NOTES for Luk 7:1-17

Today we return again to such a fundamental concept as faith. In the Bible this word most often means not simply trust in some information, but the ability at a critical moment to "take hold" of God, to lean on Him as on a firm pillar or rock.

Today's story about the Roman officer who asked Jesus to heal his servant, and whom Christ sets as an example for His disciples, illustrates this well. He is a military man, trained in army discipline, and he is absolutely certain that his order will be carried out, just as he himself is ready to carry out the order of his commander. In his relationship with God, such confidence rests not on discipline and military order, where a soldier is punished with death for disobedience, but on something no less strong: namely, on faith.

Strictly speaking, when Scripture speaks about faith, it is speaking about faith that is stronger even than death, so that the sick are healed and the dead are raised.

What kind of faith did the Lord not find in Israel, as He said of the faith of the centurion from Capernaum? First, the centurion professes his faith in Christ’s divine nature. He does not expect the Teacher from Nazareth to heal by touching the sick servant or by any other means requiring His personal presence. The centurion says that he believes Christ’s will alone, expressed in His word, is enough to heal. In this way he professes His will as a creative power acting in the world beyond the bounds of physical laws, the laws of nature. Just as the hundred men placed under the centurion’s command obey him, so the whole world obeys Christ. One may think in this way of the almighty and omnipresent God, Creator of heaven and earth, or of the One Whom God Himself has sent into the world. Second, this faith compels the centurion to look first at himself. He thinks of God not as a means of solving various problems, but as a Person before Whom he will stand when Jesus comes into his house. That is why he says that he is unworthy of this visit. These two aspects of the centurion’s faith make him an example for us to follow.

As in all the cases of resurrection and healing mentioned by the evangelists, here before us is the manifestation of the Kingdom that Jesus brought into the world. In this Kingdom there is no place for sickness or death, and everyone who comes into contact with it receives life and health in all their fullness, insofar as such fullness is accessible to him within the framework of humanity not yet transformed.

But the Kingdom is not simply some place or space, even one that is somehow specially arranged or organized. The Kingdom is first of all relationships binding people with Christ and with one another. One could even say that the Kingdom as a special kind of place or space is determined by these relationships and depends on them. Indeed, if we take, for example, the story of the healing of the centurion's servant, here there is not really any single continuous physical or mystical space: at the moment when the centurion's servant was healed, Jesus was quite far from him, and the servant himself very possibly may not even have known that his master was asking for his healing. But there is one spiritual space, and it is generated by the relationships of love and trust that bound the centurion both to his servant and to Jesus.

It is quite obvious that the centurion had an altogether special attitude toward his servant, who in the original is directly called a slave: such concern for a sick slave was plainly unusual for Romans, who were by no means inclined to sentimentality. Evidently this love forced him to turn to the Teacher, about whom all kinds of rumors circulated among the people, but about whom it was known for certain that He healed everyone ready to trust Him. And the centurion truly managed to trust Jesus in a way that, according to Jesus' own testimony, few had trusted Him even among the people of God, verse 9: he did not dare call the Teacher to his house, being completely certain that His desire alone would be enough for healing, verses 6-8.

The measure of trust and love proved so great that the Kingdom became a reality not only for the centurion himself, but also for his servant, who did not see Jesus at all and perhaps even knew nothing about Him. Thus relationships give birth to the Kingdom. And then it becomes clear why Jesus is ready to enter every house where He is awaited. For those who wait for Him and receive Him thereby increase the space of the Kingdom, themselves becoming part of it, and therefore its witnesses and servants. The same kind of witnesses and servants Jesus wants to see in each of us.

In Bishop Cassian's translation, the centurion's words sound like this: "for I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under me, and I say to one, 'go,' and he goes, and to another, 'come,' and he comes, and to this slave of mine, 'do this,' and he does it". In the Synodal translation, however: "For I too am a man under authority, but having soldiers under me, I say to one: go, and he goes; and to another: come, and he comes; and to my servant: do that, and he does it."

