NOTES for Isa 26:1-6

Describing the people of God, to whom God opens the gates of the renewed Jerusalem, the prophet speaks of them as people who are "righteous" and "keep faithfulness" (in the Synodal translation they are called those who "keep truth"), people with "firm will" or "firm intention" (or the "firm spirit" of the Synodal translation). What stands behind these prophetic definitions? None of the biblical authors ever considered righteousness to be inherent in a human being. God alone is righteous. For a person, righteousness is not a property or a quality, but a state. A person can be righteous as long as God's righteousness is reflected in him. This is possible if a person keeps unconditional faithfulness to God, which is why the prophet calls the righteous those who "keep faithfulness."

What helps a person keep faithfulness to God? Isaiah answers this question as well: firmness of intention. Or firmness of will, which in this case is the same thing. This is not willpower in the sense in which we are used to understanding the expression. By willpower we usually mean a specific effort needed in a specific situation. But the prophet speaks of a strength of will that belongs to a person as an inalienable property of his spiritual "I." The difference here is the same as between, for example, muscular effort applied in a specific situation and muscle tone, which belongs in principle to a physically healthy person regardless of the effort being made. Just as normal physical life is impossible without physical tone, so normal spiritual life is impossible without volitional tone. Spiritual life is, first of all, relationships that bind a person to God and to other people, and these are impossible without volitional tone. Without volitional tone, these relationships cannot be stable and constant. In that case, preserving faithfulness (whether to God or to a person) will have to be forgotten: a person without will simply has nothing with which to preserve it. Faithfulness, after all, presupposes more than emotions or theorizing, which usually require no special effort of will.

Faithfulness to God, for example, requires keeping the commandments given by God, if only because at Sinai, during the making of the covenant-union with God, their observance was prescribed as an indispensable condition of the union being made. No keeping of the commandments - no covenant; no covenant - no relationship with God. Faithfulness to Him in that case turns out to be purely theoretical. But life with God, life in the Kingdom, is not theory but practice. And it is impossible without a firm intention to keep faithfulness to God and to guard the relationships that unite with Him the faithful who seek the Kingdom.

The Lord gives His salvation in place of walls and ramparts. Walls and ramparts are a defense, an ordinary physical defense that will keep enemies from entering our lives. But walls and ramparts are a defense made by human hands. Whether we create this defense ourselves or receive it from those around us, it remains human. It is probably good and important to have such protection in life, when a person knows that there is someone or something to lean on. But the Lord's protection is still more important. And His protection is salvation. Salvation is not merely a situation in which enemies do not come and cause harm. Salvation is a situation in which the Lord Himself comes. Then it is no longer so frightening even if enemies appear within sight, dangerously close. Walls are unnecessary because He is not merely the best protection; He is the only true protection.

The desire for solidity, for a reliable ordering of life, is proper to almost every person. To a great extent it explains many of our opinions and actions. Concluding the account of the Sermon on the Mount, the evangelist Matthew includes today's parable about houses built on sand and on rock, in which the Lord speaks precisely about this solidity of life.

This parable sounds like a kind of conclusion to the whole Sermon on the Mount. Some Protestants like to call the Bible an instruction manual for human life, and we see that this view is not entirely without grounds. The whole Sermon on the Mount speaks about what is needed in order to be alive in the true sense of the word. And the concluding parable emphasizes that the subject is real life, a life that no misfortunes can bring down. This does not mean that there will be no misfortunes, but a person who lives by Christ's word and fulfills this word is stronger than all misfortunes. Moreover, thanks to Christ's victory, together with Him we become stronger than death itself. Even difficulties become for the person who fulfills Christ's word not depressing and oppressive accidents, but the way of the Cross by which we can follow God.

The words about a house built on sand or on rock, with which the Lord Jesus Christ concludes the Sermon on the Mount as Matthew tells it, implicitly suggest two important things. First, this is about a person's responsibility for his life and destiny. This responsibility is by no means always about a person's well-being. The New Martyrs who died in Stalin's camps were not concerned with having a successful life from an earthly point of view. Those who sought that renounced their faith and went off to teach scientific atheism. The outward circumstances of life and the twists of history very often do not give us the chance to live, as the apostle says, a "quiet and peaceable life," and that is not what we answer for. But our eternal destiny, a person's standing before God, whether you have lived your life in truth or in falsehood and sin, that is where human responsibility lies. One cannot live without this, and living with it is painfully difficult.

