… The disciples arrive, and Jesus says to them: "Do you not say that there are still four months, and the harvest will come? But I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and behold the fields, how they are white, and are ripe for the harvest" (John 4:35). From the point of view of real time, the harvest should come only in four months, it is in the future, and the fields have already turned white. Here it is, the future that is already coming and has come. What was said above: "But the time will come and it has already come" is now repeated in this sketch. The fields, which, according to the laws of nature, should turn white only in four months, have already turned white. This means that the reality of the Gospel does not live according to the laws of earthly logic. The future is coming and has already come. It's already here. This is one of the most important moments that we encounter in the Church when we come into contact with her living experience. Christianity is in many ways the faith of the future that has already come.

The mention of whitened fields is an example of the expressive means used by the evangelists. First, an event or phenomenon is told, then the same thing is shown, as it were. Or vice versa – first it is shown, and then it is told. In the Gospel there are truths told and there are truths shown, where a verbal sketch is given (in the ancient manuscripts of the Gospel there are no illustrations, but a verbal image was given). If we remember these purely visual images, then gradually what the Holy Scriptures say will be revealed to us. This, perhaps, is the phenomenon that the word of the Gospel is like the seed that is told in the parable of the sower: once in the ground, that is, in the depths of our "I", it swells and sprouts, gives sprouts, and then fruit. Moreover, it happens that the seed is stored somewhere for many years and then, once in a humid environment, germinates. In the mid-70s in St. Petersburg, during a flood, water flooded the hall of the Botanical Museum, where seeds of collection varieties of plants were stored in boxes for several decades, and some of these seeds germinated. So is the word of God. It happens that, once in a dry heart, it lies there for years, if not decades. But then something happens, and living water appears in this heart, and the seed sprouts... Gospel sketches, unusual, paradoxical phrases are immediately remembered, stuck in the memory for a long time. And after years, decades, suddenly some phrase sprouts, and then bears fruit. This is the fundamental difference between the Gospel text and any other.

… Leaving the city and coming to the Teacher, the disciples asked Him to eat.

"But He says to them, 'I have food that you do not know.'" The disciples, thinking that someone has preceded them, ask one another: "Has anyone brought Him food?" (John 4:30-33).

But the Savior switches their attention to something else, the main thing. He encourages the disciples to look at the fields, which are already white and ready to harvest. He says, "Lift up your eyes..." or, as in the translation of the New Testament edited by Bishop Cassian: "Lift up your eyes, and look into the fields."

We often encounter the expression "lift up the eyes" in the Old Testament, for example, in the Psalms: "I lift up my eyes to the mountains, from whence my help will come. My help is from the Lord, Who created heaven and earth" (Psalm 125:1-2). The same expression is often found in the prophets when talking about God. This shows that by interrupting the disciples' reflections on who brought Him food, Jesus calls them to turn their eyes to God and think about the main thing.

Further, Jesus says: "He who reaps receives a reward and gathers fruit into eternal life, so that both he who sows and he who reaps will rejoice together" (John 4:36). The sower is the One Who sows the word, God. "A sower went out to sow," says the parable of the sower in the synoptics. The reaper is the man whom Jesus sends into the harvest today. They, Jesus says, will rejoice together. And what will happen later in the Church is the common joy that God and the people who gather around Him, God and those whom He sends to work, rejoice. There is a psalm that speaks of this joy of the harvest: "Those who sow with tears will reap with joy. With weeping, he who bears the seed will return with joy, bearing his sheaves" (Ps. 125:5-6). It speaks of the joy of the laborer in the harvest-fields of Christ, which is similar to the joy of the peasant who has gathered the harvest. This is a very important point in understanding the essence of Christianity.

