NOTES for Heb 4:1-13

Apparently, the mystical messianism that spread in circles around the Church after AD 70 had little or no relation to sacred history. Indeed, if the Kingdom is in no way connected with our world, if it triumphs in some other dimension, what relation can historical events have to that triumph, even if the history in question is the history of God's people? In such a context, the perception of Old Testament events inevitably had to change. Evidently, they began to be perceived as something unrelated to messianic history and completed long ago, long before the Savior's coming into the world. Something similar apparently happened with the image of the promised land, which in both Yahwist and early Jewish tradition was connected with the image of the messianic Kingdom: now it was perceived only as a purely historical reality, and the expression "to enter God's rest," which also had a messianic meaning, came to mean only the resettlement of the Jews in Palestine, where they settled and ceased to be a nomadic people.

The author of the epistle rightly points out that the rest of which Holy Scripture speaks does not mean merely settling on the land and ending wanderings, but that it concerns a qualitatively new spiritual state that is not achieved by conquering the land alone. That is why he is confident that the messianic meaning of the expression "to enter rest" has by no means been lost, and that one can enter it even now, when more than a millennium has passed since the Jews conquered the land promised by God. And he urges his readers not to lose this meaning, the central one for spiritual life (vv. 1-3).

For the author of the epistle, the history of salvation is by no means complete, as perhaps it seemed to the supporters of mystical messianism. In the Old Testament texts he finds indications of this incompleteness, indications all the more precious because they presupposed the triumph of the Kingdom here, in our world, a world being transformed but not yet transformed (vv. 4-7). The history of salvation has begun, but it is by no means finished, and those who did not manage to join it before can still become part of it. But time is short, and it is better not to delay: it may happen that the next call of God really does turn out to be the last (vv. 8-11). Thus the author of the epistle reminds his readers of the main thing: the Kingdom that has drawn near and is coming, coming not somewhere in other worlds, but here and now.

Hardness of heart is a terrible affliction that often strikes a person who encounters God. This important moment is very often used to present the terrible account that every person—believer, unbeliever, or atheist—carries within, ready to recite the whole list at the appropriate moment. This blacklist is always before us, and when coming face to face with God, everyone must make a very difficult choice: to justify God or to justify oneself. If God is good, then I am to blame—but surely I cannot be guilty! To remain spotless in one's own eyes, it is easier to declare that God is to blame for everything happening in the world. For this, a person is ready to renounce everything, even the life God offers.

There really is a chance of being too late. It is no accident that today's reading warns us... The Word of God was proclaimed to the people of the Old Testament, yet the Lord says in the psalm Paul quoted in the previous chapter that a “people who go astray in their heart” cannot enter His rest. As far as information is concerned, everything is in order for us—even better than it was for the people of Israel. But what about the heart? To accept the word in theory and to accept it with the heart are different things... Still more different are accepting truth in theory and receiving the Living Truth, God Himself, into the heart... This is what the Church tells us today through this reading. While the promise still remains—or, as we read yesterday, while there is still time—let us ask God for the grace of conversion and open our heart to Him.

An important detail in the healing of the blind man, narrated to us today by the evangelist Mark, is Christ's command to the healed man to go straight home without going to those who had brought him to Jesus. This can be compared with the evangelist John's mention that the Samaritans believed in Jesus "no longer because of" the words of the woman who had met Him at the well, but because "we have heard for ourselves and know that this is indeed the Christ." Learning about the great and glorious works of God by hearsay is good and useful, but as people say now, "it is not the main thing." The main thing is to meet Him ourselves. That is why the feast of Christ's Nativity, which has come today for most of our brothers, is so important for us. His birth into this world is the possibility for each of us to meet the Son of God not by hearsay, but for ourselves.

Speaking of God's word, which "pierces to the division of soul and spirit," the author of the letter has in mind, on the one hand, the living revelation that is inseparable from God's presence, and on the other hand, the inner Torah, that inner spiritual and moral imperative and spiritual backbone without which the first generations of Christians could not imagine spiritual life. This living word of God is what judges a person. Speaking of "soul and spirit," the author of the letter has in mind, on the one hand, human nature, which he calls "soul," although the corresponding Greek word in the biblical context can simply mean "life," and on the other hand, that "breath," that "spirit," which God gives each person at creation. Here is the deepest level of the human person, the level connected with the very existence of the human being as the image of God.

