NOTES for Joh 12:1-19

Answering Judas's remark, the Lord says that, unlike the poor, He will not always be with the disciples. He went away, but He remained - this is the mystery of our faith. And He remained in those very poor whom Judas supposedly wanted to comfort ("What you did to them, you did to Me" Matt 25).

And there truly are many poor people around, and it is not only a matter of income or poverty - everyone lacks the living minimum of love. Are we not poor too?

And it is precisely thanks to this mystical presence of Jesus among us - on our streets, in the subway, in our homes - that we can follow Mary of Bethany, who showed mercy to her Lord by anointing Him with costly spices. To show love to those poor in love - this is our anointing too, for which Christ is always near.

Why does an enthusiastic crowd meet Jesus on the streets of Jerusalem? The Evangelist answers this question quite plainly: because the news that He had raised Lazarus had already spread through the city, since Bethany is very close to Jerusalem. And, of course, many people then thought that the long-awaited Messiah had finally come: it was His coming that would mark the beginning of that universal resurrection before the Last Judgment, in which most believing Jews of that time believed and for which they waited. It would seem that this faith and these expectations fully matched the main goal of the Savior's earthly ministry, whose fulfillment was already very near. Victory over death was close; it seemed that nothing now prevented Him from declaring it openly.

And yet there was something that substantially distinguished the people's expectations from the new reality coming into the world. The report of Lazarus's resurrection, or more precisely the reaction of the Jerusalem crowd to it, marked this difference as clearly as nothing else could. The people truly were waiting for and wanted a universal resurrection. But they saw this resurrection as a return to the understandable and familiar life of the untransfigured world, which, if only it were freed from illnesses and the threat of an unavoidable end, seemed to them an ideal. Of course, a solution to all social problems was also expected: in the messianic Kingdom there would be not only no sick people, but no poor people either; everyone would be fed and, if not rich, at least well-off. And many of those who greeted Jesus thought that now, when "the process had begun," He would finally proclaim Himself openly as the Messiah and take up what had long been expected of Him: drive the Romans and other Gentiles out of Judea, stand at the head of the newly created state, solve all social problems, issue just laws based on the Torah, and solve every problem miraculously, just as He had acted until now, healing, raising the dead, and feeding the crowds.

And perhaps only Jesus Himself knew that nothing of the sort would happen. The resurrection would begin only at the moment of His death on the cross, when the tombs would be opened and the first righteous people would come out of them, raised not to their former life but to a new life, to the life of that Kingdom which He brought into the world.

Actually, it is a perfectly reasonable thought: not to spend money on some symbolic actions, but to go and give it to the poor. And for some reason Jesus approves this gesture, which brings no practical benefit...

Why does Mary anoint Jesus' feet and wipe them with her hair? It is perfectly obvious that she did not think for a second about His burial. If we had asked her why she did this, she would not have been able to answer. But Jesus does not ask. Without words He understands the main thing: she did it out of love. And everything else no longer matters; even a mad act done out of love is beautiful and precious. More than that, such an act acquires a deeper meaning than the person doing it could have imagined.

But there is one small note: all this is true only in those cases when the driving force is love and only love. As soon as some other motive appears, a meaningless act remains meaningless.

Let us imagine a small town - Bethany, where Jesus and the disciples have gathered for another supper. Lazarus was also there, recently raised by Jesus, as were his sisters Martha and Mary and perhaps some other close people. Bethany still remembers the grief of these sisters, the disciples' bewilderment, Jesus' tears, and the amazing miracle of resurrection. And now many who were probably participants in and witnesses of this miracle have gathered at one table.

As always, conversation is going on. Jesus is telling something, or, on the contrary, listening to those close to Him, supporting them with a look, a smile, a word. The meal has already begun. And then one of the sisters does something that every person who hears the preaching of the Gospel will hear about (see Matt. 26:13). The house is filled with the fragrance of myrrh and of love brought to Jesus. Everyone is silent. Jesus Himself is silent, and so are all those present, not knowing how to react, or perhaps having understood that a reaction clothed in words is not needed. And only the emptiness in Judas's heart, which is not filled with love, cries out.

This can be called anything: betrayal, hypocrisy, calculation, greed, putting one's own opinion forward as the most important, and so on. Besides all this, the list may include qualities very necessary and useful to people. But one thing is clear: this is "non-love." Love can be displaced or replaced; one can act correctly and righteously (as the Pharisees, for example), but without love, and then it has no value, because it sweeps away everything in its path.

Let us try, during the coming Passion Week, before doing anything, to invite Love into our hearts, and therefore Christ. For where Love is, there God is.

As so often happens, among the people involved in events few understand what is taking place, and often no one understands at all. The crowds welcome the King, but those present at His entry into Jerusalem were hardly able to hear that His Kingdom is unlike every earthly kingdom and that Jesus has no intention of replacing one set of earthly rulers with another, equally familiar set. Were those who heard about the raising of Lazarus capable of understanding that what had happened was not an isolated miracle, but a pledge of the universal Resurrection?

It is difficult for us fully to understand the feelings of the people of Jerusalem and of the pilgrims gathered in the city, but they are clearly waiting for something other than what Christ is bringing. Yet He is going toward sufferings that many of those who first welcomed Him will not understand, and He knows it. Even a superficial acceptance of Christ, like the greetings of the rejoicing crowds, can become the foundation for a deeper understanding of what He has brought into the world. But it may fail to do so if that first approach to Him is mistaken for fullness of understanding.

Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem is perhaps His only clear and public testimony to His messiahship. Now, when only a little remained before the completion of His earthly path, there was no longer any danger that He would be placed at the head of some messianic uprising, though His own disciples were hoping for precisely such an uprising, right to the very end. Meanwhile the evangelist emphasizes that the people greet Jesus as the Messiah above all because rumors had spread widely through the city about the miraculous raising of Lazarus. This was understandable: if even one person had truly risen from the dead, then surely the very day of Judgment and the general resurrection spoken of by the prophets had come. And the one who raised him was obviously the Messiah. This logic was simple and clear, and it fit well within popular messianic ideas.

In reality, however, everything was far from so simple. Popular ideas about the Messiah went no further than the image of the Messiah as a great earthly King. Of course, this King was not imagined as an ordinary human being. He could, for example, perform miracles and even raise the dead. But His Kingdom was imagined as a fully earthly kingdom. And the life of this earthly kingdom was also, in general, fully earthly. Of course, it fully corresponded to the Torah. Of course, it had that measure of the nearness of God's presence without which the coming of the Messiah was unthinkable. And, of course, it did not have that triumph of death characteristic of the present age. But people remained the same. They only became righteous and pious. In the best sense of those words, but still in an earthly way.

Jesus' raising of Lazarus fit entirely within these ideas about the Kingdom. No one thought that such a resurrection was only a foretaste. A preparation for the main thing. Lazarus was not raised into that new life which Jesus brought with Him. He was raised because of that new life. But he did not contain it within himself. His nature remained the same. He returned to the life lived by people of the untransformed world.

But the Savior came to give the human person more. To unite him with the fullness of life, not with a small part of it. This is what those who greeted Him in the streets of Jerusalem could not understand. They thought the main thing had already happened, but it was still ahead. Even Jesus' closest disciples did not yet know this. He alone knew.

When it comes to the Savior's earthly ministry, we understand that something unique is at issue: indeed, He alone was destined to be born and to live His earthly life as the Messiah; this was given to no one else. And yet His life became a kind of spiritual model suitable for every one of His followers. Moreover, there is simply no other model that allows one to enter the Kingdom, and apparently there cannot be, at least in our world that has undergone the fall.

This model is very simple in theory and not so simple in practice: a person must agree to part with his own life in order then to receive it again, but now as another life, in a new quality suitable for the Kingdom. The one who loves his life ("soul") as it is, in its present condition, cannot count on the Kingdom. The demand appears excessively harsh, but as we can see, this harshness is caused precisely by the specific nature of the fallen world, of which the life of each of us is a part. Even Jesus Himself, over whom original sin has no power, was not, during His earthly ministry, completely free from this specific nature: He, being fully and to the end an inhabitant of our untransformed world and part of it, became subject, if not to sin, then to death - though, of course, not in the same way as we are: death was possible for Him, not inevitable as it is for us.

And the only thing that can help us is readiness to renounce our life in its present quality, what Jesus calls "hating one's own life." It is worth remembering that in biblical language love and hatred denote not the emotional states we often mean by them, but an attitude of acceptance or nonacceptance toward that to which our will is directed. Nonacceptance of life, including first of all one's own life, in its present quality and state, and readiness to part with it for the sake of another, new life, constitute the necessary preliminary condition for beginning the path into the Kingdom: the path during which our former life will be remelted into a new one, fit for eternity.

When the Greeks come to Jesus, they ask Philip for help. For some reason he goes to Andrew. It is hard to think the apostle was afraid to approach the Teacher himself. It is just as unlikely that Andrew was Christ's personal secretary, in charge of the Teacher's schedule. The matter is something quite different.

Something unusual is happening. For the first time, other peoples responding to Jesus' preaching are mentioned, even if they believe in the same God as the Jews. The community of Christ's disciples is encountering something new. And therefore Philip behaves very naturally: he does not hurry to act on his own. Jesus sent the apostles out to preach not one by one, but two by two (see Mark 6:7).

Who knows: perhaps Philip went to Andrew precisely because he was "paired" with him? Besides, Philip surely remembers how Christ said, "Where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am among them" (Matt 18:20).

The Lord lays the foundation of the Church in this way: not scattered believers, but disciples coming to Him together. When we do not understand what to do, when we want to know God's will, we should not rely exclusively on how we ourselves hear it. God has given us His Church to help us: He has given us elders, He has given us brothers and sisters with whom we can turn to Him together. And so His word is fulfilled: "If two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven" (Matt 18:19).

There are turning points in human history that may remain outwardly unnoticed, yet still be the true cause of major historical events. When “some Greeks” ask the apostle Philip to arrange a meeting with Jesus, just such a turning point arrives, and the Lord says of it: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

The fact is that the entire history of the Old Testament religion unfolded amid a glaring contradiction between the universal character of the divine revelation given in it and the narrowly national character of the religion itself. To be a participant in the Covenant with God and to be a Jew by blood were regarded as one and the same thing. The prophets repeatedly proclaimed that the day would come when the Lord would call all nations to Himself, but this time was associated with the future coming of the Messiah. And now that day had arrived.

It is in this universal context that Christ’s words, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to Myself,” should be understood. This is why the Greeks’ desire to meet Christ becomes such a turning point in history.