probably about more than constant readiness for death or for Christ’s second coming. Christ also enters human life when a person least suspects it: at any moment, we may find ourselves facing a choice vital to our life or a decisive encounter. Woe to the person who fails to notice Christ at the moment when that person is called to take part in bringing about God’s Kingdom. It is not that God will take offense and punish that person, but that, by passing by this Kingdom, the person will pass by the most important event and the most important encounter of their life. Therefore, as the final Encounter approaches, the Lord calls people not to miss His presence already here, on the way toward the triumph of God’s Kingdom.

Today's reading touches on another theme, one very important for understanding what life in the Kingdom is. But the meaning of what Jesus says becomes clear only in the context of the situation of that transitional era which began with the coming of the Savior and in which we live. It could be called the era of the advancing Kingdom, and it will be completed by Jesus' return. But since we do not know the exact timing of this return, readiness is required always, every day and every hour.

In fact, this is the meaning of the parables Jesus tells (vv. 36-48). When the Gospel speaks about the nearness of the Kingdom, what is meant is not the date of Christ's second coming, but the fact that the Kingdom has already entered the world, that its presence for us today is no longer future but present; and if we notice nothing of the sort, it is only because we do not want to notice. Of course, sometimes for those to whom God entrusts ministries connected with the Kingdom, the apparent remoteness of the time when the process will be completed has a relaxing effect, like the effect produced on the unrestrained servant in the parable by the thought that the master was far away (v. 45).

It is not surprising that those who knew everything and, despite everything, allowed themselves to relax are called to a more serious account than those who knew less (vv. 47-48). What is interesting is something else. In the world there are those who know more and those who know less, but, as one can see, there are none who know nothing. It is no accident that Jesus compares the signs of the advancing Kingdom to the signs by which people in those days recognized a coming change in the weather: they were just as obvious and just as understandable to everyone, so that it was simply impossible not to notice them at all and understand nothing (vv. 54-57).

That is why the coming of the Kingdom divides people, and the division, as one can see, does not run along any national, class, or religious border, but across all borders, separating those who accept the Kingdom from those who reject it, people sometimes living not only in one country and one city, but even in one house (vv. 51-53). And this happens not because God needs divisions, but because the Kingdom is an absolute reality; it is impossible to enter it partly or halfway, and even entering it "almost completely" will not work: one enters the Kingdom either to the end and without looking back, or one does not enter at all. That is why in the Church, according to the word of the Apostle Paul, there can be "neither Greek nor Jew": if the Church remains the Kingdom and does not turn into a religious organization, one among many, then only one division remains relevant for it: between those who accept the Kingdom and those who reject it. All other divisions are conditional and relative; this one is absolute, as absolute as the division between eternal life and eternal death can be.

All of Jesus' earthly preaching speaks of the approaching Kingdom. And He gives very much attention to our readiness to enter it. The coming of this Kingdom includes judgment and division, because in it one cannot be lukewarm and cannot serve two masters. And while we are on the way to it, we have an opportunity, perhaps the last one, to make peace with the one who will accuse us at the judgment. It may be our conscience, it may be people whom we have wronged, and it may also be the Lord Himself, as in the parable of the Last Judgment (Matt. 25). And the more the sprout of Christ's Kingdom grows in our hearts, the sooner we need to run to make peace with our adversaries, so that we come to judgment with them already as friends.

The call to keep watch is repeated very often in the Gospel. Among other reasons, because always being on alert, always remembering why and how we live, is unbearable labor. It is unbearable because we live in time, but we must keep watch in expectation of eternity.

Having met God, we are so blinded by Him that at first such frequent reminders of our changeability seem ridiculous to us. But time passes, and it becomes harder and harder to preserve that inner tension of the first days of faith. Like the first Christians, we suddenly understand that we are waiting impatiently for the Second Coming, but no longer for a day or two; we are waiting ten or twenty years, and who knows how many more decades of difficult and frightening life will be needed before we wait for Him. And He keeps saying: "Keep watch, do not relax, be ready. Above all, be ready."