Let us note that in the two cases the pronoun "I" and the conjunction "also" appear in a different order. This difference is not accidental. Something led the authors of the Synodal translation to change the word order, even though it is exactly that way in the original and in all modern and old translations, making the phrase hard to pronounce and unnatural in Russian. It looks very much as if it came to mean "although I too am a man under authority, yet I have under my command..." And we need to understand what this "something" is, the thing Bishop Cassian removed, because it gives a great deal, as we see it, for understanding the text.

If the centurion says, "I also am a man under authority," then he means: I, like someone else. And who is this someone else? He is speaking with Jesus. All these words are addressed to Him... In essence, the centurion is saying this. There is authority over me, and I have subordinates; there is a certain three-level hierarchy of society in which he stands in the middle between the lower and higher levels. And he says to Jesus: just like You. That is, You too have Someone over You, to whom You are subject, just as I am subject to authority. And this Someone is, of course, God. He involuntarily transfers the three-level hierarchy to which he himself is accustomed onto the whole structure of the universe. And he places Jesus in the middle, as though He were a mediator between God and man.

For us this is entirely different. For Jesus is not a mediator, but God Himself. That is precisely why in the Synodal translation these two words were rearranged and this meaning was completely removed from the text. But if we turn to the corrected text...

Yet this must not frighten us in any way; there is nothing terrible here at all. On the contrary, this is not a reason for doubt but for wonder, wonder at our Lord, at His humility, ready to accept being seen merely as a mediator and declaring the centurion's faith better than the faith He had found in Israel. Let us note that only comparative descriptions are used here; the centurion's faith is by no means recognized as the ideal of faith for all times and peoples. But it was already a breakthrough, already a step, to see in Him God's envoy, a Man subject to God; that is already very, very much, and the Lord values this step so highly.

The Lord values every little step of ours in general. Even if we have taken a small step away from a very primitive faith toward understanding something a little more complex, the Lord already values it very, very much and is generous both with praise and with complete help. It seems to us that this text, as we read it in Bishop Cassian, is an amazing witness to the Lord's humility and His ineffable kindness.

The evangelist Luke gives special importance to the healings performed by the Lord Jesus. For him, as a physician, perhaps better than for other people, the miraculous character of these healings is visible and important. All the more, the raising of the son of the widow of Nain could not fail to draw his attention, and he is the only one among the evangelists who reports it. It is therefore very important to read his account closely in order to understand what matters most to the evangelist himself.

Luke speaks of the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ over death, and we clearly see the divine character of this authority. Christ's words sound like a command: "Young man, I say to you, arise" (the Slavonic "arise" conveys much more precisely here the meaning of the Greek egertheti, which is the imperative form of "to rise"). This has nothing in common with what used to be called "galvanizing a corpse": the Lord is not commanding him merely to stand up, but to return to life from beyond the threshold of death. If we imagine ourselves in the crowd around the funeral, we can easily understand why the evangelist emphasizes the fear that seized everyone. In this raising, God Himself enters our life, and the evangelist deliberately draws our attention to this.

As we read his account, it is important to look closely at the individual details. The evangelist says that this young man was the only son of a mother who was a widow. Therefore, with his death this woman was losing everything. Not only had her son died, which is in itself an inexpressible tragedy for a mother, but with his death she was deprived of every legal standing. A woman at that time was not an independent member of society, as is still the case now in some Islamic countries. Without the protection of a father, husband, brother, or son, she was not considered a person at all. This is precisely why, in particular, the Lord from the Cross entrusts His Mother to the beloved disciple.

And here the evangelist Luke says that the Lord had compassion on the orphaned woman. The evangelist offers us three key moments: "a terrible tragedy; Jesus had compassion; rise!" Thus, together with His divinity and inseparably from it, we see in the Lord what is familiar to us and what we therefore call human. The old theologians of the time of the Christological disputes loved to separate the divine and the human in Christ's actions. Here we see how inseparable one actually is from the other.

