NOTES for Mar 12:1-12

The parable of the vineyard, first told by the prophet Isaiah, becomes in the mouth of the Lord Jesus the summation of all sacred history. The Lord makes it clear that the whole history of the Almighty's attempts to proclaim His will and His truth to humanity was a history of resistance. The messengers through whom God addresses people were 'sometimes beaten, sometimes killed.' In this series the Lord also speaks of the final Messenger - of Himself, who, according to the word of the prophets, came into the world to open to people the possibility of salvation - a possibility that did not exist before and does not exist outside Christ.

The bitter words of Christ expose the religious leaders who constantly resisted the saving action of the Creator for the sake of their own quite base interests - and here we, too, have something to think about. After all, this is not about some pagans who are 'darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart,' as the apostle Paul writes in today's passage from Ephesians. It is not even only about bishops, theologians, and ascetics, as we might render 'chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees' in our own terms. All who are called by God, all who have taken upon themselves the responsibility of being His people, turn out to be wicked workers in God's vineyard.

That is why today's words of the apostle are so important, calling us to 'be renewed in the spirit of our mind,' so that we do not become the same kind of worthless workers.

The parable of the vineyard that we find in today's passage occurs in the Gospel more than once. Evidently, by repeating it again and again, the evangelists wanted to tell us something very important for us. Of course, Jesus Himself directs this parable first of all against His contemporaries, some of whom belonged to the religious brotherhood of the Pharisees, while others held prominent positions as ministers of the Temple or well-known theologians, teachers of the Law. But if the matter concerned only the affairs of a long-vanished past, it would hardly be worth paying so much attention to this parable today. After all, we are not Pharisees, not Old Testament priests, and not teachers of the Law. And if we found ourselves in the place of the tenants in the parable, we, of course, would not reject those who had been sent: we are Christians, and we have made our choice, or so it would appear.

But here is the question: why did those to whom the Savior first addressed Himself not accept Him? They did not need to "convert" anywhere in order to do so: Jesus was not offering anyone any new religion. He offered something else: the Kingdom of God. Christianity is not a religion at all: Jesus left us neither a new religious teaching, nor a religious organization such as, for example, that same Pharisaic brotherhood, nor a rule or moral code that we were to follow. He left in the world only a community of His disciples, to whom He gave one commandment only: to live in the Kingdom. Christianity is this life in the Kingdom. Of course, over the years and centuries it inevitably had to clothe itself in religious forms, which cannot be wholly abandoned before the second coming of Christ and the full transformation of the world. And Christian life clothed itself in many religious garments: Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, diverse as all life is diverse, and all the more the life of the Kingdom.

But if we Christians have acquired our own Christian religiosity over time, sooner or later we will inevitably encounter religious problems, the same kind as those faced in Gospel times by the Pharisees, temple priests, and teachers of the Law. And the main problem, as is clear from the parable, turned out to be the desire to take possession of the vineyard that belongs to God alone, and in which each of us can at best be only a worker. For a believer, such a desire would appear at the very least strange. But such a seizure does not at all have to be malicious from the beginning. As a rule, it happens under all sorts of respectable pretexts, most often under the pretext of protecting the vineyard from outsiders, from thieves and destroyers.

And here religiosity proves extremely convenient: when it is necessary to separate one people from all the rest, or one part of a people from another, to fence off a community from destructive influences, whatever those influences may be and from whomever they may come, religion can prove very useful. Religion is always connected with a certain set of more or less rigid norms, rules, and forms that regulate all or many sides of life, and such regulation in itself protects well against outside influences. And if we remember that every religion is also a set of certain rules of life and religious obligations, it turns out that it not only protects but also disciplines both individual people and whole communities.

And yet any religion, even one based on revelation given by God, remains the work of human hands. For people express and embody in life the revelation given by God, adapting it to their human limitation. Therefore any revelation is always greater than any religion, and the Kingdom does not fit within any religious framework. Then one has to choose between familiar, established, time-tested, honored religiosity and the Kingdom. And having chosen, one must leave familiar religion for Christ. Or, remaining with one's own, kill the One who brings the Kingdom. Kill Him because otherwise those who want to remain with their own will have no peaceful life. For religion always takes hold of the whole person, entirely and completely, defining his life from beginning to end, and for a religious person the very thought is unbearable that there can be something in the world over which his religion has no power.

Let us recall the beginning of a well-known prayer: "O Theotokos, you are the true vine, who brought forth for us the fruit of life..." Let us also recall the words from the Gospel of John: "I am the true vine..." (John 15:1). The image of the Lord that these lines draw is very clear. But today He appears before us not as the vine but, on the contrary, as the Owner of the vineyard. And this opposition, which in reality is mutual complementarity, is a very characteristic feature, as it appears to us, of the Gospel proclamation and perhaps of biblical theology as a whole. The Lord and Shepherd, the Lord and Lamb. The Lord embraces us from outside and is within us ("whoever eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him" John 6:56). One could give many similar examples of definitions that are "mutually negating" from the point of view of "objective reality." But most important of all: the Lord and Father, the Lord and Son. We must somehow feel with all our heart this most complex logic of mutuality that generates fullness. For if we act only with the mind, then whatever path we take, sooner or later we will arrive at something like Hegel's formula of thesis and antithesis. That is not bad, but as the history of thought has shown, it cannot always serve as a support for faith.