How hard it is to be ready. Every day to give an account to oneself that one must wait for Him to come, and not for something else. How much one would like to put things in order once and for all. But even if one stops moving and sits absolutely still, there will be no disorder, but one will become covered with dust. And day after day, in expectation of Christ's coming, one will still have to put things in order, wipe off the dust, wash the floors, and wait until He comes.

In the different Gospels much is said about the need to be ready for action, whether witness to Christ or meeting Him. Many of the Savior's parables speak about this. The words about girded loins and a burning lamp return us to the same theme. Jesus is clearly speaking about readiness for action, for making one's life truly Christian. A belt, especially a warrior's belt, said a great deal about its owner in antiquity, and in the army it was generally a mark of distinction, replacing epaulettes.

An officer who removed his belt and handed it to his superior was in effect submitting a request for resignation. And before a campaign everyone in the army had to gird himself, first of all so that everyone could see his military rank. But in ordinary civilian life too, taking off one's belt meant relaxing and even becoming unrestrained. Without a belt it was hard to imagine a long journey: on the belt one usually carried a water skin, a special small pouch for money and necessary papers, and small but necessary travel items such as a fire steel.

Therefore to gird oneself usually meant to prepare for a road, most likely a long road. But the Savior clearly has in mind not only this outward side of the image. He also speaks of the inner collectedness that is reached through consistent keeping of the commandments and following the inner Torah. Such following forms in a person the spiritual core necessary for full Christian life.

The image of the lamp is just as multivalent, indeed even more so: in the same Sermon on the Mount it means both witness, which cannot and need not be hidden, and a person's spiritual sight, the image of the eye as the lamp that illumines the human body. Of course, there can be no purity of sight if there is no spiritual core, which is reached by following the inner Torah. But this purity will remain only a possibility if a person is not aware of the inner wholeness he has managed to reach and the measure of its fullness.

If awareness is present, then a person's body is bright: such a person is not mistaken about himself, being aware of his inner life and of every intention born in his heart. Such a person knows who he is and what he can do, and what he cannot do and therefore had better not undertake. Yet awareness is also necessary for full witness. Christian witness cannot be theoretical; only a person who has experienced what he speaks about can be a witness, and such experience can only be the experience of communion with Christ and life in the Kingdom.

Experience of this kind cannot be acquired without inner wholeness and conscious life: even if some meeting occurs or an experience of spiritual reality, or even of the reality of the Kingdom, takes place, without inner wholeness and awareness a person will not be able to retain, remember, or understand what he has experienced. That is why the Savior draws His listeners' attention to girded loins and to the lamp: without them not only witness, but the very path of the Kingdom is impossible. And therefore being His disciple is impossible.

The Savior compares the position of God's servants in the people of God with the position of a slave-steward. Today it seems strange to us to entrust care of a house and servants to a slave. But in antiquity such a practice was quite widespread: everything depended only on the measure of the master's trust in one or another slave.

Such a situation was especially widespread where, as in Israel and later in Judea, slavery was domestic, so that slaves lived in the house practically as junior members of the family. If the master of the house placed one of such slaves in the position of steward during his absence, this slave, of course, by no means ceased to be a slave, but the circle of his duties, and accordingly his rights in the house, expanded significantly, coming close to the duties and rights of the master.

But one could speak of the duties and rights of such a steward only in relation to the other household slaves and servants, who owed him formal obedience. In relation to the master, however, he remained a slave, bound to him by those partly formal and partly personal relations that usually connected master and slave in a situation of patriarchal slavery. And only on the stability of these relations, on the master's favor, did the slave's position in the house depend: whether he would remain steward or not, and how the master would deal with him on his return. A slave, in himself, of course, had no rights and could have none, and woe to the slave who forgot this. These are the very relations Jesus gives as an example, as an earthly analogue of the relations of the Kingdom.

