NOTES for Luk 9:1-27

Luke briefly touches on a whole series of events about which the other evangelists, especially Matthew, speak in greater detail. He gives the central place to Peter's confession and to Jesus' account of His approaching death and resurrection. There is a logic to this presentation. First of all, the Savior lets His disciples feel the power of the Kingdom and learn from their own experience how this power acts in the world. And not only them: the miraculous feeding of thousands of people with five loaves and two fish is also possible only in the Kingdom. This is not surprising: when it comes to the Kingdom, it is easier to show than to tell. Meanwhile, even those who had previously taken no interest in Christ's testimony begin to notice it—for example, Herod, who was generally wary of every kind of messianic movement that threatened his power.

This is precisely why, immediately after Peter's confession, Jesus explains to the disciples just how different the messiahship He has brought into the world is. Of course, the apostles fully understood everything Jesus told them only on the day of Pentecost. But it was immediately after Peter's confession that He began speaking to them about His messiahship and His path. It is as though He is trying to make everything clear from the outset, so that His messianic ministry will not become associated in His disciples' minds with traditional popular messianic expectations.

From the very beginning, the Savior does everything possible to help His disciples understand as much as they can of what they will have to understand fully in due time. This is natural: Golgotha lay ahead. The disciples had to be prepared, as far as possible, for what awaited them—and what awaited them was the shock of the complete collapse of their entire worldview and sense of the world. Only the experience of the Kingdom could help them endure it—not the earthly kingdom of popular expectations, but the true Kingdom, the one the Savior brought into the world.

The apostles gained as much experience of the Kingdom as was then possible after they went out to preach on their own, without their Teacher. The new ideas about the Kingdom proved more difficult: they would not fit into the disciples' minds or find room in their consciousness. All that remained was to rely on their intuition and, above all, on the personal relationship that bound them to Jesus. Nevertheless, He tells the apostles everything that can be said in human words about His earthly path and earthly ministry. And then each one takes in as much of His words as he is able to take in.

Today's reading brings together several short narratives, but Christ and the disciples stand at the center of each. In all these passages He gives them a special gift: unity. It can take shape in very different things—in shared trust and hope in God, in their shared experience as eyewitnesses to miracles and healings, in a shared meal, the breaking of the multiplied loaves, in a common confession of faith, in following Jesus together into suffering, and—summing all this up—in the shared experience of the Kingdom that has come in power. This path of unity is open to us as well: in common prayer, in the breaking of bread, in shared faith—in a relationship with Jesus in which there is not merely my personal faith, but the realization that, living together with one another and with Him, we become one Body.

When the Lord sends the twelve apostles out to preach, He charges them to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to bear witness to those who are willing to receive their testimony. At the beginning of the next chapter He gives the same charge to the seventy apostles. Both the Twelve and the Seventy are called to rely on God and not to take unnecessary provisions for the journey. The characteristic distinction noted by the evangelist Luke is that the twelve apostles also receive the power and the charge to cast out evil spirits and heal diseases. This is precisely why the next generation of Christians already spoke of Christ as having “established His Church on the foundation of the twelve apostles.” For He endowed them with His own power and authority and gave them the commission that He Himself fulfilled in His ministry. The distinctive feature of the charge to the twelve apostles indicated by Luke is important because it characterizes not only their task at that particular moment but also the essence of the Church the Lord is building. Like the apostles, the whole apostolic Church continues Christ’s ministry on earth: proclaiming the Kingdom and healing damaged human nature.

Jesus is truly a Teacher: He alternates "theoretical instruction" for His disciples with "practical lessons." In fact, they spend only three years with their Mentor, receiving from Him everything they are able to receive, and then they will have to carry the Gospel and preach the Kingdom of God throughout the whole world. While they are still learning, they must taste the mission, see how the word of God acts in the world, how evil retreats, how the eyes of people who receive the Good News light up. Later, after Christ's Ascension, they will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and accept a special power for witness to Christ, but already now Jesus equips them with everything needed for preaching: instructions, and "power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases."

Mission is service, so the messengers must not display worldly power or wealth; they are called to rely on God in everything. Their task is to bring the message, not to persuade or force people to accept it, and the healing of the sick is not a bright show meant to attract unbelievers, but simply a nonverbal witness that the Kingdom of God has drawn near.

