Notes for  26 July 2026

The wavering between these two opinions is no longer a matter of public discussion. Publicly no one dares to speak about Jesus at all. People talk about anything: about how bad or good everything is in the church, about how and what should be done, about what someone thinks of the most important universal human problems, about who distorted history and how. But not about Jesus. The attempt to find out who He is and what He is like gives rise to fear, exposing our superficiality and inadequacy in the most important question of life.

The fear of answering these questions openly and directly takes us back 2,000 years. Only then people discussed this at least among themselves, secretly perhaps, but they argued. Now this dispute goes on implicitly, in the depth of each person’s soul. Is He good or a deceiver? Who is He? What is He like? Why did He come to me? However frightening it may be to be laughed at, to be thought an oddity or a madman, sooner or later everyone will have to answer these questions honestly.

What is most important about the meal Jesus arranges for the people listening to Him? One could say the miracle, and that would be true. But what is a miracle? One could also say the manifestation of the Kingdom, and that too would be true. Yet the Kingdom is the breath of God, the power of God, and the love of God acting in a particular way. What way is that? The evangelist explains by mentioning that Jesus blessed the food.

One might think that such an ordinary feature of Jewish life as a blessing hardly needed special mention. Yet the evangelist mentions it, and most likely not by accident. What, after all, was this customary Jewish blessing of food? In essence, it was nothing other than an invitation to God to sanctify the table and join the meal, where He was always awaited as the dearest guest. Jesus apparently does the same: He invites His heavenly Father to join the meal He arranges for the people listening to Him. But God's presence always gives the gathering itself a new quality. God's people are a people-community; that is how God intended them to be. Every sacred gathering, including one in a home, reveals and actualizes this quality, making it a reality wherever and whenever those assembled call upon God to bless their fellowship. The place where those who call upon God gather then becomes sacred space; it is no longer merely the meeting place of the community but the place of God's presence.

And what if the meal is blessed by the One who brought the Kingdom into the world in all its fullness? How great must the fullness of God's presence be in that case? Clearly, we must speak here not simply of sacred space as a place of God's presence and His meeting with the faithful, but of the Kingdom, which is precisely such sacred space in all its possible fullness. There God's presence is revealed as nowhere else, and the meeting becomes not merely an episode but the norm of life, for life in the Kingdom is life in God's presence, without which there is no Kingdom. When Jesus blesses the food, everyone nearby becomes, at least for a time, an inhabitant of the Kingdom.

Of course, such participation in itself guarantees nothing; it can be regarded as a kind of spiritual advance. But that advance can also become the first step on the path to the Kingdom, and therefore on the path to salvation.

Comparing the Kingdom of Heaven to a precious object, a treasure for which one is willing to give up everything, is very characteristic of the Gospel. Jesus uses this image many times, as we have just read in the preceding verse (Matt. 13:44). But here we see a somewhat different turn to the theme. The Kingdom of Heaven is like not a pearl but a merchant seeking fine pearls. It is compared not with an object possessing “objective” value, but with a person, a personality, with his inward purpose and his search for genuine values. Indeed, despite all the “objectivity” of the Kingdom of Heaven, it is realized through a person's personal relationship with God, through his acknowledgment of God's rule over him, and through his consent to God's will. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God...” “Seek, and ye shall find...”