13th Sunday after Pentecost / Sts. Joachim & Anna / 1 Cor. 16.13-24; Matthew 21.33-42
F/S/HS. Brothers and sisters, unlike some of Jesus’ other parables, where the listener is left scratching his or her head as to the full meaning of the parable, almost anyone hearing our Lord’s parable from this morning’s Gospel would immediately tumble to its indicting meaning.
The parable comes late in Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus has repeatedly throughout His ministry, in so many ways, reached out to the various Jewish religious leaders of His day—like the Scribes and Pharisees—with the message of God’s love and the revelation of His identity as the Son of God. He has performed miracle after miracle, healing after healing. Thousands have come to believe in Him and follow Him.
Except for these Jewish religious leaders, who have either turned a blind and indifferent eye to the Messiah, or they have outright plotted to persecute Him. Which is why, just two more chapters from now in this same Gospel, Matthew’s Gospel, our Lord unleashes a torrent of jeremiads—woes against you, you hypocrites—against these religious leaders (Mt. 23ff).
A version of this indictment begins with this morning’s parable. It translates like this: God the Father is the landowner who planted a vineyard: the vineyard of humanity, but especially God’s chosen people, the Jews. The tenant vinedressers are the religious leaders entrusted with the care of this vineyard. The landowner’s servants (v. 34) are the prophets, sent by God to proclaim how to care for the vineyard. But instead of tending lovingly as should to the vineyard, these religious leader vinedressers have neglected and shirked their responsibility.
God then sent His Son (v. 37). Surely they will heed and honor the presence of this loving Son! But in their impious greed they dole out the rudest of all disdains—they murder the Son. God in turn rejects and destroys these tenant vinedressers, and replaces them with other vinedressers—Gentile vinedressers!
Jesus’ parable echoes down through the centuries. At one level it is about our Lord’s church: The church as a vineyard, and those who are in positions of leadership as the tenet vinedressers of that church, responsible for nurturing and pruning the vineyard, unto a rich harvest. O how I as a priest here at St. Siloans measure myself by this parable. Am I a faithful vinedresser, faithful to all of you, faithful to our Lord and His vineyard Church.
On the other hand, it is exceedingly compelling to see how this parable has been used down through the centuries by our church fathers and mothers, to identify other Christian vineyards and other faithful tenets of these vineyards.
St. Paisios of the Holy Mountain employs this same parable to reflect on the God-given vineyard that is Christian family life—husbands and wives and children living together as a little church. He asks: Is your little church bearing a rich annual crop? Beginning with you, husbands and wives, are you tending your vineyard with grace and love and humility?
Saint Paisios reposed in 1994. The irony is not lost on me that of all of the things that most concerned this monastic and ascetic, it was Christian family life in the home. Fathers, how are you doing with nurturing and pruning your wife and children? Mothers, how are you doing with nurturing and pruning your husband and children? Children, are you being formed to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to respect and love your parents and your siblings, and love those in the world without being coopted by the glitter and gutter of the world?
During Saint Paisios’ lifetime, he said more than once that never has the vineyard known as Christian family life been so at risk and so fragile. Family life is rotting on the vine! he cried out.
And because Christian family life is the bedrock, the foundation of society, so many other aspects of life will start to rot too. One wonders—I am left wondering—what St. Paisios would say about current day family life, were he alive today? Surely, in so many cases, he would weep tears of pain and offer up a thousand Lord have mercies! on behalf of our families, our marriages, our children.
Yesterday we honored the nativity, the birth of Mary our Theotokos, the mother of our Lord. This morning we honor her parents—Sts. Joachim and Anna. What must this family of three have been like, I often ask myself? Imagine the love shared by Joachim and Anna, nurturing and pruning their daughter Mary as they did, such that it produced the young woman chosen by God to bear the Lord of the universe in her womb! Imagine the honor young Mary bequeathed to her parents; her love and prayers and dignifying of them! Oh dear ones, how we need examples like this vineyard family, to show us how it’s done.
