The Heirs

Recently, we have reflected on the Christian state of life, which is faithful stewardship. Today our Gospel lessons have led us into a vineyard or garden (the terms are interchangeable in Scripture) presenting us with a strange tale concerning tenants or stewards (these terms are also interchangeable).

We reflected at length on this subject three years ago. We noticed that God, Who "is the Vinedresser" (Jn 15:1), is constantly planting gardens. The first garden we hear of is God's Heaven, planted with radiant blooms we call angels each possessing the personal sovereignty of choice to love and serve God, or not. The next garden is fashioned from unconquerable chaos from which God He has wrested order on a verdant earth. Next, He plants an exquisite garden, hedged in by protecting angels (we later learn), and within it He sets two choice vines: Adam, whose name means soil, and Eve, whose name means living. Preparing His fourth garden, God cleanses the earth and then, following a period of purification, He plants three human couples whom He has carefully chosen and prepared. This garden, too, has been hedged in .... by "many waters," we read. The fifth garden is "a land flowing with milk and honey" (Exod 3:8, Lev 10:24, Num 13:27, Deut 11:9, Josh 5:6, Ezek 20:6), the Land of Promise.

In each of these gardens, God's meticulously cultivated vines have become diseased each time by the same blight, which is the wild. Perhaps I can capture it better using a contemporary phrase: to wild out, which means "to rebel against morals."

Angels in Heaven "took a walk on the wild side." Their present habitation suggests that "the wild" has become their permanent state: Pandemonium, meaning "all demons" .... a wild place to be sure.

The revised Eden, proceeding from Eve's imagination, is a wild thought: that she will supplant God. Now that's really wild.

After the flood, the new parents of humankind go wild. Noah drinks himself into a stupor signifying an orgy. The language is terse, so let us briefly unpack it: "To uncover nakedness" is a Hebrew euphemism meaning "to have sexual intercourse." As Deuteronomy 23:1 and 27:20 suggest, having intercourse with one's mother is expressed as "uncovering one's father's skirt." That is, a blind debauchery renders Noah unconscious and lands his wife in the arms of her son. The illicit issue of this union is Canaan (Bergsma and Hahn). As chaos is the edgy underbelly of our world, so Canaan is always just beneath the surface of the Promised Land.

The Book of Isaiah, so favored by the Lord Jesus, understands the garden very well. As we read,

For these favored ones God plants a vineyard:

Unruly life is pushed out and good life fenced in: orderly, cleared of stones, planted with the choicest vines, and set apart, signified by the hedges and watchtower. For what lies outside the vineyard bears watching.

But it is not God's hedges which fail. It is not God's sentinel angels who have fall asleep on watch. It is not the good earth nor the oceans surrounding it that fall short. As Isaiah declares,

Each time, in the case of all these gardens, the failure comes from within. In Heaven, it comes from within the ranks of angels. In Eden it comes from within "the enclosed garden" (Song of Solomon 4:12). Even at the foot of God's Holy Mountain, to which the people of God have been brought out of fleshly Egypt, it has come from within their tents. It is the wild from within the restless hearts of men and women which brings about the catastrophic failure. This is the dagger-edge constantly pressed upon the heart of God: the betrayal of those He has loved and the treachery of those He has trusted. It is a dagger we everywhere today.

Perhaps we have grown dull to the word stewardship, for so often we hear it during fund drives. We no longer take it personally. After all, it is a problem we can solve by by writing a check.

But it turns out that being a good and faithful steward, in the vocabulary of our Lord and God, represents a high attainment indeed as we discussed last week.

We recognize Isaiah's idealized vineyard in our Gospel lesson this morning: the choice grapes, the wine press, the watchtower, the hedges. They present to us an essence. They signify every garden the Lord has planted. We recognize the rebellion of angels in the tenants whom God has trusted. We recognize an ideal of orderliness midst chaos recalling the Creation of the world. We recognize the hedges and watchtower signifying grave hazards beyond Eden's boundaries. And we recognize Eve's twisted logic that she will supplant God:

Jesus asks,

Following the calculus of the tenants, we ask, "Will Father God, the Master Vinedresser, adopt them as His sons?" After all, that is the only way these men might receive the Heir's inheritance.

But adoption is not what the tenants chose. And the Disciples rightly answer Jesus saying that Father God

The tenants have two choices: to requite the Father's love or to betray Him.

