NOTES for Luk 13:10-17

Reading some Gospel stories, one might think that Jesus intentionally violates the Sabbath rest, doing it to spite the traditionalists of religion. But the Savior never wanted scandals and did not like them. He did not need scandalous fame, the fame of a destroyer of foundations. Besides, according to His own words, He came not to destroy the Torah, but to bring it to fullness. Why then does He act as He acts?

In fact, could the healing of the woman mentioned by the evangelist in his story not have been postponed until the next day? After all, she was not threatened with death; she had already lived with her illness, as we can see, for more than one year, and one additional day of waiting would no longer have changed anything for her. And if this had been simply a matter of healing, even a miraculous, supernatural healing performed not by human power but by God's power, the synagogue ruler who condemned Jesus' action would have been right.

But that is precisely the point: this was not simply a matter of healing, even miraculous healing, but of the manifestation of the Kingdom, whose consequence was this healing, just as it was many other healings of the same kind mentioned by the evangelists. And the Sabbath, in view of its original spiritual meaning, was ultimately needed precisely in order to open the Kingdom to a person, to give him the opportunity to establish deep, sincere, full relations with God, without which there is and can be no normal spiritual life. The multitude of ritual prohibitions and restrictions with which the Sabbath later became surrounded is connected with the obvious predominance of religiosity over spirit. Jesus is precisely striving to return the Sabbath to its original meaning as time spent with God.

And where, if not in the Kingdom that He brought into the world, was one to seek the fullness of communion with God? Where could one spend the Sabbath day better than there? But for those who do not notice the Kingdom, religion with its prohibitions and restrictions proves more important. It is hard to condemn them for this: in the absence of spiritual life, religion may really be the best thing a person can find for himself. Yet in the absence of spiritual life, it is precisely religion that separates a person from the Kingdom, from communion with God, and in the end from life. From that fullness of life for which no religion can offer anyone a substitute.

A prayer of praise is a sign of spiritual freedom. We do not praise God for something; praise and thanksgiving are not the same thing. We can praise Him always, because praise is gratitude to God for being God.

We can praise God even in the most terrible circumstances, even when it seems that there is certainly nothing for which to give thanks. We can praise Him in those moments too, because God is still God; He is still glorious and worthy of praise. But often we are bent double. Sometimes we remain bent double for years, absorbed in ourselves, our ailments, and our grievances. We often ask God for something and sometimes even thank Him for something — for example, for granting our request — but we almost never sing His praise simply because He is God.

God also gives us the strength to praise. He can drive out the spirit of infirmity and give us a spirit of joy and praise. Let us ask Him to help us straighten up and begin to praise Him, for this is possible even after eighteen years of a bent and joyless existence.

Disasters and tragedies have happened in every age. Christ uses one of them as an illustration in His preaching.

We should not look in the fate of the unfortunate for signs of special sins that other people do not have. God does not punish sins in such a primitive sense. But everyone living on earth will be weighed on the scales of eternity: What does he live for? Is he fulfilling his human calling? Does he bear fruit, like a fruit-bearing tree, or not?

"For you, this is the last chance to save the situation," Jesus tells His listeners. "Tomorrow may already be too late." How many such "last chances" have been missed? How many more will be missed? The question "to be or not to be" is not decided theoretically. It is a question Christ asks personally of every disciple able to take it seriously.

Today's reading brings us back to the image of the coming Kingdom, emphasizing the difference between it and our world, which has not yet been transformed. It begins with a mention of events we know about only from the Gospel, one connected with some kind of persecution (v. 1), and the other with what today we would call a technological disaster (v. 4).

Clearly, those who told Jesus about the persecution expected His comments. In this case it may have involved some kind of reprisals undertaken by the Roman authorities in response to another uprising, perhaps affecting those who had not been involved in it, as often happened in those days. But Jesus does not try to explain anything when the subject is a world lying in evil. For Him, as we see, evil has neither explanation nor justification. He offers no theological reasoning, no arguments of the kind representatives of various schools of moral theology so often resort to. He says something more terrible, something no theologian would have dared to say aloud: there is no justice in the world; virtue is not rewarded in it, vice is not punished, and a tower can collapse on anyone's head, whether he is righteous or a sinner (vv. 2, 4).

The only way to avoid this fate is conversion, or "repentance" (vv. 3, 5). On Jesus' lips, conversion was certainly inseparable from readiness to accept the Kingdom He had brought into the world. And to accept it not someday, when the one receiving it has "ripened," but here and now, when the Kingdom has overtaken the one who is turning. This is also the meaning of the parable of the fig tree that Jesus told to those who had asked Him the question (vv. 6-9): if someone remains alive in a world full of evil, it is only because God again and again gives him time and the opportunity for conversion.

But the situation is already at the boundary; all deadlines have long passed, and every time a person postpones conversion, he risks not living to the next attempt. There is no salvation in this world; it is only in the Kingdom, and one should not delay, putting off the moment of meeting it. Better now than later, when it may already be too late. That is why Jesus treats so sternly every attempt to push the Kingdom into second place and to postpone the meeting with it "until later." He demonstratively heals on the Sabbath (vv. 10-13), and not only because the synagogue, the assembly of the faithful, is the most fitting place for the Kingdom to be revealed, and the Sabbath, God's day, is the most fitting time. He also acts this way because in this case waiting is a matter of life and death. He says to the synagogue ruler, the "ruler of the synagogue": do you not water your livestock on the Sabbath? You know that otherwise the animal will die, and therefore you do not consider it a violation of the Sabbath if someone unties the animal and leads it to water; how, then, is a human being worse, especially one who belongs to God's people (vv. 15-16)?

Of course, Jesus could not have failed to know the traditional answer to the question He asked: if an animal is not given water, it is in danger of dying of thirst, and therefore watering an animal is not considered a violation of the Sabbath. But the woman Jesus healed would calmly have lived until the end of the Sabbath day, as she had already lived for many years, and from the point of view of a person faithful to religious tradition there was no need to hurry with her healing. But Jesus cannot and does not want to wait when it comes to bringing a person into the Kingdom. Unlike the synagogue ruler, He knows how time is contracting as it moves toward the end. And He hurries--hurries so that the Kingdom may be opened to everyone who seeks it and is ready to accept it.

Many people often ask about the meaning of suffering. At times it is so difficult to understand why the most innocent suffer most often, since it appears quite natural to suppose that suffering is sent as punishment for sin. Jesus is asked this very question concerning a tragedy that occurred in Jerusalem.

But He shifts the question onto an entirely different plane. He does not deny the link between sin and punishment, yet at the same time He says that God's way of teaching us is founded on His patience and mercy. The question is no longer, “Why is everything so bad when I have done nothing wrong?!” but instead, “Why is everything so good when I have done nothing good?!” Jesus Himself immediately gives the answer: everything is so good because God is giving us one more chance to change for the better.