And, of course, in our practical life it is enormously important for us how Christ acts. The Lord does not launch into explanations; He does not speak about the purifying meaning of suffering or the inevitability of death; nothing like our "God gave, and God has taken away" comes from His lips. After all, all these are words that cannot console a weeping woman. What does she care about those theological depths? Jesus pities her and her son, and His compassion overturns all the laws of this world. After all, the young man had perhaps been sick, or there had been some other "natural" cause of this death. But all of that proves insignificant, because the Son of God pities these people and grants them life. This, in fact, is what is central in the Gospel, the Good News of the Creator's mercy.

For the Jews, death and everything connected with it were considered unclean: the dead were buried before sunset, cemeteries were located outside the city, and an observant Jew was not supposed to touch a dead body. But when Jesus meets a funeral procession at the gates of the city of Nain, He unexpectedly breaks the traditional prohibitions before everyone. He addresses an unfamiliar woman with words of comfort and touches the dead boy. This alone should have astonished those around Him. But for the Lord there are no prohibitions when the poorest and most deprived are involved, as was this widow who had lost her sole provider. He does not wait for the woman to approach Him; He goes to meet her Himself, not only comforting her but performing a true miracle—returning to her the son for whom she mourns. Sometimes we are so deeply immersed in our grief that we cannot see Jesus walking beside us. We notice Him only when He has already worked in us the miracle of His Resurrection, when the joy of His presence unexpectedly begins to grow in a place of sorrow and pain.

In the raising of the widow of Nain's son, one may see a messianic sign given to the people, or one may see a visible prophetic act, a sign of the resurrection to come. Such interpretations are unlikely to be wrong, yet it is still worth noticing that the man who was raised was the widow's only son, and she had no one else to support her in old age. The hour of the universal resurrection and victory over death had not yet come; those few who were raised returned to temporary life, and for this reason someone might regard their restoration to life as pointless. But His mercy and His genuine love for people are not pointless: already in earthly life they show that life and mercy have one Giver.

Jesus' fame is growing. But the people still regard Him as a prophet and do not see that He is more than a prophet. For a long time they will continue to demand practical miracles from Him, refusing to understand that what He has brought into the world is greater than anything accessible to human imagination. But can we claim that even today we understand this in all its fullness?..

Jesus' raising of the dead has always drawn special attention. This is no surprise: all such events are usually understood in the context of biblical ideas about the universal resurrection, the Last Judgment, and, in the New Testament context, about the Savior's return and the final triumph of the Kingdom. Of course, such parallels are entirely possible. And yet it is important to see not only the similarity but also the difference between these raisings and that universal resurrection on the day of Judgment of which, for example, the Book of Revelation tells us.

Indeed, when the issue is the Last Judgment and the triumph of the Kingdom, one must also speak of the complete transformation of the nature of this world, including the nature of the human person himself. In relation to the human person, the Church Fathers directly called this process "deification," not, of course, in the sense that a person becomes God, but in the sense that his nature becomes compatible with the nature of the Kingdom of God.

Meanwhile, the people whom Jesus raises return to their former life, to the life of the untransformed world in which they lived before they died. But this return, too, was a consequence of the action of that power of the Kingdom without which there can be no life either in the Kingdom or in the world not yet transformed by the power of the Kingdom.

Why, then, do the people raised by Jesus rise not to the life of the Kingdom, but to the life of the untransformed world? The reason is that the Kingdom itself has not yet been revealed in fullness. We live in the age not of a Kingdom that has fully arrived, but of a Kingdom that is arriving. And those living in our age are not born as inhabitants of the Kingdom and do not find themselves in it automatically; they must make their choice and make an effort to enter this Kingdom.

Therefore those who come into contact with the Kingdom receive the fullness of life that is proper to them as inhabitants of their age. What follows depends on them, on their choice and their desire. For some, the return to the life of our world, into which the Kingdom is entering, can become only a delay on the way to death, which is inevitable in the untransformed world. For others, it can become the first step on the way into the Kingdom.

