CHAPTER 15. Answers to the scribe and the two disciples. Calming the Storm. The Healing of the Possessed in the Land of the Gadarenes. Healing of the bleeding woman. The resurrection of Jairus' daughter. The healing of two blind men and a dumb demoniac man. Resurrection of the son of the widow of Nain

Answers to the scribe and the two disciples

On the very day when the Lord was teaching the people in parables, He came in the evening again to the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The crowds of people gathered around Him again, and He wanted to get into a boat to swim to the other side. At that time the scribe came to Him and said, "Teacher! I will follow You wherever You go.

Wishing to test whether he was really ready to become His disciple, wishing to discover His innermost thoughts, Jesus explained to him that to be a disciple and to follow Him is not so easy for people who are devoted to the comforts of life, to earthly goods: foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.

This answer apparently made a strong impression on those of Christ's companions who were already called His disciples; on the faces of many of them one could see their readiness to follow Him; but to test the power of this readiness, He said to one of them, "Follow me." This disciple had just lost his father and was about to bury him. Therefore, he hesitated and wondered what he should do? He considered it impossible to break the custom and not attend his father's funeral, and therefore, deciding to leave Jesus for a while, he asked permission to go first to bury his father, promising to return afterwards and follow Jesus. But Jesus did not give the permission that was asked: "Let the dead," He said, "bury their dead.

"The word dead, which is used twice here," says Bishop Michael, has two different meanings: in the first place, it means the spiritually dead, and in the second, the dead in the proper sense, the bodily dead. The Jews used the word dead to refer to a person who was indifferent to an object, or over whom a certain object had no influence. Thus, to be dead to the world, to the law (Rom. 7:4), to sin (Rom. 6:2) means that the world, the law, and sin have no influence on man, have no power over him, that he is free in relation to them, acts as if they did not exist. Thus there are people who are dead to religion, being deaf to its voice. Such were those of whom the Saviour speaks here. "Leave the dead, who are deaf to my word, to my work, who do not understand and do not understand it, and who are dead because of their sins" (Eph. 2, 1, 3); leave it to them to bury your dead, and you, who have heeded the word of life preached by Me, follow Me, continue to be My disciple." The Lord wanted this, apparently not entirely understandable, prohibition to pay the last debt to the deceased father, or to test the character and devotion of this disciple to Himself, since true love for Christ must leave for Him both relatives and friends (Matt. 10:37; Luke 14:26), or to warn and protect him from his relatives, who might wish to distract him from Christ. Perhaps the Lord saw that the cares of the home, the cares of life, would completely distract this disciple from the work of God, and therefore does not allow him to depart from Himself. Without a doubt, the duty of children is to obey their parents, to pay homage to them both in life and in death, and the Lord does not destroy this duty. He only teaches that for the sake of preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God one must leave everything when circumstances require it" (Bishop Michael, Explanatory Gospel, 1).

The other disciple did not wait for Jesus' call and said to Him, "I will follow You, Lord!" but first let me bid farewell to my household (Luke 9:61). And Christ did not give him the permission he asked. The first disciple had a more valid reason for a short absence - the death of his father; the other simply did not have the strength to immediately break all ties with the past: wishing to follow the Lord, he was aware of his attachment to earthly life with all its joys, and in him there was a struggle between two opposite desires; finally, the desire to follow Jesus begins to win, and he, delighted with such a victory, himself, without challenge, hastens to say: I will follow You, Lord! but... Here the struggle begins again, life beckons to itself, and the ardent disciple says bashfully and timidly: but first allow me to say goodbye to my household.

Answering Him, Christ compared one who walks on the path to eternal life to a plowman. The ploughman who has taken hold of the plough must look forward so that the animals harnessed to the plough pull evenly, without falling off the furrow, and that the plough goes straight at the proper depth; Only if such conditions are met, the ploughing will be good and the ploughman's goal will be achieved. And if he looks back, the animals will be knocked out of the furrow, and the plough will jump out; and through this the ploughman will not achieve his goal. In the same way, a person who has decided to follow the path outlined by Christ must keep a sharp eye on the front, must constantly have before him the goal of his journey, and only then can he hope to enter those narrow gates of the Kingdom of Heaven that stand at the end of his path. But if there is still a struggle in him, if he cannot renounce temptations, if he looks back at them from time to time, then he is not reliable for the Kingdom of Heaven, moreover, he is not reliable for the Kingdom of God (Luke 9:62) here on earth.

The Evangelists are silent about what these two disciples did: whether they followed Jesus, or whether they succumbed to temptation. It must be assumed that if they had gone home, Jesus would have preached to the Apostles on this matter, but since the Evangelists are silent about this, it is likely that these disciples followed the Lord.

Calming the Storm

After that, Jesus entered the boat with His disciples and ordered them to sail to the other, that is, the eastern, side of the lake. They obeyed the order and sailed away. Other boats sailed with Him, as Mark testifies, but it is probable that these other boats lagged behind or took a different direction, since they are not mentioned in the rest of the narrative.

Exhausted, Jesus fell asleep in the stern. A terrible storm arose, the waves hit the boat and began to flood it, but He slept peacefully. The disciples, almost all the fishermen of this very lake, accustomed to struggle with its storms and bad weather, are exhausted and in despair wake up the sleeping Teacher. The words with which the Apostles and disciples addressed Jesus are conveyed by the Evangelists in different ways. According to the story of Mark, they asked: Teacher! Is there no need of Thee that we are perishing? In these words one can hear both a reproach to the Teacher for not paying attention to the fate of His disciples, and a hidden confidence that He can prevent their death if He wishes. Luke conveyed only cries of despair: "Master! Mentor! we perish (Luke 8:24). And according to Matthew, the disciples, waking up Jesus, turned to Him with a prayer: Lord! save us, we perish (Matt. 8:25). In such a difference in the exclamations of Jesus' disciples, one cannot see a disagreement in the narratives of the Evangelists; in a moment of general despair, the disciples could not speak with one voice, by prior agreement; on the contrary, each of them was in a hurry to speak, each in his own way hastened to ask Jesus for salvation, so it must be admitted that everything transmitted by the Evangelists was actually said by different disciples, and each of the three Evangelists wrote down those words that were better known to him.

So some of the disciples said, "Teacher! Is there no need of Thee that we are perishing? Others cried out in despair: Master! Mentor! We are dying. And still others prayed to Him: Lord! Save us, we are perishing.

When Jesus had heard them all, he said to them: "Why are you so fearful, you of little faith? Is the testimony of John and all the miracles I have performed before you not enough for you to finally know who I am? Do you really think that you can perish in the waves of your native sea? You whom I have chosen to preach My teachings to all the world? And then, rising and standing in the stern, He turned to the raging hurricane and the furious sea, and in an authoritative, commanding voice said, "Be still, be still." Instantly the wind subsided, and there was a great silence. Turning again to the disciples, He said to them with sadness, "Where is your faith? (Luke 8:25).