This is always already the situation for all of us. Each of us is born into a garden of innocence having unspeakable beauty. Each of us is then showered with a love so great that God has sent His only Son, the Heir,

The choice is always binary: either to requite God's overwhelming love or to betray that love. There is no middle ground. Of this we are reminded at every Divine Liturgy:

An overwhelming love received calls upon an overwhelming love to be given. The choices we make each day may venture towards fifty shades of gray, but in God's world there is only darkness or light. The Beloved Disciple tells us, "in Him there is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5): no gray, and no lukewarm (Rev 3:16). Only light or darkness.

Now we may congratulate ourselves that we have not killed the Heir. But if we do not labor in the Vineyard presenting to God fruits in due season, then we indeed have murdered the Heir, for we will have squandered the inheritance .... and our own lives. The story is told over and over, of how a great king puts talents of gold (that is, vast fortunes) into the hands of His servants, of how a great king gives His estates into the hands of servants to oversee, of how God sent His own Son into our lives for surely we will respect Him. And then He stands back (we perceive, at a distance) watching what we will do.

Do we claim that we have not received talents of gold or that we have not been given the king's estates to oversee? If we do say this, then we have not been paying attention. For each one of our lives is consequential far beyond these .... potentially. I presently serve two little, old ladies every day who changed the lives of millions of people over decades bringing them food and water and clothing and medical care. You see, it all depends on what we do with the gift of our lifetimes.

Do we say that God's Son has not been sent to us? If that is our claim, then we are so self-absorbed that we have missed the greatest gift and opportunity of our lifetimes, which is to prepare Him room, to receive Him into our hearts and souls and minds, and to love Him becoming His brother or sister and, in this, receiving the Father's adoption.

Father God has planted many gardens. "How many?" we may ask. We reply with a question: "Well, how many precious lives have been born into the world?" Each time, He pours out His incommensurable love. He pushes back the disordered world. He hedges it in with pleasant hedges. He plants choicest vines. Is not this the case with each of us? He pours out His incommensurable love. Each time, He sends His Son into their hearts. And each time He awaits a response. The range of possibilities? They are always two. Either we return that same love, laboring in the Vineyard, or we will have failed to receive His Son respecting Him and loving Him. And in this failure, we will have murdered Him .... certainly in the space of our lives, blighting our inner gardens.

Yes, with each grave personal failure, we renew the Lord's Crucifixion. Meeting Peter on the outskirts of Rome, the Apostle, who has just abandoned his flock, asks Jesus, "Where are you going, Lord?" And the Lord, Who now must go to these faithful people, replies: "Why, Peter, I am going to be crucified again."

The possibilities are always two. Either we receive Him and love Him, or we crucify Him. There is no other, middle way. Either we requite His love becoming His Heirs, or we become His murderers.

Reading the Hebrew Scriptures, we see that God scans the world searching for hearts that are true. With each life He creates, He says, "Perhaps this is one who will be the apple of my eye." You see, in the mysterious gift of our freedom, of our free choice, even God does not know what we will do next (a mystery we will explore next week).

He sets the same Vineyard within each of us. Each of us become His tenants. What will we do? This is not a once-for-all decision. It is a decision that is made every morning, even every hour. Will we be true? Is this not the case with every love relationship? On any day, we can fail to be true. It is a decision that is always before us. Will we love with His kind of self-sacrificing love? Or will we murder the Heir, Who wishes to give us everything, Who mysteriously is .... ourselves. Yes, It turns out in God's unfathomable mysteries, that the one we murder when we have turned our backs on Him, is us. Alternatively, the one we receive, the one we love, the one who becomes an heir, sacrificing all, offering the gift His Son has offered, is our other self, the self that chose for Him.

He has pushed back the rocks and stones. He has prepared the good earth. He has hedged all in protecting us. And He watches from above sending His angels to assist us. All that remains is to live in His garden, to receive His love, and to become His Heir. This is always, every minute, every hour, His sacred will.

Do our hearts sometimes become sometimes restless? Do we sometimes have wild thoughts? Do our passions make war on our souls? This is the ancient foe's tunnel into the gardens of God. And Father God in His infinite wisdom has entrusted us to guard this last redoubt, this last defense of everything that is good and right. Let us, therefore, resolve to become His heirs, to guard our hearts, for He seeks such as these to become the apple of His eye, even His own sons and daughters.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.