NOTES for Zec 8:1-23

As the prophet lists the Lord’s promises, he continually names the One from whom they come: the Lord of hosts, which means the Lord of armies. This name is usually associated with notions of strength and might, with everything we are accustomed to connect with an army. Yet words of peace and forgiveness come precisely from the One whom we are accustomed to regard as fearsome and surpassing everything imaginable.

This does not mean that manifestations of the Lord’s power in the world cease to inspire awe, but we begin to approach an understanding of the true meaning of His might. It uproots evil and keeps the universe from destruction.

Once again we hear a prophecy about many other nations coming to the God who revealed Himself to the Jews. At that time many Jews did not value the knowledge of God revealed to them, just as today many sons and daughters of Christian nations seek revelations among pagans. Yet today we also see the spiritual thirst of those who were cut off from Christianity. The very appearance of such seekers reminds longtime Christians of the importance of what they have ceased to value...

The prophecy of Zechariah that we read today contains the Lord's answer to a question about fasting. After the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C., an additional July fast was established among the Jews for mourning Jerusalem. In 518, prominent Jews living in Babylon, having heard that the work of rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple was progressing successfully, sent a question to Jerusalem: was it necessary to keep this additional fast?

And the Lord answers through the prophet Zechariah, saying: "...was it for Me that you fasted and wept?" The conclusion of the Almighty is not comforting. He tells the prophet that those who wept were weeping for themselves. Indeed, in moments of loss and defeat, we often do not grieve so much over the sorrow as feel sorry for ourselves, sorry that "all this" has happened to us. And God says the same about fasting: just as a person eats for himself, so the Jews also fasted for themselves. Repeating what He had said literally a few years earlier through Deutero-Isaiah, the author of the second half of the book of Isaiah, the Lord points to the meaning and form of fasting pleasing to Him: render true judgment, and show mercy and compassion each to his brother.

In the passages read today from the next chapter of the book of Zechariah, the Lord addresses those who have already lived through catastrophe and restoration. For those who have lived through this, says the Lord, fasting will become a time of restoration, a time of joy. Fasting will become the effort needed in order to experience fully the joy of the presence of the merciful God among us. The Church included this prophecy in our liturgical reading today because catastrophe and restoration for us today mean the death on the Cross of Jesus, killed by us and by our sins, and His Resurrection. And during Great Lent we mourn Jesus and rejoice in His Victory, so that we may be able to feel and experience, to the depths of our being, His presence with us.

For Christians, Jerusalem is the city where Christ’s death and His Resurrection into eternal life are worshiped. During the fast, through prayer and the reading of the Word, we follow Christ’s path. We walk on, and many people, even those who do not belong to the Church, know about the season of fasting and take inward notice of it. Prayer will become a very important part of our spiritual labor during this time. Not only the weak and needy, but also the strong will come and stand in prayer. By God’s mercy, prayer will bear fruit, and on the night of Pascha we will meet the risen Christ in Jerusalem.

Zechariah, like some other prophets, observes that at different periods in Jewish history God seems to turn now one side, now another, towards His people. At first sight this may even seem somewhat strange: the same prophets repeatedly said that God is not a human being, that unlike human beings He does not change His purposes and plans, remaining faithful to the covenantal alliance He once made. Yet the matter is not so simple. Much is written in the Bible about divine punishments that fall upon the people because of apostasy and other sins. It is often said that God ‘turns away’ from sinners and apostates, or ‘forgets’ them. Then, after they turn back and repent, He ‘remembers’ His people and turns His face towards them once more. Is this a beautiful metaphor? Or perhaps something more? God, of course, forgets no one and nothing. But He is a real, living Person: like us, He is gladdened by one thing and saddened by another, looking on one thing with pleasure and another with revulsion. Our feelings may not be His, but He does have a will; in this we are alike. And if something displeases Him, if there is someone or something He does not wish to look at, the focus of His attention, and therefore of His providence, inevitably shifts away from whoever or whatever is repugnant to Him. Then God's people essentially cease to be God's people—cease actually to be so at that particular moment when God turns away from them. They are left at the mercy of the winds and waves of history, which at times overwhelm even far more numerous and powerful peoples. Yet all this is reversible: repentance and turning back restore a proper relationship between God and His people. And a new period of flourishing begins.