And second, the Lord says that His word is the firm support from which you can fulfill your eternal responsibility and find life. So God not only gives us responsibility and freedom, but also reveals the truth, so that we may use them for life and not for death.

With the parable of the two builders, the prudent and the foolish, Christ concludes the Sermon on the Mount, and there is profound meaning in this.

Of course, the Savior's words, His teaching, made a deep impression both on educated scribes and on the simplest people. We know from all four Gospels that enormous crowds gathered to listen to His preaching. And words often make a strong impression on us as well. It happens that we hear someone's inspired sermon, one that touches us to the depths of the soul, and it appears that we will never be the same as before. It appears that our whole life must change at once. But time passes, and we completely forget how bright and how new our life appeared to us. We return to everyday worries and practical problems, to our ordinary life. Why disrupt an established way of life or break established, even painful, relationships? For what? And life keeps flowing on as usual.

The same thing happens every day: we read the Gospels, the Epistles, the Prophets. We close the book and go on about our business.

But Jesus insistently emphasizes that it is important not only to listen, but to live by the Word of God. Our life in Christ can take place only if the commandments of Christ lie at its foundation like a great rock. And among them, as He Himself said, the most important are love for God and neighbor.

The Apocalypse of Isaiah is not a story about coming disasters, but a vision of the triumph of God's Kingdom. Let us note for ourselves several details of which the prophet speaks: victory over the enemies of Israel, the gathering of Israel from dispersion, the Lord's feast for all nations on Mount Zion, the openness of the paths of personal righteousness, victory over death and the resurrection of the dead, the defeat of the serpent, and joy and gladness in God's salvation. Why was this written? We are called to take part in this victory - through our trust in the prophecy and our agreement with God's plan.

It is worth recalling how houses were built in Palestine in Gospel times. Then (as, for that matter, often today) builders did not need a strong artificial foundation: the soil of Palestine itself is rocky, and to reach stone it is enough to remove only a comparatively small layer of sand and clay. On the other hand, if this is not done, during the winter rains a house can easily "float away": streams caused by heavy downpours quite easily wash away the not very thick upper layer. It is clear that Jesus compares a person seeking the Kingdom with a house builder who removes the unreliable alluvial layer from the reliable rock.

It is not hard to guess that this concerns the spiritual foundation on which a person builds his own life. Evidently, this is the ordinary spiritual state of fallen man, when he does not think about how, by what, and for what he lives, but simply drifts with the current. And even if in such a state this person tries somehow to direct his life, the attempts usually fail: in order to solve the task one has set, one needs to know something about the spiritual foundations of what one is trying to influence. But fallen man, who does not think about spiritual life, sees only the fluid and unreliable surface of the reality around him, forever changing and always elusive, on which it is impossible to build anything and on which one cannot even lean, so changeable and inconstant is it.

And only after a person penetrates deep, breaking through the surface of things to their essence, does he discover the real foundation: God, spiritual life, and then Christ and the Kingdom. And he finds that very rock on which he can calmly build his life because that rock will not fail him.

Christianity is probably unique precisely because it unites things that seem irreconcilable from the point of view of our earthly reason. Why are two seemingly different passages included in today’s reading? Perhaps because the first speaks of prudence and the second immediately afterward of recklessness: the prudence of building a secure house on rock and the recklessness of touching a leper. How can the two be joined? Here lies the profound essence of Christianity. Holy foolishness and dogmatic purity may seem to have nothing in common, but they are two poles encompassing the whole world. The rigorous rational thinker Thomas Aquinas and the remarkable mystics Francis of Assisi and John of the Cross. The philosopher Solovyov and the mystics of the Name-Glorification movement. We all form one body, because when you dedicate yourself to Christ, you dedicate your whole being: reason and soul, heart and mind.

It is frightening. It turns out that one can even work miracles in His name—and yet He will say that He never knew us... But these same verses give us hope. It turns out that working miracles is not necessary at all: the main thing is not to practice lawlessness. As someone once said, “simply keeping the commandments is more important than special effects.” So let us strive not for special effects, but to do His will.

The Sermon on the Mount ends with an important observation from the Savior: for the Kingdom, what matters most is relationships, relationships with Him and with neighbors. Otherwise a person's whole life is like a house built on sand. At first glance, a person who in Christ's name not only prophesied, but even cast out demons and worked miracles, must be a disciple of Christ, and if so, his path must certainly end in the Kingdom. In reality, however, everything turns out not to be so simple.

The main problem here is that fallen man in general tends to substitute form for content. In this case, paradoxical as it may sound, the form turns out to be precisely prophecies, the casting out of demons, and even miracles - everything we tend to regard as content, treating only the religious shell of a spiritual tradition as form.

