NOTES for Luk 12:49-53

For us, as for the disciples of Jesus who heard the terrible words of today's reading, it is hard to accept such a prospect. They were waiting for a Messiah who would come as a liberator and bring triumph to Israel. The Romans would fall, Israel would be free, and the world at last would be wonderful and good. But Jesus, by His perfection, by the fact that He is the Truth, became a stumbling stone for everyone and for each person. His very presence becomes a cause of division. No one remains on the sidelines; everyone has to decide Who has come.

But even if one accepts Jesus as the Messiah, the division does not end there. Children and parents, brothers and sisters - all of us stand on different sides of Him; all of us see different things and try to consider what we ourselves have seen as the most important thing. Some see wrath, some mercy, some love, some light. Each considers it necessary to secure the primacy of his own view of God. This is how our damaged humanity shows itself when it comes into contact with His perfection. The apostles faced this, and it continues to this day. On the other hand, we have already been warned of the danger. And the one who is warned is armed: he can keep himself from becoming a conduit of division.

How polysemous are the evangelical images; cut from their context, they put out of countenance. Isn't in this same Gospel we read that the followers of Jesus wanted to make fire to come down from heaven, and Jesus prohibited them (see Luke 9:54-56)? It is then about another fire here, serving not to destroy, but to save people. May be it is about the fire of Pentecost (See Acts of the Apostles 2:3), or about the fire of purification (Is 4:4; Rev 3:18); or may be about the fire of faith in our hearts, of which mother Mary (Skobtsova) remarkably said: "Christianity is fire, if not, it does not exist ". Is this fire burning in us, are we hot or simply lukewarm (to see Rev 3:15-16)? As our heart burned when The Lord offered us the first meeting with Him (see Luke 24:32)! Haven't we cooled down, haven't we abandon our young love (see Rev 2:4)? It is indeed our responsibility to preserve this fire, which Jesus made come down on earth.

Today's reading touches on another theme, one very important for understanding what life in the Kingdom is. But the meaning of what Jesus says becomes clear only in the context of the situation of that transitional era which began with the coming of the Savior and in which we live. It could be called the era of the advancing Kingdom, and it will be completed by Jesus' return. But since we do not know the exact timing of this return, readiness is required always, every day and every hour.

In fact, this is the meaning of the parables Jesus tells (vv. 36-48). When the Gospel speaks about the nearness of the Kingdom, what is meant is not the date of Christ's second coming, but the fact that the Kingdom has already entered the world, that its presence for us today is no longer future but present; and if we notice nothing of the sort, it is only because we do not want to notice. Of course, sometimes for those to whom God entrusts ministries connected with the Kingdom, the apparent remoteness of the time when the process will be completed has a relaxing effect, like the effect produced on the unrestrained servant in the parable by the thought that the master was far away (v. 45).

It is not surprising that those who knew everything and, despite everything, allowed themselves to relax are called to a more serious account than those who knew less (vv. 47-48). What is interesting is something else. In the world there are those who know more and those who know less, but, as one can see, there are none who know nothing. It is no accident that Jesus compares the signs of the advancing Kingdom to the signs by which people in those days recognized a coming change in the weather: they were just as obvious and just as understandable to everyone, so that it was simply impossible not to notice them at all and understand nothing (vv. 54-57).

That is why the coming of the Kingdom divides people, and the division, as one can see, does not run along any national, class, or religious border, but across all borders, separating those who accept the Kingdom from those who reject it, people sometimes living not only in one country and one city, but even in one house (vv. 51-53). And this happens not because God needs divisions, but because the Kingdom is an absolute reality; it is impossible to enter it partly or halfway, and even entering it "almost completely" will not work: one enters the Kingdom either to the end and without looking back, or one does not enter at all. That is why in the Church, according to the word of the Apostle Paul, there can be "neither Greek nor Jew": if the Church remains the Kingdom and does not turn into a religious organization, one among many, then only one division remains relevant for it: between those who accept the Kingdom and those who reject it. All other divisions are conditional and relative; this one is absolute, as absolute as the division between eternal life and eternal death can be.