Sending the apostles out to preach, Jesus tells them not to make distinctions among the houses where they will have to stay, and not to hide from anyone the message they bear. Even rejection itself was not to be perceived by them as a failure of the mission, for their task was to bear witness to the Kingdom, and the rest was left to the free choice of those who heard.

Such an approach could seem somewhat unusual in those days. The institution of messengers, and the word "apostle" properly means messenger, had a quite specific meaning in the life of religious brotherhoods of the Gospel era. Such messengers were the connecting link among the separate communities that belonged to the brotherhood. Since the brotherhoods had no rigid hierarchical structure and were community movements, the role of such messengers was very important: they became living witnesses of important events in one or another community, events about which the members of that community considered it necessary to inform their brothers from other communities.

Preaching to outsiders, as a rule, was not part of the task of such apostles-messengers; special missionaries existed for that. But Jesus, while calling His disciples messengers, at the same time also proposes that they be missionaries, and more than that, that they be missionaries first of all, and that they consider the whole people of God, the whole Synagogue, as their community. Such an approach was unusual at the very least. But the witness of Jesus' apostles was unusual as well.

Ordinary apostles-messengers bore witness to something significant for their own religious brotherhood, usually in the context of that brotherhood's religious life, and each brotherhood's religious life had its own features. But the apostles sent by Jesus were to bear witness not to religious life, but to the Kingdom which, according to the Savior's word, had "drawn near." This approaching Kingdom was what Christ's apostles were to testify to, and to testify in such a way that its nearness would become obvious to everyone who wanted to see.

For such witness the community truly was the whole people of God, because the matter was not some specific religious tradition or religious practice, but something that concerned everyone who belonged to that people: the Messiah and the Kingdom, the things of which the prophets had spoken. And Jesus tells the apostles not to make distinctions and not to hide the message from anyone, so as to bring into the Kingdom everyone who wants it. For the issue is salvation, and God wants to save everyone, regardless of the religious tradition to which that person belongs.

Having gathered the twelve disciples, Jesus sends them out to preach. But their task is not merely to proclaim the Kingdom of God; they must embody it in their lives. They are to live in complete trust in God, relying on themselves in nothing and taking nothing for the journey. They must pass fearlessly from town to town, staying now in one house, now in another, never having a permanent shelter and at the same time regarding the whole world as their home. How powerful Christ's words must have been for the apostles to set out through towns and villages without hesitation, fulfilling His command. How strong their faith must have been for them to dare to heal the sick—not as learned physicians but as simple fishermen—simply because the Teacher had commanded it.

This call to proclaim the Kingdom of God with our whole life is addressed to each of us. And the Lord does not limit Himself to issuing the call: He gives us the strength to fulfill it.

Sending His disciples to preach, Jesus gives them two assignments: to bear witness to the Kingdom that has drawn near, and to heal the sick. It would seem that these are two different tasks, but that is only how it appears at first glance.

Of course, if the healings mentioned in the Gospels were simply something like supernatural medicine, one could say that different things are involved, that witness to the Kingdom and healings are indeed two different tasks. But the evangelists speak about the healings performed both by Jesus and by His disciples precisely as manifestations of the Kingdom. Of course, one can deliver a person from illness by entirely natural means. Here it is no longer essential whether ordinary medicine is meant or so-called alternative medicine: even in the second case, no miracles in the strict sense actually occur; rather, certain mechanisms deeply hidden in human nature and usually not involved, at least in the fallen state, are being engaged.

A true miracle begins where God acts, and not the possibilities hidden in human nature. But God's action too can be different, and here much depends on the measure of a person's involvement in His action and on the fullness of a person's awareness of God's plan for him. It often happens that God heals a person, and then the person falls ill again, often with the very same illness. Usually such a situation is connected with the fact that, receiving healing as a gift from God, the one healed does not understand it as a spiritual advance for solving his spiritual problems and carrying out the spiritual tasks before him.

