NOTES for Mar 9:10-16

Today's passage brings us back again to the theme of healings, and this time it again concerns the healing of a demon-possessed man. But now the healing of the demon-possessed man by Jesus Himself is preceded by an unsuccessful attempt made by the apostles (v. 18). In addition, the text contains a brief but meaningful dialogue about faith and unbelief (vv. 23-24). At first glance, the connection is not completely clear: after all, even Gentiles sometimes received healing, as happened with the Syrophoenician woman mentioned in this same Gospel (Mark 7:25-30). But much here becomes clearer if we consider the meaning of the word "faith." In modern religious language, faith often means conviction that certain opinions or ideas about God, the human person, spiritual life, and other religiously important matters are correct. Meanwhile, both the Hebrew word usually translated into Russian as "faith" and the corresponding Greek word used by the evangelist mean not so much faith as conviction, but faithfulness and trust toward the one to whom such faithfulness has been promised. Faithfulness and trust were the foundation of the relationship between Jesus and all those whom He met during His earthly ministry. If trust did not arise from the beginning between Him and those with whom He interacted, further interaction became impossible, just as it did in cases when a person who had once trusted Jesus then betrayed Him for some reason. But if a relationship was not established or was broken, then the Kingdom of God was closed to that person, for it is inseparable from the person of Jesus Himself; in that case, there could be no question of healing either. Such a person could still keep his religious convictions, but convictions and views by themselves cannot open the Kingdom to anyone. Conversely, trust in Jesus opens it even to a Gentile who, like the Syrophoenician woman who came to Him, may have had no carefully developed religious worldview at all. What matters to Jesus, it appears, is personal relationship with a particular person, or its absence, more than that person's worldview.

The episode of healing the possessed man, of freeing him from the power of dark forces, is remarkable for a detail to which the evangelist pays special attention. He writes that Jesus' disciples could not drive the demon out of the man possessed by it, and that only the Savior Himself succeeded. His words about the faithless generation, or "race," are often understood as addressed to the possessed man's relatives, first of all to his father, who had brought his son to Jesus' disciples.

Yet the question of the addressee of these words remains open. They could equally have been addressed to the disciples, who could not do what they had already had to do more than once, at least during the mission on which their Teacher had once sent them. Then, during that mission, they had had to drive out demons and free possessed people from the power of dark forces. Perhaps this is precisely why the possessed man's father turns to them: reports of healings performed by the disciples of this mysterious Man had most likely reached him.

It turned out, however, that even the disciples were not as strong as people said, and then all that remained was to turn to their Teacher. If even He could not help, then the case was hopeless. Jesus, of course, succeeds, and He pronounces those very words about the faithless generation. Later the disciples ask Him: why did it not work for us? The question was reasonable. They remembered that it had worked before, and they must have perceived their failure as an annoying mistake whose cause they needed to learn in order to avoid such errors in the future. Jesus answers by speaking about prayer, without which nothing will work.

In later editions of the Gospel text, a mention of fasting is added to prayer; it is absent from the earlier editions. But this addition, which probably existed originally as a marginal note, changes nothing essential, since fasting has meaning only when it contributes to intensified prayer. The meaning of the answer is clear: the disciples' main mistake was that they decided they had already achieved something, received something, acquired some new quality of spiritual life that was now inalienable. Jesus tells them this is not so, that all their achievements are possible only in the context of continuous spiritual movement connected with continuous prayer; only then are miracles, healings, and the casting out of evil spirits possible.

Once a person stops spiritually and falls out of this spiritual movement, he loses everything and becomes completely powerless, as the disciples were before the possessed man. This is no surprise: miracles and healings are possible only by the power of the Kingdom and its breath, and they exist only in continuous movement, which in turn is possible only with continuous conscious relationships with Christ. It is no accident that Jesus speaks of a faithless generation, for precisely such relationships are called faith, and this is what the disciples lacked.

Having seen the glory of the transfigured Jesus, the disciples “come down from heaven to earth,” both literally and figuratively. They see the helplessness of their brothers, who are unable to help the unfortunate young man; they see how lack of faith overcomes them and the boy's father more powerfully than any demon. Faith truly is a gift: it cannot be accumulated, it can be lost in an instant, and it may fail us at the most important moment of our lives. Christ's voice sounds almost despairing: “If you can believe even a little...” But even when not even “a little” faith remains, Christ does not disappear. He is an objective reality, far more real than all our moments of darkness. And so we can always cry out to Him: help me; I cannot believe, I do not know how—but You are near, You love me, and You can help.