Wind ahead approximately three hundred years, to another vineyard—the family of St. Macrina. Because if ever there was a vineyard whose tenant servants faithfully nurtured their vines unto the richest of harvests, here are those servant vinedressers. Or, to change the metaphor to a different fruit—The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, we often say of children who mirror the virtues of their parents. In the case of this one extraordinary Christian family from the ancient church, it seems like a whole bushel of virtuous apples fell from one tree!
So let me close this morning by sharing a bit about this most healthy of bushels, this most virtuous of vineyards: St. Macrina’s family. Because brothers and sisters, if we are to learn how to be faithful vinedressers within our own families—and faithful vinedressers within our family that is this St. Silouan church family—observing St. Macrina and her family will surely help guide us.
St. Macrina’s parents, Emelia and Basil, had ten children. By all measures Emelia and Basil were virtuous and loving parents who tirelessly strived to cultivate a vineyard family that bore the tastiest of fruits. We know very little about four of the daughters, not even their names. Her other sister, Blessed Theosebia, was a deaconess in the early church. Macrina’s four brothers are all amongst the role-call of our saints: Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Naucratius, and Peter of Sebaste.
Every one of Macrina’s siblings champion Macrina as the most virtuous vinedresser within her vineyard family, the one who, when disease or drought sought to destroy their vineyard, steered her family on the pious course of life. How? She, of all the siblings, her siblings report, possessed the greatest longing for God, a nearly perfect desire to embody and perfect the love that lived in her heart for all persons, her family especially. O dear Macrina, how each of our families need a vinedresser like you!
Following the death of her father, it was Macrina who assumed the role of helping her mother raise her younger brother Peter. Says brother Gregory about Macrina: She brought [Peter] up and educated him in the most excellent fashion. She occupied him from earliest childhood with lessons in sacred objects to such an extent that his soul had no opportunity to incline itself towards anything trivial. She became for him father, teacher, tutor, mother and counselor in everything good and virtuous.
Gregory writes further about Macrina’s role in helping cultivate their family vineyard: As gold is tried in various furnaces to rid it of any impurity or rust, so that it will be completely pure afterwards, so Macrina was tested by various sorrowful onslaughts and the integrity and steadfastness of her soul was proved in every respect. [After the death of our father] came the death of [our] brother Naukratios; secondly she lost her mother; and thirdly, [she lost] the great Basil…. [Macrina] stood fast like an invincible athlete, without yielding to any of the calamities that came upon her.
As her mother Emelia lost her husband and then one child and then another, she collapsed and was unable to speak for some time. At which time Macrina became a balm for her grieving mother. Observes Gregory once again: She strengthened our mother’s weakness and pulled her out of the depths of grief by teaching her soul to be brave through her own steadfast and unswerving attitude.
By now Gregory himself had achieved the heights of fame throughout Christendom. Yet he suffered greatly amongst those heretics who were attacking Orthodoxy. In his distress, he turned to his sister Macrina to lament the confusion and turmoil in the Churches of Christ.
Macrina detected in her brother’s words a spirit of ingratitude. She writes him: Are you still ungrateful for the blessings God has bestowed upon you? Will you not correct your ingratitude? … Do you not regard [all of this] as a sign of God’s grace? … If you did, you would give thanks to God, who has raised you to these heights through the prayers of our parents. Brothers and sisters, that dear ones is a sister who knows how to prune her brother!
And Gregory’s response to his sister? A response born out of the humble recognition of Macrina’s righteous pruning. She said these things, and I wished the day could be longer so that the blessed Macrina would not stop delighting my ears with her words.
Sisters and brothers, our Lord has planted a vineyard. Our St. Silouan family is part of this vineyard. Your Christian homes and families are a part of this vineyard. All of us are the tenets of these respective vineyards. What is the Lord’s assessment of our vineyard stewardship? Are we faithful tenets, unto bearing a rich harvest for the Lord? Or are we squandering our role, leaving the vineyard fruit unattended and, at worst, rotting?
Let us learn from our spiritual heirs, from the likes of Sts. Joachim and Anna and the Theotokos; from St. Macrina and her family, how to cultivate a vineyard whose harvest, when God looks down upon its bounty, says to us: Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world (Mt. 25.34). F/S/HS
