22nd Sunday after Pentecost  
Galatians 6:11-18; Luke 16:19-31

"If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.” (Luke 16, 31)

Indeed, it was so: Christ resurrected the son of the widow of Nain, resurrected the daughter of Jairus (Matthew 9:25), resurrected the real Lazarus (not from the parable), even when Jesus Christ himself rose from the dead, there were those who did not want to believe or deliberately spread false rumours, as the Jewish high priests did (Matthew 28:11-15).

Clearly, we know that people spread lies and denied the miracles of the resurrection, but we should not forget that those people were doing the will of the devil, their spiritual father and mentor (John 8:44). Attempts by the devil to deny the resurrection and all the works of God were carried out through people possessed by him.

That is why the apostle Paul tells us:

"For we do not have a struggle against flesh and blood (that is, against people), but against the beginnings, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against heavenly spirits of malice." (Ephesians 6:12)

The devil, heavenly spirits of malice, tried to do everything so that people would not believe, would not accept Jesus Christ as the Son of God, so that they would not accept the miracles that Jesus Christ performed as works of God - so that they could not be saved, freed from the rule of sin over them.

That is why we are so struck by the spiritual blindness of the high priests, Pharisees and scribes who saw the miracles and works that Jesus did and could not deny them. That is why they lamented:

“What should we do? Because this Man [Jesus] performs too many miracles. If we leave Him like this, everyone will believe in Him..." (John 11:48).

For the servants of the devil, the sermon itself, the teachings of Christ - were unpleasant, but most irritating were the works of God that Christ did, because they could not be denied by any words, even though the Pharisees tried to do it: "He does not cast out demons in any other way, only as Beelzebub, the prince demons" (Matthew 18:24).

Thus, the spiritual blindness of the opponents of Christ - the Jewish elders - was not due to ignorance, the inability to know the truth, but due to the domination of their will by the eternal enemy of God - the devil. They simply did not seek to know the truth; they did not want to accept that truth.

When faith disappears in a person, when a spiritual void is created in such a person, then those "heavenly spirits of malice" that the Apostle Paul reminds us of inevitably settle in a person. Nature does not tolerate a vacuum -- even atheists accept this.

When people deviate from the truth even in purely worldly matters, it inevitably leads them to serve falsehood. When Svyatopolk, the son of Volodymyr the Great, killed his brothers, he, in order to maintain his rule in Kyiv, called for the help of the foreign Poles. And he became known in the history of Ukraine as Svyatopolk the Abominable. His memory is cloaked with infamy, as someone who served foreigners in order to rule over his people.

But that difficult example from our Ukrainian history did not encourage other people to serve the truth and their people. Bryukhovetskyi and Mnohohrishnyi were subservient to foreign oppressors in order to rule over their people; Iskra and Kochubey were informers. Their deeds and names have all fallen into disrepute, and the very people they obeyed were those who despised them.

However, history did not teach or profit servile traitors in newer times: Chubar, Zatonskyi, Skrypnyk, and Yuriy Kotsyubynskyi , for example. These were either blinded by false slogans, or simply wanted to rule over their own by the grace of others, and therefore betrayed the interests of their people. And again - foreigners rejected and destroyed them when they no longer needed their help to rule over Ukraine.

Nevertheless, even those hard and bloody examples of the fate of traitors and servants of their masters in more modern times have not been able to serve as effective lessons. Let us look at Ukraine today and we will see only transitional names that, having fulfilled their shameful role, have disappeared from the political horizon and sunk into infamy.

Who among those people who were servile traitors was able to gain a good reputation among their people, whose memory is honoured by our nation? This, too, is also a manifestation of a kind of blindness.

Such is the fate of all apostates from God, from God's laws and from the truth of their people, which in us (for the Ukrainian people), has always been inseparable from the truth of God, for our people did not enslave anyone, and sought only to live a free life in their country.

There are spiritually blind people who try to live without God (like the rich man from the Gospel parable of Lazarus) in countries where God is freely acknowledged. I present here one vivid example, taken from a newspaper report.

One wealthy man, a pharmacist by profession, filed a lawsuit in the US against his five sons. He did not make any financial or material accusations, he only complained to his sons that they received an inheritance from him, and now they want nothing to do with him; they do not want to know him.

The judge stated that in view of the fact that the plaintiff does not require any maintenance from his sons because he has adequate means, this prevents him (the judge) from passing any sentence against the sons; but he advised the plaintiff to turn to his priest or minister so that he might teach his sons that they should not forget their father:

“But I am an atheist and do not belong to any church.”

“Then there is no advice. There is no law for this, no police to help you. You may have prepared medicine for hundreds or thousands of people, but for the entire age of your conscious life you did not take care, you did not prepare medicine for your children or for yourself.”

In the court, the case was closed at this point, but in life, as we know, matters cannot be stopped or ended in such a way. A person must determine his/her place in life - whether he or she will live with God or without God. And depending on that, one must determine one’s fate in eternity, in the afterlife - whether to be with Lazarus, with Christ, or to be with the rich man who "clothed himself in purple and fine linen, and feasted daily" (Luke 16:19 ).

What distinguishes the faith of Christ is the goodness, that in it Christ does not compel anyone to anything - neither to heaven nor to hell; in this earthly life, a person can consciously choose his or her place. Christ called us only with love:

"Come to Me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest!" Christ promises us that when we voluntarily and consciously choose His way, accept the teachings of His commandments, then “you will find rest for your souls." (Matthew 11:28-29)

Amen.

Very Rev. Fr. Taras Slavchenko

Taras Slavchenko was born on March 8, 1918 in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine. After graduating from school and the Pedagogical College, he entered the language and literature faculty of the Scientific Pedagogical Institute. Having successfully completed it in 1938, he served as a teacher in a secondary school.

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