NOTES for Luk 11:52

When Christ says, "Woe to you...," one is tempted to say that these words are addressed, of course, to His immediate listeners. Yet always and at all times His words are addressed to us ourselves, and only to us. Of course, it is pleasant to think that the words about God's love for the world apply to us, while no one likes hearing rebuke. And nevertheless, inside each of us lives that very lawyer who is always trying to appropriate the "key of knowledge." In words we may recognize another person's right to a different view, to a different way of confessing God, to a style of thinking unlike our own, but somewhere inside there is always a quiet but distinct little voice speaking: "But I know that in reality they are all wrong. After all, only I know what is correct."

Let us leave the origin of this voice outside our reflection; one thing is clear: it belongs to the human person in general. Sometimes we like this voice so much that we give it the right to speak out loud. And this is much more terrible than any failure to fulfill the law. Because the whole essence of the New Testament, the whole essence of the Good News, is in the change from Law to Grace. The Lord offers us a completely different way to see the world and live in it: to love our brother to death, to the cross, to weep and rejoice together with him. Only in this way, and not through observing rites, fasts, and internal church rules, can we be with God, on one side with Him. And if we stand before God, are we not all wrong to the same degree? But fortunately, His love for us is determined neither by our righteousness nor by our understanding.

In the Gospel we do not find Jesus directing angry rebukes at thieves, extortioners, prostitutes, unfaithful wives, occupiers, and other sinners. The only group he rebukes is the scribes and Pharisees. What wrong had been done by these people who studied the law, taught others, and served as a kind of “conscience of the nation”? It seems to me that their gravest fault is expressed in verse 52. Called to lead people to the knowledge of God, they themselves passed by this most important thing in human life. If there is no knowledge of God, no amount of knowledge about God will have any meaning.

In several episodes, the evangelist records different sayings of the Lord about life in the coming Kingdom of God. Jesus did not preach in a vacuum—around Him were believers, some devout and some less so. Naturally, they all understood somewhat differently what God is and how one should live with Him. Yet in the sayings recorded by the evangelist one can trace two principal “types of religious life”: on one side, a person with a clear, simple eye, filled with light like the light of a lamp visible to everyone in darkness; on the other, the formal piety of people who remember when to wash their hands and when to pay the tithe, but sometimes forget—not out of malice, but solely because of the limitations of human memory—such things as forgiveness, mercy, and trust in God. Naturally, both kinds truly are “types,” distinct ideals of spiritual life; nevertheless, they depict quite clearly the two directions in which a disciple of Jesus Christ may set out.

Today's reading is devoted to the central theme of the controversy that unfolded between Jesus and part of the Pharisaic brotherhood - the theme of the Kingdom and religiosity. To understand the situation, it is important to keep in mind that this is not about some specific form of religiosity. The religiosity of the Pharisees, of course, had very concrete features characteristic of the era; but on the other hand, the Pharisaic mentality can be regarded as the quintessence of religiosity as such, and in a certain sense any other religiosity known in history (at least in the history of the Abrahamic religions) can be compared with Pharisaic religiosity as with a standard.

But the point is that Jesus was not the founder of a new religion. Christianity is not a religion, but life in the Kingdom, and the Savior is constantly trying to convey this thought to His interlocutors. It is no accident that He answers so fully the Pharisee who invited Him into his house, when the man asks about the ritual washing of hands before a meal (vv. 38-44). The question of ritual purity is the central question of any religion; it defines a person's belonging to a religious community and his religious standing.

Jesus, however, speaks of purity not as a religious condition, but as a spiritual one. The possibility of abiding in the Kingdom is determined not by a person's qualities, moral or religious, but by his relationships with God and with his neighbors. Religion and morality can cleanse a person outwardly; careful performance of religious duties makes a person religiously impeccable; he conforms to all the prescriptions of the Torah if it is understood only as religious legislation that has no relation to a person's inner life.

One can call this religious formalism, but that would still not be the whole truth, because the same Pharisees tried to fulfill the prescriptions of the Law not only formally; they were simply completely sure that, after carefully paying the tithe, they really were clean before God (v. 42). Jesus, however, speaks of almsgiving for a reason (v. 41), of something that no law can regulate: only the refusal to try to formalize everything in one's relationship with God can make a person think not about his religious duties and rights, but about his relationships with God and with people. Then such a person will also not attach special importance to status, so important in religious life (v. 43). And the main problem here is that the way into the Kingdom is not some special, new religion, but the rejection of every religion as such. This was unacceptable even to the "scribes" - teachers of the Torah (v. 45). But Jesus replies by noting that rabbinic theology, like all traditional theology in general, is occupied with justifying that same religiosity, which, incidentally, does not obligate the theologians themselves to anything (v. 46).

Worst of all, it is religion and its defenders that in every age have opposed God's witnesses and tried to get rid of them. So it was before, and in Jesus' time nothing had changed (vv. 46-52). And here it turns out that fully religious, learned, and outwardly devout people condemn to the cross the One whom, by their own assertions, they had been waiting for through many centuries. Choosing between religion and the Kingdom, they, as is clear, choose religion. And they remain with their own choice.

The Savior's words addressed to the Pharisees and teachers of the Torah, who in those days were usually called "scribes," may seem too harsh, just as they seemed to some of His listeners. But the question was too serious, and things had to be called by their proper names. The accusations are serious: in essence, Jesus reproaches both the religious leadership of the Synagogue of that time (the Pharisees) and the outstanding teachers of the Torah for not observing themselves what they call others to observe. A strange accusation, it would seem: after all, in the Gospels it is precisely the Pharisees and teachers of the Torah who are shown as zealots for the Torah; they are the ones who constantly reproach Jesus for violating one or another of its prescriptions. But Jesus clearly identifies the problem: external religiosity devoid of spiritual content. This very religiosity became the main problem of synagogue spiritual life in the Gospel era. Many Pharisees adhered to such religiosity, and many teachers of the Torah taught it to the people.

There was, of course, an alternative, but only a few represented it. The New Testament books have preserved the names of some of them for us: Nicodemus, Gamaliel... But they did not determine the general atmosphere of synagogue life at that time. And so it turned out that calls to spiritual life were accompanied by instruction in a life that was not so much spiritual as religious. People were taught not how to acquire inner wholeness and inner light (the very "clear eye" of which Jesus speaks), but how to observe ritual prescriptions. Of course, these prescriptions also did not appear for no reason, and behind them stands a certain spiritual experience that gave rise to them; but by that time the experience had already been forgotten, while the prescriptions remained.

And now the people are offered a life of religiosity alone, without spiritual content; prescriptions without communion with God. Meanwhile, the teachers themselves feel like masters of the Torah: after all, they are the ones who comment on it and interpret it; people come to them for advice; it is their authority in the eyes of ordinary people that is unquestioned.

Not all of them, of course, were like this, but there were enough of them for a vast number of people to become locked inside a circle of formal religiosity with no possibility of leaving it. And every free word from God, any breath of God's Spirit in this environment, is perceived as something unnecessary and even dangerous: it undermines the monopoly of teachers and interpreters over the Torah, and therefore over spiritual life. It is no accident that Jesus tells those who build monuments to the ancient prophets that they are no better than their fathers, who killed those same prophets. They have no need of living spiritual life, just as their fathers had no need of it. And that means they have no need of the Kingdom either.