The parable of the wicked tenants reminds us of all human history - of the fate of the righteous in a world of sin. A similar parable had already been told by the prophet Isaiah (5:1-7), but here the emphasis is not on the vineyard, that is, Israel, the beloved planting of the Father, but on the tenants, those entrusted with cultivating and guarding the vineyard. The Father, that is, the vinedresser (cf. John 15:1), continually sends His servants into the world: prophets, apostles, saints, whose preaching and righteous lives have always been, are now, and will always be a living reproach to those in whom the blinding light of divine Truth exposes inner emptiness, even if it is covered with the garments of outward piety. No, these are by no means always hardened villains. It is important to remember that the parable is addressed to respected and even righteous people. But the righteousness of the Pharisees, in the words of one contemporary Christian writer, is bad because it can be measured, that is, one can say at some point, "I am a perfectly decent person," and rest there (see Luke 18:9-14). Historical tragedies are usually brought about not by villains, but by the majority of "decent people" who have lost their thirst for the Absolute, their thirst for holiness. Such people, even without wishing it themselves, can at some point kill God...

The vineyard is our own life; it is we ourselves, created in the image and likeness of the Creator. The image of the vineyard reminds us that life and everything we have are God's gift, a gift that does not belong to us and that we can lose. But we appropriate His gifts as our own property, and when He sends us His servants - our neighbors, all the people we meet and who need us - when we find ourselves in circumstances that require real fruit from us, we, like the tenants, prove unworthy of His call, His holiness, His love.

Let us try to remember that all the difficult circumstances of our life or, on the contrary, certain special moments of grace all mean that the Lord is calling us, that He wants us to bring Him our fruits, our heart.

Today's parable belongs to the series of parables about spiritual readiness for the Last Judgment. The behavior of the young women who did not take oil with them gives us a very harsh and unsparing picture of overconfidence and foolishness. It was necessary to foresee the possibility that the bridegroom could be delayed, and that requires wisdom. You cannot be so sure that your own oil will certainly be enough; any overconfidence here is out of place.

Some interpreters try to find symbolic meaning in the fact that the parable speaks specifically about oil. In the Old Testament there is the phrase "oil of gladness" (see, for example, Ps 44:8). St. Macarius uses precisely this phrase in his interpretation of this passage. What gladness is meant? Surely the gladness of love for the Bridegroom, by whom, according to the symbolism of the Song of Songs, God is always understood. Christ Himself also calls Himself the Bridegroom. Remember the words: can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? So here the issue is the joy of pure love, clouded by nothing.

Reflecting on the parable of the wicked tenants, it is worth turning to the text of the prophet Isaiah, which became for the Lord the kind of metaphor that, being understandable to everyone, allows Him to fill it with new meaning. And to answer the questions that the metaphor itself leaves unanswered.

What questions are these? Let us recall that this is the beginning of chapter 5. The prophet tells of the planting of a vineyard with choice vines. It is very important for him to emphasize that the hill was fertile, the vines were choice, and the Lord cleared the land of stones. That is, all the conditions had been created. But instead of grapes, there are wild berries. This unexpected break in meaning, since we understand that such a thing does not happen in nature, turns the narrative into a kind of parable and becomes the central nerve of Isaiah's whole text, leading to the question - why? "What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it? Why, when I expected it to yield good grapes, did it yield wild grapes?" (Isa. 5:4)

This question, full of an inexpressible heartache, remains unanswered. And it is precisely this question that Christ answers. No. There were no wild berries. There was a good harvest of grapes. But the one entrusted to gather it proved unworthy of that trust. The break in meaning is removed, and the parable reaches an entirely different metaphysical level.

Today the vineyard has been entrusted to us, and once again a choice is possible: will we become workers who bear fruit, or will we seek to extract personal benefit from the vineyard? Will we want to turn the Church into an instrument for our own advancement, a place where we feel comfortable? To fail to carry out the will of the vineyard’s Owner, it is not at all necessary to drive Him and those He sends away openly; it is enough to become absorbed in pursuing our own interests just a little more than necessary. We will most likely not kill those sent to us, but by our entire behaviour we will place ourselves on the side of those who did.
Meanwhile, the Owner has no intention of depriving us of the vineyard’s fruits. But only what is given to Him will return to us in abundance.

Hearing this parable, one is struck by how wisely and thoroughly the owner established this vineyard. It had everything needed to produce a good harvest and make wine from it. Only one thing in it was not good enough—the tenants. These hired workers, to whom the owner had entrusted his vineyard only for a time, somehow decided that it belonged to them. At first they simply refused to hand over the harvest, apparently believing that the effort they had spent obtaining it justified them. Besides, they knew better themselves how to process the fruit and turn it into fine wine. In the end, these people appropriate not only the vineyard but also the life of their master’s heir.

Christ teaches us that everything we “think we have” does not belong to us. Everything is a gift of God, entrusted to us so that in due time He may come and take the fruit that belongs to Him by right as its owner. Yet how often we forget this, believing that we know much better what we need and why. How often, after fulfilling something to which He calls us, we decide that we have understood the complex design. And if something does not fit our orderly picture of the divine plan, we are ready to make an attempt on the life of Jesus in our heart.