Further, in the 4th chapter of the Gospel, it is told how Jesus heals the son of a Capernaum courtier. There is a story about this in the synoptics: in Matthew in the 8th chapter and in Luke in the 7th, but it is not quite clear who they are talking about. In Luke, the healed is called by a word meaning "slave" or "servant"; in Matthew, the word "boy," which can mean both "slave" and "son." Finally, the Gospel of John makes it clear that he is a son. True, the Evangelist does not always use the word "son", sometimes he says "child" or "child". The question arises: who is this boy – a son or a slave? In Matthew, it is like an intermediate version: "child" or "youth". Probably, it is impossible to answer this question with certainty. And doesn't it matter who this healed person is? After all, for a Christian, it makes no big difference whether he is his own child or someone else's. After all, if we are truly Christians, then we love other people's children no less than our own. Another thing is that we come into contact with our own children every day, and with other people's children less often, but still there is no fundamental difference between them. In God, all people turn out to be related to each other, and therefore our task is to hasten to help not only our own, but also to strangers.

The three Evangelists tell about the same event in different ways, although not only the content, but also the words are largely repeated. Matthew emphasizes that the person who turns to Jesus for help is a Gentile, not a Jew. That is why Jesus exclaims: "Verily I say to you, I have not found such faith in Israel. But I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." —Matt. 8:10-11. Thus, the Gospel of Matthew emphasizes and puts in the foreground the universal character of Christianity, the Good News. "Many will come from the east and the west" – here we are talking about countries where pagans live. They will sit down at the wedding feast, at the Lord's meal, at the Messianic supper with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The difference between the clean and the unclean, between Jews and Gentiles, will be erased: they will all become the people of God.

In the Gospel of Luke, another point stands out in the same story. The centurion of Capernaum sends elders to Jesus, and they ask Him to heal their master's servant. But what do the elders say? And they "begged him earnestly, saying, 'He is worthy that you should do this for him, for he loves our people and has built us a synagogue.'" Jesus was not far from home when the centurion "sent friends to Him to say to Him, Lord, labor not! for I am not worthy that Thou should enter under my roof" (Luke 7:4-6). In their efforts for the centurion, the elders tell Jesus that he is worthy, but the centurion says of himself, "I am unworthy." But Jesus still heals the one for whom He was asked. God heals not because someone is worthy, but because of His great mercy. Healing is not a reward, not something that a person deserves, earns; it is given to him by the ineffable and immeasurable mercy of God. It is interesting that in Luke's account of this healing, the Jews themselves are busy, who, as Jewish elders, would seem to know that God works miracles only by His mercy. But it turns out that they have forgotten about it, although this is one of the basic principles rooted in the Old Testament.

In fact, this is what distinguishes faith in the true God from the faith of the pagans, in that the pagans believe that the mercy of the deity can be bought, that it can be paid for by offering a sacrifice, and the greater the sacrifice, the better the deity will help. And the biblical faith is built on the fact that God's mercy cannot be bought, that it is granted by Him. It is something that cannot be acquired under any circumstances. But about this, as we see from the Gospel of Luke, the Jews forgot, although, it would seem, everything was given to them so that they would remember it. The Bible has been given to them, the word of God has been revealed to them. The pagans, even the best of them, do not know about this. Plotinus, Proclus, and many others only guessed this, not being Christians.

Completely different accents are placed in the Gospel of John. In the Greek original, at the end of the 4th chapter, the word "alive" is repeated three times, which in English is better translated as "will live". "The courtier said to Him, 'Lord! Come before my son dies. Jesus said to him, 'Go, your son lives.'" Further, the courtier is met on the road by servants and informed that his lad is alive (or "will live"). The father asks, when did he feel better? And he learns that it was at the hour when Jesus told him that his son would live (cf. John 4:49-53).

This "will live" is repeated three times on a piece of papyrus and therefore immediately attracts attention as the key word of this text. It sounds like a refrain. It turns out that God in Jesus gives life, and gives it more abundantly. Bishop Cassian noted in this regard that in the Synodal translation this passage is poorly translated as "healthy" – thus, as it were, the tension that is present in the text is erased.

Vladyka Kassian goes on to say that Jesus is the beginning of life for those who believe in Him. And this is clear from the above text. But if we read not only this thrice-repeated "he shall live" here, but also the dialogue between Jesus and the courtier, we will see that when the father asks to heal his son, Jesus answers him rather strangely. He says, "You will not believe unless you see signs and wonders" (v. 48). In other words, Jesus almost refuses the courtier. This passage is reminiscent of the beginning of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, where the Apostle says that the Greeks seek wisdom and the Jews demand a sign (cf. 1 Cor. 1:22).