In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Dear Fathers, brothers and sisters:
We have now moved into chapter 21 and are almost finished with our Sunday readings this year from the Gospel of Matthew. In this chapter, our Lord had just entered simultaneously triumphantly and humbly into the city of Jerusalem on the colt of the foal of an ass. However, in the same way that our Lord, according to St Ephrem the Syrian, confronted not just a Rich Young Man, but a rich young Pharisee in last week’s Gospel – so too in today’s reading He continues to challenge and confront the Pharisees through a hard-hitting parable. Let us interpret and understand this parable through the God-inspired teaching of that great Father of the Orthodox West, St Hilary of Poitiers.
Whereas in so many of the other parables of our Lord, neither the Pharisees and Saducees nor the people or often, even the Lord’s own disciples, do not understand the full meaning of the parable, in today’s parable of the Wicked Tenants, the Scribes and Pharisees understood that this parable was told clearly against them. As St Hilary says –
The whole issue is clear. Even the Chief priests and Pharisees understood that this was spoken of them, which made them angry.
Perhaps what is especially tragic here is that the Scribes and Pharisees knew that our Lord was starkly warning them of the terrible blasphemy they were about to commit, and yet with that stubborn and envious pride, they did not change course, and refused to repent.
Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country:
The image of the vineyard was a very a well-known metaphor for Israel in the Old Testament that would have been instantly identifiable through such verses as Isaiah 5:7 which says that, ‘The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel’.
So let us introduce each of the characters and scenery in the parable. First – who is the “certain householder” or landowner. St Hilary answers:
Here we understand that God the Father is the landowner who has planted his people Israel in anticipation of an excellent harvest.
God the landowner thus planted His Vineyard Israel in the hope of gaining beautiful fruits from them. St Hilary identifies the hedge, or wall as representing the Patriarchs, the “protection of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”. The winepress that is placed in the vineyard, St Hilary, suggests should be understood as “the prophets [who are] like a kind of winepress into which he pours the fruitfulness of the Holy Spirit”. What about the tower that is mentioned? St Hilary argues that this represents –
the eminence of the Law, which takes us from the bottom to the height of heaven.
And finally we have the husbandman or tenants to which God-the-landowner rents out his vineyard to:
In the tenants is an image of the chief priests and Pharisees to whom the authority of teaching has been granted.
And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it.
At the time that God then anticipated His people, the people of Israel, would begin to produce good fruit, lives of righteousness in obedience to Spirit of the Law he sent forth his servants. Who are these servants meant to be? St Hilary says –
In the servants, who were sent to gather the fruit, we see the fruit we see the advance of the prophets who had often and in various ways tried to recall the people.
And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another.
This reference to the servant-prophets being beaten, killed and stoned is not just a piece of poetic license or hyperbole, this is actually what the People of Israel did to the prophets that God sent to them. For example, we know that the priest, Pashur the son of Immer, a temple official in Jerusalem, had the Prophet Jeremiah beaten and put in the stocks at the Upper Gate of Benjamin. Isaiah the Prophet, the Evangelist of the Old Testament, according to Church Tradition was placed in a tree and killed by being sawn in two. Zecharaiah the prophet was also stoned to death by King Jehoash for condemning the Jewish Peoples’ rebellion against God.
Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise.
Yet again, throughout the whole history of the prophets of Israel we see a consistent story of rejection and persecution that continues right up to the last and greatest of the Old Testament Prophets – St John the Baptist.
But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son.
There is something so poignant about this final phrase – “They will reverence my son”. Of course the wicked tenants should have reverenced the landowner’s Son when they realised Who He was.
In the sending of the son of last of all, we understand the Advent and the Passion of our lord, who was thrown out of Jerusalem as out of the vineyard according to a sentence of condemnation.
But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.
But rather than the presence of the Son, shaking them from the inhumanity and hostility they had shown unto God’s Prophets, as if in madness, this seems only to have stirred them to yet greater inhumanity and yet greater evil.
The plan of the tenants and their claim on the inheritance, once they had killed the heir, was the vain hope that the glory of the Law could be preserved after Christ had been slain.
And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.
As St Hilary already mentioned, in the parable the son is first cast out of the vineyard and then killed. Likewise we know from biblical archaeology that the site of Golgotha – the place where our Lord was Crucified – in the 1st Century was outside the Old city walls of Jerusalem.
When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen? They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men,
What is interesting to note here is that our Lord now starts to complete the parable with the aid of the Pharisees and Scribes that he is addressing. It is they, who perceived exactly what our Lord was meaning that complete the parable and in chilling words confirm that they, those who plotted against God’s Son – will be destroyed.
and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.
And in the response to the chief priests and Pharisees, the inheritance of the Law is more worthily handed over to the apostles.
As St Hilary says, the apostles become the new tenants, the new busbandmen of the vineyard who are asked to produce the new wine of the Kingdom. Today we commemorate the memory of two of the Apostles, Sts Bartholemew and Titus. St Bartholemew was one of the 12 Holy Apostles and preached the Gospel in Syria, Asia Minor, India and Armenia. By Holy Tradition St Bartholemew is accredited with translating the Gospel of Matthew from Hebrew into Greek. St Titus was one of the 70 Apostles and was baptised by the Apostle Paul after abandoning Pagan Philosophy. St Paul consecrated Titus Bishop of Crete, and wrote an epistle to him. After St Paul’s death in Rome, Titus returned to Crete where he poured himself out in pastoral labour till the end of his life, destroying the pagan temples of Diana and Zeus by his holy prayers. Such was the life and service in Christ’s vineyard of the Holy Apostles Bartholemew and Titus. And, dear ones, what about us? What service in the Lord’s vineyard will we bring? At an Episcopal Liturgy when the Bishop serves, there is a beautiful moment at the Little Entrance when holding aloft the Dikiri and Trikiri the 2 and 3 branched candlesticks he faces the people on the amvon and quoting from Psalm 79 blesses the people and says –
“O God of hosts, return again, look down and behold and visit this vineyard and perfect that which thy right hand hath planted”
We are all unworthy servants in the vineyard of the Lord, following the glorious example of Sts Bartholemew and Titus, let us dedicate ourselves to producing in our own lives the fruits of the Holy Spirit in lives of gentleness, peacefulness, mercy and grace.
Amen.