If we were not talking about Christianity, that would indeed be so. But Christianity is unique. It is not a new religion, not a new theology, not a new morality, and not even a new spiritual tradition; it is a new life. And in life, the main thing is life itself. Its flow. Its process. Its spiritual quality, its very dynamic - the very thing a modern philosopher would call existence. And, of course, relationships - with God, with Christ, with other people.

After all, relationships determine the structure of our life, its spiritual algorithm. Christianity is not about what to do, but about how to be, how to live, in what spiritual state to exist. This is the content of Christianity - and all external activity here is nothing other than form.

Meanwhile, among Christians in every age there has been a strong temptation toward a kind of religious activism, when Christianity itself began to be perceived as a practice - not the practice of life itself, but of specific activities and "spiritual" works. Religious education, charity, missionary work - the list can be continued, if not indefinitely, then for a very long time. It is taken for granted that the more such works a person completes in a unit of time, the more active he is in this respect, the better a Christian he is.

It is no wonder that many have tried, and still try, with all their strength - even to the point of a mental or nervous breakdown, which they often regard as a cross connected with the "ministry" that "God has supposedly entrusted" to them. Such people often do not even realize that God wants something entirely different from them, just as they do not realize that their breakdowns, crises, and at times more serious problems are precisely the collapse of the house built on sand that Jesus speaks about.

As He concludes the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus very sternly warns His listeners, and us as well, against the characteristic divide between hearing—and even accepting as true—His teaching and embodying it in one's life. I would even say the divide between “theoretical” and “practical” Christianity. Serving the truth in practice requires effort to overcome the “resistance of the environment”—perhaps this is the meaning of the images of the “narrow way” and the “narrow gate”—whereas “theorizing” creates almost no inconvenience in this life.

Accepting true teaching must bear fruit: a change in life expressed in actions and an inward recoil from sin and lawlessness. If this does not happen, then there was no real acceptance either, and then: “I never knew you; depart from Me!”

Today's reading is devoted to the theme of false prophets (v. 15) and false disciples (vv. 21-22). But before speaking about false prophets and false disciples, Jesus says that the way into the Kingdom will not be simple, that it is a narrow way that few will want to walk (vv. 13-14).

This sequence is, of course, not accidental. False prophets appear because they are expected. Fallen human nature is inclined toward compromise; for complete peace of mind, everyone would like to fulfill what God requires, but to fulfill it in such a way that the fulfillment is as little burdensome as possible. To violate the word of God directly would be too risky; then, when meeting God face to face, there would be nothing to say to Him. It would be another matter if some spiritual leader appeared, for example a prophet, who by his authority sanctioned such a violation, took the responsibility upon himself, and thereby removed it from those who did not want to walk the narrow way. Of course, if one wants to, such a "prophet" can always be distinguished from a true person of God. But if there is no desire, if the listener is seeking not truth and not God's revelation but self-justification, he can fail to notice even completely obvious things.

It is no surprise that all this is also characteristic of those who call themselves Christians. One name alone, as Jesus says, is not enough; what is needed is readiness to walk that same narrow way. Meanwhile the devil is always ready to point to easier roads, supposedly leading to the very same goal, as he pointed to them for the Savior Himself during the temptation in the wilderness (Matt 4:3-10). The only criterion of truth turns out to be the doing of Jesus' words (vv. 24-27).

And the point here is not only that a person who lives by the Kingdom and in the Kingdom, as all true Christians do, cannot be confused with anyone else: it is impossible to imitate the grace of God. The point is that no abilities and no gifts of God, by themselves, bring a person closer to the Kingdom; for this, a person must first of all change inwardly, and if such a change has not taken place, everything else is useless, even if the action of God is noticeable in that "everything else" (vv. 22-23). But for fallen man, inward change is the hardest path of all, and few are truly ready to walk it. There is no other way into the Kingdom.

At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, where the most important rules for the life of Christ's disciples are gathered, there is a kind of comment by Jesus Himself on this whole moral teaching: one cannot limit oneself to hearing the word; one must carry it out, that is, apply it in life. This means that all these rules, commandments, and moral guideposts are not only ethics, a "moral code," or a charter, but rather instructions for putting faith into practice. For faith is the presence of God in a person's life, and therefore to believe means to live in a godly way. For Christ, no "religious convictions" detached from practice are possible. He is not expecting some special worldview or set of beliefs from us. He is expecting God to be present in the world through us...