In a certain sense, in the Kingdom all are without rights except the King who brought this Kingdom into the world, since no one has deserved it and no one can enter it by right. And when the Kingdom is projected into our still untransformed world, it often turns out that a servant of God receives power over people, since the laws of the untransformed world presuppose such power. For God acts in our world so that His action proceeds as if from within, without blowing up the world or destroying it.

And here everything depends on whether such a servant feels himself in the position of a slave to whom the true Master has entrusted temporary management of His house, or imagines himself a full-rights manager whose rights are not conditioned by a concrete situation of service, but belong to him from the beginning by virtue of some special status or special position in the Kingdom. The issue here is not that the true Master will be offended and want to punish the usurper, but that any attempts at self-assertion in one's own independence separate the one who tries to do this from the Kingdom. And therefore from the One who brought the Kingdom into the world.

We constantly put off repentance until the last moment. Right now one can still sin, but on such and such a day I will go to confession and repent there; or when I am dying, then I will repent; or in general, when the Lord asks me at the Judgment, then I will repent!

We deceive God. After all, we know that He is with us all the time, that He sees us all the time. We know that we must always strive to imitate Him, not out of fear of punishment, but because with our sins we drive nails into His palms. And we can ask forgiveness right away, so that it will not seem to us that we can "store up" sins and then dump them on God. God carries our burden on Himself all the time, so that it will not be too heavy to bear.

But we can help Him carry at least a small corner of the Cross, for His Cross is made up of our crosses.

A person gets used to everything. To good things quickly, to bad things more slowly, but still gets used to them. That is why the apostle Paul gives so much attention to how those who have acknowledged their liberation from sin will live their life.

Our salvation is accomplished in eternity, but we receive it in time. It is easy to get used to the astonishing gift of freedom from sin and life in grace, and just as easy to return to existence under the old laws. The Gospel reminds us how repulsive life is for the one who "knew, but forgot" the price at which our life was paid for. The issue is not that we must fear punishment for returning to sin. Our task is never to get used to the fact that our life and grace were paid for by the price of Christ's blood.

Do we really believe that Jesus will come again? And if we do, are we waiting Him? And if yes, how are we waiting him: with a merry impatience (fast, Fast!), or with fear (oops, only not now!).

What do we have more in us: faith in Jesus and the desire to meet Him or the fear of His justice and pressing forward to avoid His glance?

The answer to this question depends on the way we regard our preparation to His advent. It is clear that we cannot be totally ready, and that is why it is said that He will come "as a thief, at night", and on the other hand He exactly delays His advent so that we could get ready (see 2 Peter 3:9). And if we are afraid of this advent, if Jesus is an austere Judge for us, then we shall repeat all the time consciously or unconsciously: "no, don't, I am not yet ready" - and not hurry up to be ready. But if His glance is for us a glance of love, if our heart looks for a meeting with Him, then we shall wait every day for His advent, crying internally: "Maranatha! The Lord is coming!”

Do we really believe that Jesus will come again? And if we do, are we waiting Him? And if yes, how are we waiting him: with a merry impatience (fast, Fast!), or with fear (oops, only not now!).

What do we have more in us: faith in Jesus and the desire to meet Him or the fear of His justice and pressing forward to avoid His glance?

The answer to this question depends on the way we regard our preparation to His advent. It is clear that we cannot be totally ready, and that is why it is said that He will come "as a thief, at night", and on the other hand He exactly delays His advent so that we could get ready (see 2 Peter 3:9). And if we are afraid of this advent, if Jesus is an austere Judge for us, then we shall repeat all the time consciously or unconsciously: "no, don't, I am not yet ready" - and not hurry up to be ready. But if His glance is for us a glance of love, if our heart looks for a meeting with Him, then we shall wait every day for His advent, crying internally: "Maranatha! The Lord is coming!”

For us, as for the disciples of Jesus who heard the terrible words of today's reading, it is hard to accept such a prospect. They were waiting for a Messiah who would come as a liberator and bring triumph to Israel. The Romans would fall, Israel would be free, and the world at last would be wonderful and good. But Jesus, by His perfection, by the fact that He is the Truth, became a stumbling stone for everyone and for each person. His very presence becomes a cause of division. No one remains on the sidelines; everyone has to decide Who has come.