But when witness to the Kingdom is involved, everything is somewhat different. It is no accident that near Jesus some are healed and others are not, that in some places He manifests the power of the Kingdom and in others, because of the unbelief and rejection of the local inhabitants, He does not. Here healing, deliverance from illness, becomes the consequence of a person's entering the Kingdom, beginning to live its life; and illness and death are incompatible with the life of the Kingdom. But in order to be freed from them, one must contain the life of the Kingdom in all the fullness possible for that specific person and live by it alone.

Of course, no one can guarantee to a person who has once come into contact with the Kingdom that everything will be exactly so for him. But in any case, healing at contact with the Kingdom opens to a person that fullness of life which, if he is persistent and consistent, he will be able to acquire and live by. Such experience was the best witness to the Kingdom, and that is why Jesus entrusts His disciples with bearing witness to the Kingdom precisely through healings, in the form most obvious to the inhabitants of the fallen world.

As we can see, the preaching of Jesus Himself and of His disciples causes fear and bewilderment among the authorities, first of all in Herod. In principle, there is nothing surprising in this: the authorities, both local and Roman in the person of their representatives in Palestine, were generally wary in those days of all kinds of religious and religious-political movements in Palestine in general and in Judea in particular. They watched especially closely any movement, even one only beginning to emerge, in which there was the slightest hint of messianism. That is not surprising either: popular messianic ideas in those days would inevitably have transformed any messianic movement into an uprising directed both against Rome and against its local appointees, such as Herod, who had the status of a Roman ally. In this case, alliance was the historically formed shape of a more or less honorable vassalage. But Herod's fear, apparently, was not caused only by these quite rational considerations. His fear appears to have been irrational in the stricter sense.

When Herod heard about Jesus and His preaching, and then about the preaching of the apostles whom He had sent, he began rushing about feverishly, trying to understand what it all meant. Had John risen from the dead? Or had the ancient prophet Elijah come down again from heaven, the one of whom popular traditions said that, after leaving the earth in a heavenly chariot, he would return shortly before the day of the last Judgment and the coming of the Messiah? This was clearly the fear of a corrupt man and a murderer, the fear of a sinner afraid of retribution, whether from God, from the zealot "enthusiasts," or from some other force unknown even to him and therefore still more terrifying.

As we can see, the murder of John the Baptist became the last straw that stirred up in the sinful ruler's soul a real storm of fears and manias that had previously been suppressed. It is no accident that the evangelist mentions that Herod liked to talk with John, even when John was already in prison by Herod's own order. Herod hated John, feared him, and, paradoxically, still, if he did not love him, at least felt drawn to him. Communication with John was necessary for Herod.

Perhaps this contact with a righteous man restrained the powers of darkness already nesting in his heart, just as contact with David restrained them in the soul of another sinful ruler, Saul. And the execution of John, which Herod did not want at all, freed the darkness that nested in Herod's soul from the last barrier that kept it from finally taking possession of the sinful king's heart. So Herod began rushing about, foreseeing the inevitable sorrowful end. An end that came quite soon.

Herod was always afraid of the Messiah's coming. In truth, he did not seem to believe very much in the Messiah. It would be more accurate to say that he feared any messianic movements that periodically flared up in different parts of Palestine. This happened more often in Judea, but sometimes also in Galilee, which Herod ruled. Herod hardly believed seriously in God, but he fully believed that another messianic movement could lead to his losing power.

Meanwhile, in Gospel times many popular legends and images were connected with the Messiah. They were not always rooted in the sacred books; just as often, if not more often, their sources were popular traditions and legends, sometimes strangely intertwined with mythological plots. One such plot was connected with the image of the great ancient prophet Elijah. The early prophetic books, to be precise, the Fourth Book of Kings, mention Elijah's ascent into heaven. On the basis of this account, a popular legend arose that before the Messiah's coming Elijah would return to earth in order to foretell His coming.

Herod was not a believer, but judging by the testimony of contemporaries, he was very superstitious. He feared the dead. Not, of course, those who rested in their tombs, but those who, as it seemed to him, could come out of those tombs and take revenge on him. Herod did not believe in resurrection, of course, but he feared shadows coming out of tombs, as well as heroes of popular legends descending from heaven. And now he was perplexed.