At this depth it is decided what a particular person is before God, before other people, and before himself. For a Christian, such judgment takes on an added meaning: here the question is also decided whether he is faithful to Christ, whether the life of the Kingdom is an absolute value for him, or whether there, in the very depths of his soul, he is ready to seek something else, something more important. And there too, at this final depth, the question of faithfulness to Christ as High Priest, with a capital letter, is decided. Indeed, the high priest in the traditional Yahwist understanding is the head of the people-community standing before God.

Every community always consists of persons, each of whom is fully aware of himself and of his relationships both with God and with the other members of his community. Otherwise the community degenerates into a religious collective, where individual people dissolve into a large collective "we" that at times has quite vivid religious experiences, but is spiritually completely barren. And each member of the community comes to God together with all the relationships that bind him to others. The presider of the community and its head stands at the center of this complex system of relationships that the community, going to God, represents.

The question of the presider's full inclusion in the system of relationships within the community is extremely important in the context of the community's spiritual path. In this sense the Savior is the ideal Head and Presider: His bond with everyone who belongs to the Church as His body is absolute. No one, not even the most zealous high priest leading the Temple community and the people of God, can have such a bond with his community. Betraying such a Presider means losing the Kingdom, and therefore salvation.

Returning to the image of the Messiah-High Priest, the author of the letter does not separate it from those ideas of the living Torah that were widespread at that time in both Jewish and Christian circles. For him, Jesus Himself becomes this living Torah. His high priesthood is due to the fact that He succeeded in doing what no one had ever succeeded in doing before: fulfilling the ideal that had previously remained unattainable. In order to become the living Torah, a human being had to be completely free from sin while still remaining human and not turning into some disembodied being. And Jesus proved to be the first and only one in human history to whom this was given (v. 15).

Such a Teacher cannot be deceived: the living Torah is the embodied word of God, and His action on the human person touches those depths of human being where its spiritual ("spirit") and natural ("soul") components meet (v. 12). It is as impossible to hide from Him as it is to take refuge from God or hide anything from Him (v. 13). But this Messiah-High Priest bears in Himself the whole fullness of the grace of the Kingdom that He brought into the world, giving every faithful person the opportunity to share in it (v. 16). The living Torah, the embodied word of God, the Man who bears in Himself the whole fullness of the Kingdom, and therefore the fullness of God: this is how the author of the letter sees the Messiah, whom he calls the new High Priest, the High Priest of the Kingdom.

There is something very important for us in biblical Revelation: God, transcendent and incomprehensible, speaks. He speaks—and the universe takes shape; He speaks—and life appears; He speaks—and the human being is created, the one with whom God will then conduct a dialogue. We see that the word of God is not merely a word, but an action.

Moreover, His word has one quality usually found only in a living interlocutor: every time we turn to it, we hear something new! The word proceeds from the living God and brings life with it.

God overcomes the distance that separates us from Him and addresses us. The apostle reminds us that God's word “works” for us when it penetrates within us, to the very heart—then it cleanses, instructs, and fills us. Can we shut ourselves off from it? Probably. But then, if it is not active within us, neither will the life that God wishes to give us enter into us.

The demand for a sign from Jesus was entirely understandable: many were ready to see the Messiah in Him, and most already considered Him a prophet, if not all. However, in order to recognize the Messiah as Messiah, He was expected to provide certain definite signs as proof of His messiahship. These signs were connected with traditional messianic expectations, partly popular and partly theological. Messianic theology was especially developed in the Pharisaic environment, which is no surprise, since they considered themselves messianists, the very remnant of which the ancient prophets had spoken. They could not afford to be mistaken about the Messiah; hence their attention to messianic theology and their attempts to develop unambiguous criteria for identifying messiahship.

But Jesus, though He was the Messiah, was not going to conform to anyone's criteria. He simply revealed the Kingdom to the world in its fullness, in love and power. And God's power usually acts quite convincingly, though only for those who want to see. It would seem enough to open one's eyes and look. What other signs are needed? What other criteria must the One meet who can not only heal any disease but also return the dead to life?

The problem, however, is that fallen humanity is astonishingly talented in everything related to creating illusions and illusory reality, inside which a person can dwell so completely that at times nothing outside has any effect on him at all. Behind concepts built on his own illusions and mirages, fallen man can hide for a very long time from every reality, even from the reality of the Kingdom entering the world, which a "theologian" intoxicated by his own "reality" may simply fail to notice. Here signs and proofs of every kind are truly useless. They will go unnoticed just like everything else that does not fit the concept and the "reality" on which that concept was built.