But even if one accepts Jesus as the Messiah, the division does not end there. Children and parents, brothers and sisters - all of us stand on different sides of Him; all of us see different things and try to consider what we ourselves have seen as the most important thing. Some see wrath, some mercy, some love, some light. Each considers it necessary to secure the primacy of his own view of God. This is how our damaged humanity shows itself when it comes into contact with His perfection. The apostles faced this, and it continues to this day. On the other hand, we have already been warned of the danger. And the one who is warned is armed: he can keep himself from becoming a conduit of division.

"I came to cast fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!" These words from today's Gospel reading can be very hard to understand and accept for people accustomed to finding in their religiosity only comfort in life's sorrows, peace, and rest. But the world of church hymns pleasant to the heart, the world of vigil lamps, candles, and icons, is not the whole of faith. Faith is continuous struggle, an unending battle against sin.

We often get used to the fact that sin is present in our lives and stop noticing it. But there is also a special state, when the heart burns. Then every sin, even the smallest, touches the soul like a burned wound. It is the state when grace descends and you stand like Moses at the burning bush, and the Spirit of God scorches your face. It is the state when there is so much warmth in you that you simply cannot help sharing it. It is the state when not a single minute can be empty, because then the fire begins to consume you yourself. Do you remember the wonderful meeting on the road to Emmaus? "And they said to one another, Did not our heart burn within us while He spoke to us on the road and while He explained the Scriptures to us?" (Luke 24:32). This is the kind of fire the Lord is speaking to us about.

How polysemous are the evangelical images; cut from their context, they put out of countenance. Isn't in this same Gospel we read that the followers of Jesus wanted to make fire to come down from heaven, and Jesus prohibited them (see Luke 9:54-56)? It is then about another fire here, serving not to destroy, but to save people. May be it is about the fire of Pentecost (See Acts of the Apostles 2:3), or about the fire of purification (Is 4:4; Rev 3:18); or may be about the fire of faith in our hearts, of which mother Mary (Skobtsova) remarkably said: "Christianity is fire, if not, it does not exist ". Is this fire burning in us, are we hot or simply lukewarm (to see Rev 3:15-16)? As our heart burned when The Lord offered us the first meeting with Him (see Luke 24:32)! Haven't we cooled down, haven't we abandon our young love (see Rev 2:4)? It is indeed our responsibility to preserve this fire, which Jesus made come down on earth.

These words of Jesus about the division He brought into the world trouble some readers of the Gospel, especially today. Unity seems more appropriate to us now than division; we would like every division between people to disappear, and unity seems to us better than division by definition. And so it is when secondary matters are concerned. From the Gospel's perspective, as from the perspective of spiritual life in general, all our divisions—cultural, linguistic, racial, even religious—are essentially secondary and do not touch what matters most: our relationship with God and its dynamics. It is the dynamics of our relationships with God and with our neighbors that matter most; everything else is secondary. In this respect, people are divided into only two categories: those whose lives contain a relationship with God and the dynamics associated with it, and those whose lives do not.

A complete absence of relationship with God naturally means the complete destruction of the human personality, often followed by physical destruction as well. Yet one can also speak of this relationship being formed and strengthened, or of its gradual degradation and tendency toward total destruction. Ultimately, in the context and prospect of the Kingdom entering the world, the question must be one of striving toward the fullness of the Kingdom's life or of self-isolation: an attempt to shut oneself off, create one's own little enclosed world, and become its king, its sole master and ruler. The fallen world exists precisely in such isolation, and therefore the fundamental Christian division is the division between those who seek the life of the Kingdom and those who are content with the life of this world, the fallen world.