Through the prophet Zechariah, the Lord calls the people, after their return from captivity, to trust His blessing and work. "Do not be afraid!" are the key words of all chapter 8, expressing the prophet's faith that the ways of the Lord, however inscrutable they may be, draw a person toward salvation and life. In verses 14-17, again repeating the call, "Do not be afraid!", the Lord says something exceptionally important and unexpected. All His preceding words can be understood as a call to persistent labor in building the Second Temple, if we stay within the limits of the historical context. But the Word of God does not leave us that option. "These are the things you shall do," says the Lord. At this point one expects a list of architectural details for the Temple's construction. But it turns out that the heart must be applied to a completely different labor: "...speak the truth to one another; judge with truth and peace in your gates. Let none of you devise evil in your heart against your neighbor..."

So the constructive labor by which we are called to take part in God's saving action consists in judging rightly, loving peace, and not devising evil against one's neighbor. First, these words immediately broaden the context of the prophecy: from a word of comfort to the Jerusalemites of the late sixth century B.C., they become a promise about the Kingdom of the age to come. Second, almost for the first time in the Old Testament, God's rejection of evil is so clearly extended not only to people's actions but also to their thoughts. Clearly this too is a foretaste of the New Testament. Finally, it is important that the Lord calls people to this work of righteousness, peace, and mercy for a specific reason, expressed in negative form. One must not devise evil against one's neighbor or swear falsely because God hates this. Such a calling to become like God is also one of the essential features of the New Testament.

We usually believe that particularly and only the revelation of the New Testament emphasizes not so much on acts, than on the intentions of man, by assimilating them practically to acts. However, even before the arrival of Christ, God had already revealed to people this simple fact: that intention does not only precede the act, but, in a certain degree, is itself an act. And it is not only a question here that, when a decision is taken, man can hold on for its realization only by an outside strength, so a practically conceived act can be considered as achieved.

The question is above all, in what makes the basis of the spiritual life: in the purpose, or as sometimes say the psychologists today, in the intention. Certainly, even if somebody decided of an act, it does not still mean that he will accomplish it absolutely. Maybe, to the murderer, will not appear for example, the opportunity to reach the potential victim.

But all the same somebody who did not kill another only because the opportunity is not presented to him, from the point of view not only of the Gospel, but also of the Torah is considered as murderer. And not because, by having such an intention, he becomes dangerous for the society, but because such a taken decision means that the system of values, by which is guided the potential murderer, is already so deformed that, even if he does not succeed to accomplish what he conceived because of reasons independent from him, system of values cannot change any more, if, of course, the sinner does not repent of his plan and does not refuse it not under the pressure of circumstances, but voluntarily.

And the destruction of the system of the values and priorities under the influence of intentions, contradicting God's commandments, is this destruction of the heart, which, in the long run, obliges man to turn away from the way of righteousness. If not in one, then in another.

How accustomed we are to thinking that fasting is something heavy and dark, something we have to get through so that afterward we can rejoice more in the bright Resurrection of Christ. Even the priests' vestments are dark and the veil in the church is black, mourning-colored. Of course, fasting is pain. But on the other hand, it is easy for us here to fall into a somewhat childish attitude toward fasting. Easter is not candy given for good behavior during the fast. But fasting, people will say, takes so much of what is familiar from us! Yet is it not a joy to give something out of love for God? If not, then it is still too early to fast. For fasting - fasting itself, as the greatest spiritual joy - must be earned (precisely fasting, not Easter, because Easter joy is given to all "who fasted and who did not fast," as it says in the catechetical homily of our father among the saints John Chrysostom).

This joy is probably what the prophet Zechariah speaks of in the words: "the fast of the fourth month and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth shall become joy and gladness and cheerful feasts for the house of Judah." When we feel exactly this during the fast, no matter how hard it is, then we have reached something true. But what about, people will say, the Cross, the nails, the spear? Yes, but they are for the sake of life.

On the other hand, people very often say that during a fast they feel a special vigor of spirit, and then Easter comes and there is nothing but slackness and fatigue, like a runner who has run a marathon. There are many fine distinctions here.