He had already executed John the Baptist. And he regretted this execution: it seems not to have been part of his plans, and the decision was made, as often happened with Herod, in the heat of the moment, out of foolishness and frivolity. And now it seemed to him that this Unknown One had come to avenge John. Herod did not understand the meaning of what was happening, but with some subconscious feeling he sensed a connection between the executed John and this incomprehensible new threat. Yet this did not bring him any closer to understanding what was happening. Understanding requires more than instinct and intuition; it requires clear spiritual sight, which faith gives. Sight that Herod did not have and could not have.

There can hardly be any doubt that the miraculous feeding of the many-thousand-person crowd with five loaves and two fish was yet another of the many manifestations of the Kingdom mentioned in the Gospel. It was a manifestation that neither the people gathered to listen to Jesus nor the apostles expected at all: it is no accident that the disciples asked Jesus whether they should go and buy bread for all the multitude of people around Him. But He acts differently, letting not only the apostles but everyone present see what the Kingdom is, where nature is completely subject to the spirit.

But in order to feel the breath of the Kingdom, one had to enter this Kingdom. Of course, the easiest way to enter it was to hold, figuratively and sometimes even literally, the hand of Jesus. Yet He, as we can see, wants those who are walking to form a spiritual chain whose participants can also hold on to one another. Apparently it is precisely for this purpose that He tells the disciples to seat the people in groups of fifty.

It should be noted that in Judaism the number ten, and numbers that are multiples of ten, generally have special meaning. The point is that ten people, more precisely, ten men who have reached religious adulthood, are enough to form a prayer assembly, to organize a community that will be considered a synagogue. And Jesus is clearly not simply organizing the crowd at random; He is turning it into a fellowship based on separate communities of fifty people each.

This appears to be the very form that, according to the Savior's design, the Kingdom was to take in our transforming but not yet transformed world: it was to become a collection of communities, communities including those who seek the Kingdom and those who have already managed to share in its life. In this way the spiritual chain of those seeking salvation and the Kingdom was to take shape and grow. But it was needed not only to help those seeking the Kingdom, but also so that the Kingdom itself would receive the form of its existence in our transforming world, not yet transformed to the end. A form that would allow it to grow, including ever new people, conquering ever new hearts.

All four Gospels speak of the miraculous multiplication of the loaves, telling of meals for many thousands of people that Jesus arranged as a sign of the coming Kingdom of God. In it there will be no more hostility, hunger, or indifference, and so all people will gather around God's table for a feast. This is exactly what Jesus begins to do, thereby affirming that the Kingdom has come: everyone can come to Him and taste the "bread of life."

Everyone can come, but the closest disciples will be asked for an essential effort of spirit: to understand still more deeply the meaning of these meals, to see in their Teacher not only the herald of the Kingdom, but also its Center, the Anointed One around whom all nations will gather at God's table. Once they have learned His mystery, they must hear strange and frightening words about the approaching trials awaiting Christ and His disciples. The evangelist shows how the disciples gradually walk the path of faith, coming to know their Teacher more and more and taking on an ever greater burden of faith, which does not always speak of joy and victories. He hopes that his readers will also walk this path.

Peter's confession, which took place after the feeding of 5,000 people with 5 loaves, is a turning point in the Gospel story. The crowds of people who follow Christ and the Twelve without letup are moved by very different motives. The apostles answer the Lord that some of these people take Him for John, others for Elijah or other ancient prophets, and follow Him in order to receive the washing of repentance or a miraculous healing, or simply to touch "the divine." The Lord Himself says with sorrow: "you seek Me... because you ate of the loaves and were filled" (John 6:26). His attempt to reveal the Father's design to these people leads to grumbling among the Jews, so that many of the disciples leave Him.

But the prophet Amos says that "God does nothing without revealing His secret to His servants the prophets" (Amos 3:7). This is true also of God's design for the salvation of the world. In order for people to accept the sacrifice of the Cross, they need to understand what it is. In order for people to accept the Way of salvation given to us in Christ, it is necessary to see Him precisely as the Way and the Truth and the Life. And in a secluded place near Caesarea Philippi, of which the evangelist Luke speaks, the Lord asks His disciples a direct question: "But who do you say that I am?" It is important that the evangelist John, supplementing the account of the Synoptic Gospels, formulates this question differently: "Do you also want to go away?" These twelve people are the last ones to whom the Lord can address a direct question...

