13th Sunday of Matthew

The parable is simple but elegant. “There was a householder who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower…” This is a story of creation. The householder goes to great efforts to make his creation both beautiful and comfortable. It refers to the world that we live in. The householder is God the Creator.

“The LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads” (Genesis 2:8-10).

Then the householder let it out to tenants. Obviously, we are the tenants. The householder leaves, in the parable he “went into a far country.” Chrysostom interprets this to mean that he gave them time to do the right things, reminding us that God is slow to anger. Then Chrysostom notes, “’He sent His servants,’ that is, the prophets, ‘to receive the fruit;’ that is, their obedience, the proof of it by their works.”

What follows is a tale of human disobedience, for which the immediate interpretation is the story of the people of Israel and their disobedience and ingratitude. They kill one prophet after another, and ultimately the householder’s son, reminding us of how one prophet father another was killed until finally God’s Son Himself was executed on the Cross. We need to be careful with this, because some use this passage to justify anti-Semitism. In the time that St. Matthew’s gospel was written, and this gospel was written for a Jewish/Christian audience, it was necessary to it was necessary to explain how Christianity sprung from Judaism but expanded beyond it. This story, like that of the Prodigal Son, served this purpose.

The quote that closes the reading is not part of the parable but it relates. Jesus asks, "Have you never read in the scriptures: 'The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner; this was the Lord's doing, and it was marvelous in our eyes’?” The stone refers to His own self, who was rejected by His people but became the foundation of a new structure, the Church.

It is tempting to leave the story here, with a simple historical interpretation- that the story is about the rejection of the Messiah by His own people. But the parable, like so many others, has a lesson for us today. The lesson lies in what the tenants say when they kill the householder’s son: “'This is the heir; come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.”  They wanted to exclude the owner from his property. People of faith would say they wanted a world in which God is someplace else, where He is unnecessary or irrelevant.

Karl Marx called religion the opiate of the people, because religious people accept things the way they are and tend to acquiesce to repressive governments. Sigmund Freud believed that religious faith is an infantile response to the fear of death. Militant atheists today consider faith not only wrong-minded but also harmful, because it retards their ability to solve the great problems of humanity. My opinion is that perhaps the most harmful trend today is not militant atheism, but practical atheism, in which people live their lives the way perhaps saying that they believe in God, but in little or no way incorporating faith into their daily lives. While professing faith, they are functionally atheists. They live without church, without rules except those of their personal liking, and without God.

Christian believers and especially Orthodox Christian believers believe that if this world is to become the Paradise that God intended it to be, we must first become the people that God intended us to be. The proper sequence is that which is expressed in the Great Litany at the beginning of the Divine Liturgy.

“In peace let us pray to the Lord… For the peace from above and the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord… For peace in the whole world, for the stability of the holy churches of God, and for the unity of all, let us pray to the Lord.”

In short, we cannot pray without first bringing peace into our minds. We cannot bring peace into the world until we have peace in our personal lives.

“There was a householder who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower…” Today’s parable begins with an image of God’s creation. Genesis has another. “The LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.” Revelation has still another: Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God” (Revelation 21: 1-3). There are a number of visions of Paradise, and they all include God.

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Text: Matthew 21:33-42

The Lord said this parable, "There was a householder who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to tenants, and went into another country. When the season of fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants, to get his fruit; and the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first; and they did the same to them. Afterward he sent his son to them, saying 'They will respect my son.' But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.' And they took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" They said to him, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons." Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the scriptures: 'The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner; this was the Lord's doing, and it was marvelous in our eyes?'"