Still, the disciples in their own way are not much better than those demanding a sign. They too do not understand the Teacher. For them, leaven is connected with physical bread, and they are sure that Jesus is forbidding them to share bread with the Pharisees and Sadducees. But in reality He is speaking of something quite different, not of food prohibitions and not of rituals. The Kingdom He has brought into the world turns out to be too full and too free even for those who followed Him. This is understandable: in our world, the fall has affected everyone and each person, except Him. The time will come, and the slow, difficult overcoming of the consequences of that catastrophe, because of which the Kingdom was closed to humanity, will begin. But at that moment this time was still ahead.

Jesus performs healings a little differently each time. As in this case, when He touches the eyes of the man He heals twice. At first glance this may seem strange: after all, this is God's power, which can heal a person in a single instant, while here there is clearly a certain process, certain stages, and for some reason the healing does not happen all at once. It may seem that Jesus is, as it were, testing things out, trying His power before the full and final healing.

In part that is true - only the issue is not His power, but the person's readiness. Healing looks simple and instantaneous only on paper, while in reality behind it stands a complex and intense process in which the one being healed takes part. In such cases we usually speak of faith: whoever believes receives healing. But faith, even understood as trust rather than as certain convictions, is a process, not only a single momentary decision. In healing a person, Jesus draws him into relationship with Himself and into the life of the Kingdom He has brought into the world, drawing him in to the extent that the person is ready to follow Him.

Such involvement always begins with a person's readiness to follow Jesus; without it nothing will work. That readiness, however, must be constantly confirmed, both because its measure differs and because at each next stage of the path that measure changes. In a certain sense one could say that at each successive stage of the path God asks the person again whether he is ready to move farther, and each time the person is free to answer God yes or no. The same is true in relationship with the Savior: each next step on the Christian path means a greater measure of a person's involvement in relationship with Christ, and that greater measure presupposes the person's consent to the next step.

It would seem that this is merely a matter of healing, of bringing it to completion. Yet for the person himself, "merely" means a very great deal, a huge step forward on the path of relationship with God and with Christ. No wonder the person overcomes it not in one step, but in two. Jesus treats everyone with whom He comes into contact with the utmost care, neither hurrying him nor pushing him from behind; but if a person is ready, the next step will certainly follow.

For eight chapters in a row now we have been reading about the glorious passage of the Son of God over the earth. Have we recognized Him? Have we learned to trust Him? To believe His word? Or do we still need signs? Have we "understood" everything, or have we remained blind? What is there more of in us: the leaven of the Pharisees, or the faith of the hungry and the sick? Does the one who was hungry and was fed, who was sick and was healed, who was blind and received sight, still need signs?

The disciples witnessed the feeding of the people. They were at that feast and even distributed the bread. But in everyday life they remain in doubt and are not sure that they will be fed, although Jesus is with them and they see Him with their eyes. But with the heart? Do we feel God's presence in everyday life, on Monday, in the boat in which we are crossing the week? Or do we "still not understand"? For the second time Mark gives a passage about feeding a large crowd with a few loaves. It is important to understand that if bread is given from God's hands, then it is not just bread. People are fed by God's blessing, by God's love. And this is truly real nourishment.

It is hard to understand what is happening to others when everything is all right with you, when you have nothing to plead for tearfully. When there is no real need, there is no need for hope, and no need for the Healer. When we do not thirst for an encounter with truth and love, when we have not been worn down in this world by our weakness and infirmity while seeking truth, it is hard to be satisfied with what God gives us. Such are the Pharisees: Jesus does not even speak with them. "He left them."

The disciples remain beside Jesus, see Him with earthly eyes, share a meal with Him, and see many healings, but still remain outside the mystery of God. They have received sight for the first time, like that blind man from Bethsaida. After the first laying on of hands, the blind man began to see like everyone else. He saw people outwardly. A person was able to "see everything clearly" only in the presence of Jesus, when he "looked intently."

God gives spiritual sight to those who thirst for it. For this, the "hardened heart" must be "softened." Then it will become clear what the spirit of Pharisaism is; then the spiritual life of people and of God will be visible. Then signs will no longer be needed. What, then, have we managed to "understand" over these seven and a half chapters? What have we really understood, what have we "seen clearly," how have we changed?