When Peter, on behalf of all the disciples, confesses Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Lord for the first time reveals to the disciples the design for the salvation of the world. The Crucifixion and Resurrection are opened to the disciples, and to us through their witness, as Pascha: the passing of the living God through our human life. There is no salvation for us if some man, even a prophet, died for us. There is not even salvation for us if God simply remade the laws of the universe so that sin would not lead to death; in an altered world we would not remain ourselves. Salvation is given to us in this: the Son of God became the Son of Man and shared our lot with us, opening to us the path to Resurrection. To set foot on this path, each of us, like Peter and the apostles, must see in Jesus of Nazareth the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Peter's confession is undoubtedly one of the most important moments in the spiritual life of the apostolic community. And precisely at this moment Jesus begins to speak to His disciples about His death on the cross and about His resurrection. Sooner or later this conversation had to take place. But why precisely now? Because spiritually the disciples were ready to hear what the Teacher said to them.

Of course, this does not mean that their reason was ready to receive what they heard. With their minds they could not contain what was said until the Teacher's resurrection itself, and if we speak of its full meaning, not until the day of Pentecost. The point was something else: Peter's confession, with which all the apostles agreed, obliged them to accept certain things without accepting which the apostles could not have remained apostles. Jesus was in no way like the image of the Messiah that was characteristic of popular religiosity and was so close and understandable to the apostles.

Even on the day of the Savior's ascension, the disciples expected from Him that now, at last, He would become a "real," "proper" Messiah, restore an independent Jewish state, and in general finally carry out the religious-political program whose realization the people of those times expected from the Messiah. It is no accident that Jesus forbids them to tell anyone about His messiahship: He, of course, understands perfectly well what appeals will follow from it. The disciples understood everything differently: they decided that the time had not yet come, that the uprising had to be prepared, and that until then they had to keep silent about their Teacher's messiahship.

And yet, despite all the misunderstandings and failures to understand, Jesus tells them what they now had to hear. To hear and to accept. There was no other way: for it was God who had revealed to Peter who stood before him. Now he, like all the other apostles, had to learn everything. And to decide for himself, as each of the apostles had to decide: whether he accepts what the Teacher has said or rejects it. The issue here was not whether what had been said fit into their consciousness or not. The main question was only this: whether the disciples, after everything they had heard, would still be able to trust the Teacher, or would not be able to. "Yes" meant the path into the Kingdom; "no" meant the path of Judas, the path into the outer darkness.

The Savior's words about the cross, it would seem, would not have been very clear to His listeners: His death on the cross still lay ahead. But the Jews of the Gospel era knew firsthand what a cross was: about a century before the events described by the evangelist, when Judea was still independent, during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, there was an uprising under religious slogans, led by representatives of the Pharisaic movement. It was brutally suppressed, and hundreds of its participants were crucified.

Such an execution was not only agonizing and shameful: death on a cross defiled a person religiously, and the authorities clearly wanted to humiliate the rebels in this respect as well. That is why Jesus' words were understandable to every one of His listeners, especially the Pharisees, who, of course, had not forgotten their martyrs. But Jesus clearly has in mind not religious and political questions at all, although those who were ready to see Him as the Messiah expected from Him precisely a call to struggle, to an uprising against the Romans, to a holy war against the Gentiles who occupied the holy city.

The Savior speaks of the Kingdom that is "not of this world," and of the new life lived by its inhabitants. And He says: whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever gives it up for My sake will save it. These words sound paradoxical. But if we think carefully, if we look at earthly life from the point of view of the fullness of the Kingdom's life, everything falls into place.

In fact, sooner or later one has to part with what the fallen world calls life: in essence, it is not life at all, but only its pitiful remains, flowing away like water into sand. And even if a person, having refused the Kingdom, receives the whole world in exchange, that very untransformed world into which the Savior came in order to bring the transforming Kingdom, the life of the one who refused will not become fuller from such power. But to give up a part and receive fullness in return is an entirely reasonable and entirely real way out. For the life of the Kingdom is not some other life flowing in some other dimension. It is the same life of ours, only brought to fullness. To the fullness possible in the Kingdom, but unthinkable in the untransformed world.