Notes for  11 July 2026

The apostle does not tire of reminding us that for a Christian the matter is never about one's own successes, achievements, or, conversely, failures. Of course, Christian life is a spiritual path that must be walked. But the main thing on this path is not self-improvement, but the manifestation of the Kingdom to the world. A Christian lives not for himself, but for others. True, not in the sense of the altruism that people around us for some reason often expect from Christians, but in the sense of one's participation in the Kingdom.

The ministry of a Christian is his very life, provided that it is truly Christian, because in that case the life of the Kingdom shows through it, further and further, ever more brightly and clearly, and everyone who communicates with him can partake of it. But such a life is possible only if from the very beginning a person renounces the thought of living by himself. Not for himself or for others, but by himself.

The life of a Christian ceases to belong to him; it becomes God's, Christ's, flowing into the stream of the life of the Kingdom, which surpasses everything a person could imagine. But the stream of this life must flow freely. It is impossible to keep it for oneself, to stop it, to separate out a few streams from it so that they are guaranteed to belong to some particular person. Here it is either free movement or nothing. But then one has to renounce the absolutizing of any forms, ways, and images of Christian life, including one's own. One has to realize that the life of all Christians, if they are truly Christians, is one, while the forms - organizational, liturgical, religious in general - are secondary. And none of them is better than any other; each is good when it is appropriate, when it is adequate to existence in the Kingdom for certain people or communities. And if so, then the refusal to absolutize one's own form becomes not simply a concession to the neighbor, but a necessary condition for abiding in the Kingdom.

Indeed, even those forms, including religious ones, which we consider our own, native, and organic, are relative in their essence, and at some point we will very likely have to give them up. Then an observant Jew can discover that what he was so proud of and held on to so tightly - his own religiosity - gives him no advantages at all in the main thing over a Gentile who had nothing of the kind. That is why the apostle advises not to absolutize any forms: for absolutizing presupposes self-identification, which in spiritual life will hinder rather than help.

The story of the woman who suffered from a flow of blood and was healed by touching the edge of Jesus' garment differs somewhat from other stories of healings. First of all, what stands out here is that the woman does not address Jesus at all, asks Him for nothing, but only silently touches Him. In another version of this account, however, Jesus does notice her, but He does so on His own initiative, while the woman, on the contrary, tries as far as possible to remain unnoticed.

It would appear that such a desire to obtain what one wants as if secretly, without asking anything of the One from whom one expects help, should rather speak against such a person. But on closer examination everything turns out not to be so simple: the woman who suffered from a flow of blood was considered unclean, and by touching anyone at all she inevitably defiled the one she touched. It is quite understandable how a person defiled in this way would react. The risk was great and was justified only by the woman's hope for a miracle, for healing. In the case of healing there would no longer be any question of defilement: the disease had retreated, the bleeding was gone, and therefore there was nothing defiling. The healed woman would only have to perform the purification ritual and offer the prescribed sacrifice. But if healing had not occurred, the woman could have been accused of a rather serious offense.

Despite this, she resolved to act without asking permission. She evidently understood very well that by her request she would have placed the One to whom she appealed in an ambiguous position: He quite likely would not have wanted to refuse her, but by agreeing He risked defiling Himself if the healing did not take place, which would have been at least unpleasant for Him. And He could still, as the woman probably thought, simply refuse, not wanting extra problems. So she resolves to act at her own risk, fully trusting the One from whom she sought healing, and yet wanting to reduce possible problems for Him to a minimum. As we can see, she fully trusts this stranger, believes in His power, and receives her reward, being healed of the disease from which she had suffered for many years.

At first the words that a disciple cannot become greater than his teacher can appear to limit his possibilities. But if we take into account that to become like the teacher is already no small thing, and that not everyone is able to become equal to him, then here we can see a call to growth. If the matter is discipleship to Christ, then the call to become like the Teacher reveals to us His special attitude toward those who follow Him. For the matter concerns the high level to which Christ intends to raise fallen humanity - He wants to deify us.

And even in the stern words of warning that Christ will deny the one who denies Him, we can see how highly He has placed the human person. For relationships are implied here that almost make one think of equality...

Of course, it would be enormous insolence on such a basis to forget reverence before His majesty and to introduce familiarity into relations with Him. He did not become one of human beings so that we would bring into spiritual life what is "human, all too human," that is, in the words of one author, "always something animal." But what draws us near to God is a gift that imposes responsibility.

In this episode there is one circumstance that appears strange if ethnographic details are taken into account. The point is that among Jews a son can receive his father's name only if the father died during the mother's pregnancy. It is hard to say when this custom arose, but if it already existed by the time of John's birth, then the position of Zechariah, who was forced for a long time to remain silent, looks tragic: he is not taken into account; he is equated with the dead. The neighbors and relatives, rejoicing at the infant's birth and proposing to name him Zechariah, are in essence disposing of things in a house that is not theirs.

But Zechariah, despite the humiliations he endured, kept faithfulness to God. We hear his inspired speech, containing prophecy, and the evangelist notes that he spoke under the action of the Holy Spirit. But in order to be filled with the Holy Spirit, Zechariah had to pass patiently through the trial of rejection.

Readers of the Gospel have often been interested in the question of what Christ could have been writing on the ground. If we do not forget that many of His actions corresponded to what was said in Old Testament prophecies, then the answer can be the words proclaimed by the Lord through Jeremiah: "Those who depart from Me shall be written in the dust, because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water" (Jer. 17:13). Some scholars of the Gospel text, on the basis of the absence of this episode from many of the most ancient manuscripts and of its stylistic features, consider it inorganic to the Gospel of John and inserted from some other text, for example from Luke. But even if the passage really did move during the copying of a manuscript, Jeremiah's words about living water, if our surmise is correct, emphasize the semantic unity of the episode with the preceding and following narrative.

The accusers went away, being convicted by their conscience. We are accustomed to perceive the Pharisees negatively, but they too must be given their due: very many people in their place would not have listened to the voice of conscience and would have behaved differently, mercilessly stoning the sinful woman and, together with her, the pangs of conscience. As was said in another age, "he is not a vindictive man: he does not remember the evil done to another." But these Pharisees remembered; they cannot be called incapable of repentance. And this is one confirmation that Christ did not preach to the wind, but to those who could hear Him, even if they did not want to admit it even to themselves.

Abiding in the Lord and in His word, the Israelites receive help from God in the battles with the Amorites and in conquering the land east of the Jordan. And although all the land of Palestine is promised to Israel, one can enter this promise only by remaining faithful to His word. Even Moses, who spoke with God face to face but angered Him by his distrust, must die without ever crossing the Jordan. Living relations with God always require from us reciprocity, faithfulness, and obedience to His will, which He reveals to us in His word.