The Transfiguration is a prototype of the Kingdom. More precisely, it is the Kingdom itself, revealed for now only locally, in connection with one Person alone - the One who brought this Kingdom into the world. In essence, the Transfiguration was nothing other than the manifestation of the Savior's transfigured bodily life, His human nature, a manifestation of it in the form it has in the Kingdom when the Kingdom is fully revealed.

In the fallen world the Kingdom is not yet fully revealed; it is only entering it. Therefore the manifestation of transfigured humanity in it occurs only as an exception and is visible not to everyone, but only to those who have already shared sufficiently in the life of the Kingdom. Such was the manifestation of the Savior's transfigured human nature. In essence, this was His real human nature, the one that fully corresponded to His spiritual state.

Remaining in the human body familiar to us was for Him a kind of self-emptying, what theologians call kenosis. In this case, the true state of God or of a person is hidden from those to whom God or the person reveals himself. For God, kenosis is the only possibility for communion with humanity, but for a person too kenosis often becomes absolutely necessary if his spiritual state differs significantly from the state of those with whom he has to communicate. Jesus as Man had to resort to kenosis not only in order to communicate with ordinary people, but simply in order to remain in our fallen world.

Now, on the Mount of Transfiguration, He appeared to the disciples as He truly was, in His real body. It is not surprising that the disciples perceived this manifestation as a miracle; it was indeed a miracle, an invasion of the Kingdom into our world. It is no accident that immediately after the Transfiguration Jesus begins to tell the disciples about the path He must take so that the Kingdom may enter the world completely and in fullness. The disciples are still perplexed. Much time will pass before they understand everything, but that is inevitable: every understanding has its time.

Today's reading is devoted to one of the most important events of the Savior's earthly ministry: the Transfiguration. Judging by the mention in the text of "booths," that is, shelters (v. 5), it took place during the days of the Jewish feast of Sukkot, which is spoken of in the Old Testament books, where it is mentioned as the "feast of harvest" (Exod 23:16), that is, a feast dedicated to the completion of the gathering of the harvest. The word "sukkot" in Hebrew means "booths." It is usually celebrated at the end of September or in the first half of October, and over time it acquired a new meaning, becoming not only a feast of the completion of the harvest, but also a time when believing Jews remember the years of wandering through the wilderness on the way from Egypt to the promised land. It is customary to spend the days of the feast not at home, but in booths in the open air; the climate of Palestine permits this. Such a break with the established order of life is meant to remind one of the wilderness, where nothing was yet secure or permanent, but where God's closeness to the human being was experienced with special vividness, since in the wilderness there was no one else to rely on. One of the signs of God's presence from ancient times was considered to be the cloud that at night emitted a radiance like the light coming from fire: by such a cloud God, as it were, marked the place where a person could find Him. It was first seen during the Exodus (Exod 13:21-22), and then it regularly appeared over the Tabernacle, the traveling sanctuary of the Hebrews (Num 9:15-16). It was called the "glory of the Lord" (Exod 40:34-38), because precisely with its appearance believers associated God's dwelling among His people. It is no wonder that, seeing Jesus in shining garments, overshadowed by a radiant cloud from which the voice of God was heard (vv. 3-7), the apostles became finally convinced that before them was indeed the Messiah-Christ promised by God. Their first desire at this was to stop time so that the feast would last forever, building booths at the place of the event and remaining in them forever (vv. 5-6). But Jesus immediately explained to them that His earthly ministry had not yet been completed, and that the Kingdom of God would be fully revealed only after His death and Resurrection (v. 9).

The disciples go up after Jesus, become witnesses of His transfiguration, see His glory, and hear the Father's word about the Son. Three evangelists tell of this event, and all three connect it with Christ's words that some of His disciples will see the Kingdom of God come with power. If this really was a "taste of the Kingdom," then how does the disciples' experience differ from ours?

We, like them, try to follow Christ (sometimes successfully, sometimes not, just as they did); we believe in His glory, in His divinity; through His words in the Gospel we hear the voice of the Father... The only thing we lack is the experiential sensation, as vivid as the one that seized the disciples then in the radiance of unearthly light. But have we not been told: "...blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29)? Do we not taste the Kingdom even before death, uniting ourselves by faith with its Source?