Today, when the Church calls us to focus our prayerful gaze on the manifestation of the raising of the son of the widow of Nain, one wants, as if looking into this text as into an icon, to pause over the words: "...and [Jesus] gave him to his mother." It would seem to be a completely insignificant detail, one that does not substantially affect the narrative component of the text, in other words, something almost self-evident and therefore not something that holds our attention. And yet it is precisely this detail that is worth closer attention, because the deepest meaning is placed in it; it may be the most important thing in the whole text, despite, and maybe because of, its inconspicuousness. For in the word of God there is not one extra or unnecessary comma; everything is concentrated to the utmost, joined together, and empty of nothing.

So, "and [Jesus] gave him to his mother." In these words is the whole meaning of resurrection. Atheists often reproach us for believing in "fairy tales" simply because we are afraid of death. And they, they say, though they too are afraid like everyone else, courageously overcome this fear within themselves. They are strong and brave, while we are weak and helplessly clutching at illusions. But in fact we somehow need to convey to them a very simple thing: what is precious to us is not our own immortality, not at all. Something entirely different is important to us, something holy and imperishable: love. A mother's love for her son, a son's love for his mother, a grandson's love for his grandmother and grandfather, and a grandmother's and grandfather's love for their grandchild, love for one's husband or wife, love for friends, for teachers, love for a living, concrete human person. This is the meaning of resurrection.

Once a priest serving in a hospital church, where children small and grown were dying of cancer, told about a boy who was also dying and, before his death, said in confession that he was terribly afraid he was a bad Christian because he did not very much believe in existence after death. And the priest answered him that, just the opposite, this showed that he was a real, honest Christian. It is not personal immortality that is dear to us, not paradise life waiting for us as a reward for earthly torments, not fantasies about otherworldly beauties that stir our mind, but something born in the very fabric of this earthly life: love for dear mama, who gave birth to you into this world, for dear papa, for brother, for sister. This is what we focus our mind's gaze on when we think about the end of our existence. And this is what the Gospel tells us so clearly today, if we do not pass by words that seem so understandable.

For an adequate understanding of the Savior's words, it is important to imagine how houses were built in Judea, and in all Palestine, in Gospel times. The soil in most of Palestine is rocky; the powerful foundations needed when building on clay or sandy soils are not necessary there. It was only necessary to clear away the upper alluvial layer (usually thin enough) in order to reach the stone. After that, the simplest strip foundation was laid, its basis being large corner stones (cornerstones). But removing the upper layer was absolutely necessary; otherwise, in winter, during the rainy season, when turbulent streams flow from the mountains down the slopes into the valleys, the house would almost certainly "float."

The Savior, as we can see, compares spiritual life with a house that makes sense to build only on rock, after first clearing it of everything that can get in the way of construction. Clearly, the image of a house built on rock was meant to remind the listeners that listening and hearing are not the same thing. The one who has heard will certainly move from words to action, applying what he has heard in practice. But, of course, there will also be those who, after listening to everything, will not want to change anything in their life.

And this is no surprise: in spiritual life the main role is played not by intellect and not by feeling, but by the will. It is precisely through acts of will that the spiritual "I" of a person, which constitutes the center of the human person, manifests itself. But often the person himself does not realize this, at least when it comes to practical life. And he lives without realizing either the true causes or the true significance of his decisions and actions.

Such unexamined spiritual life really resembles a house built on sand: the acts of will that determine a person's spiritual life remain for the most part unconsidered, and often entirely unnoticed, so that a person, in a spiritual sense (and sometimes not only in a spiritual sense), literally lives without knowing how.

Any thought that unexpectedly comes to mind and any feeling that seizes the heart can lead to decisions and actions completely unexpected even for the person himself, decisions and actions that he often can neither understand nor explain. And only full awareness of every choice made and every decision taken makes a person's spiritual life (as well as his life in general) inwardly whole and consistent. In that case every action of the person comes from the depth of his spiritual "I." And his spiritual life turns out to be founded not on the shifting sand of random thoughts and feelings, but on the rock of conscious choice.