Here division really is absolutely inevitable. The two spiritual vectors just described are incompatible—not because some people are “spiritual” and others are not, but because some seek life and move into life, while others are content with a life-that-is-dying, a gradual descent into the death that reigns in the fallen world. These are not different views or convictions but opposite directions of spiritual movement, which inevitably divide those who choose them. People moving in different, mutually opposite directions cannot, after all, remain united.

The Savior's words, addressed to people who, at first glance, are believers, make us think about what we notice and what we do not. Or, more precisely, what we want to notice and what we do not want to notice. Both today and in every age there have been many people, even believers, who more or less sincerely assured both others and themselves that, when it comes to spiritual life, they are doing everything possible, but not everything, they say, is within their power; and if that is so, what more can be asked of them? You cannot do more than you are able. Meanwhile, Jesus, addressing the people listening to Him, people who demand from Him certain signs proving His messiahship, advises them to pay attention to themselves.

The principle is simple: if you truly knew yourselves, Jesus tells them, then you would recognize Me as well, and you would not need any signs. And in the condition in which the people listening to the Savior were found, no signs would have helped them. The issue here is not necessarily that the people listening to Jesus were deliberately deceiving Him or themselves. The issue may also have been that His hearers were not, in the spiritual sense, themselves.

They were not their true selves - just as we very often are not our true selves. We do not live the true life that God gives us, and therefore there is nowhere for the life of the Kingdom to enter us. Indeed, our natural life is a stream that comes from God and is bound up with His breath, with that breath of life which defines our existence as people created in the image of God. And if we do not allow the stream of our life to flow freely, if we drive it into frameworks we have created - the frameworks of theories, concepts, religions created by us - then there is nowhere for the breath of the Kingdom to enter.

To live the life of the Kingdom, one must first become oneself. Then very many things become obvious which, as long as our life does not flow freely, cannot be proved to us by any miracles. This is what Jesus says to those who demand from Him proofs of His messiahship: become yourselves, and you will see everything yourselves. No better proof can be devised: every proof is by definition external, while here the issue is what comes from within, what a person becomes convinced of himself. Then he no longer needs any miracles: everything is clear to him without them.

"Fear not, little flock!" That was also the title of an article by Fr. Georgy Chistyakov, which contains the following passage:

"If we analyze Sacred Scripture on the basis of what linguists call the 'frequency' of the use of a given word, we discover that almost 370 times in it there is the call: 'Fear not!' It is addressed now to Abraham, now to Jacob, now to Gideon in the Old Testament, now to the apostles and the myrrh-bearing women in the Gospel. This call is constant and insistent. God does not say: do not be afraid of this or that. He addresses us with extreme simplicity: do not be afraid. Never and of nothing! Of course, fear is embedded in our nature from the beginning - as are many other things. But some natural traits must be developed, while others must be outgrown. Overcome. God addresses precisely our animal memory: 'Fear not, little flock!' - and even more sharply: 'I send you as sheep among wolves.'" ("Ogonyok," 1999).

Everything here is said with the utmost precision and unity; it is hard to add anything. Still, one can recall these well-known words of the evangelist: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has torment. The one who fears is not perfected in love" (1 John 4:18). For us this is paradoxical; with us everything is usually the other way around: the more we love, the more we fear for the beloved. But that is only the beginning of love. After all, if the Lord is all-good, and the final "station" will be the state when "God is all in all," then what is there for us to fear? Only to endure and wait remains, and to endure and wait means to believe. But the fearful thing stands clearly before our eyes, while the angelic world is hidden. How can one not be afraid? How can one not want to eat, not want to sleep, and so on... It is impossible. And precisely because of this impossibility, this is something utterly true.

I will accept all, take all that You give,
Whatever You give, whatever You send me.
Let wild folly come to pass,
Let dark falsehood envelop me.
Grant that I may hear You amid the lie
And not confuse Your voice with another.
Help me, strengthen me, uphold me
With Your careful breath.
(Yuly Shreider)

"Let wild folly come to pass" - somehow these words really are frightening. Still, as another poet said, "We do not need to fear this darkness, and we will not pretend to be happy" (B. Okudzhava).