They came and informed Jesus concerning the men from Galilee, whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices, on the festival of Herod’s birthday, when he cut off John’s head.^[1] Since Herod had illegally killed John, Pilate sent and killed those who were present at the feast. Since he was not able to injure Herod, he destroyed his accomplice to his shame, and he left him in anger until the day of the Lord’s judgment. The two were reconciled through the pretext of the Lord.^[2] Pilate mixed their blood with their sacrifices, because the Roman authorities forbid them to offer sacrifice. Pilate found them transgressing the law and offering sacrifices, and he destroyed them at that same place and time.

From those Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices, the symbolic interpretation appears to refer to those who under the devil’s power offer sacrifice impurely. Their prayer becomes sin,^[1] just as it is written of Judas the traitor, who, amid the sacrifices, planned the betrayal of the Lord’s blood.^[2]

He told another parable, A certain man had planted a fig tree in his vineyard and he said to the vinedresser. This refers to the law, taking its point of view. Behold, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree. This refers to the three captivities in which the Israelites were taken away, so that they might be chastened, but they were not chastened. . . . The fig tree is a figure of the synagogue. He sought the fruits of faith in it, but it did not have that which it could offer. . . .

During three years, he showed himself among them as Savior. When he wished that the fig tree be uprooted, the event was similar to that earlier one, when the Father said to Moses, Permit me to destroy the people.^[1] He gave Moses a reason to intercede with him. Here he also showed the vinedresser that he wished to uproot it. The vinedresser made known his plea, and the merciful One showed his pity, that if, in another year, the fig tree did not produce fruit, it would be uprooted. The vinedresser however did not condemn through vengeance like Moses, who, after having interceded and was heard, said, For the day of their ruin is near and that which is about to happen to them is fast approaching.^[2] . . . We are not saying that the Jews are tares, for they are capable of being chosen, but they are not pure wheat grains, for they can be rejected.

The Lord also has something very fitting to say about a fruitless tree, Look, it is now three years that I have been coming to it. Finding no fruit on it, I will cut it down, to stop it blocking up my field. The gardener intercedes. . . .

This tree is the human race. The Lord visited this tree in the time of the patriarchs, as if for the first year. He visited it in the time of the law and the prophets, as if for the second year. Here we are now; with the gospel the third year has dawned. Now it is as though it should have been cut down, but the merciful one intercedes with the merciful one. He wanted to show how merciful he was, and so he stood up to himself with a plea for mercy. Let us leave it, he says, this year too. Let us dig a ditch around it. Manure is a sign of humility. Let us apply a load of manure; perhaps it may bear fruit.

Since it does bear fruit in one part, and in another part does not bear fruit, its Lord will come and divide it. What does that mean, divide it? There are good people and bad people now in one company, as though constituting one body.

Now the literal sense of this passage does not need a single word of explanation. When we search into its inward, secret and unseen meaning, we affirm it as follows. The Israelites, after our Savior’s crucifixion, were doomed to fall into the miseries they deserved, Jerusalem being captured, and its inhabitants slaughtered by the enemy’s sword. Their houses would be burned with fire, and even the temple of God demolished. It is probable that he compares the synagogue of the Jews with a fig tree. The sacred Scripture also compares them with various plants: the vine, the olive, and even to a forest.^[1]

He says, Look, these three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down; why should it use up the ground? It is as if he would say, Let the place of this barren fig tree be laid bare; then some other tree will come up or may be planted there. This was also done. The crowds of the Gentiles were called into its place and took possession of the inheritance of the Israelites. It became the people of God, the plant of paradise, a good and honorable seed. It knows how to produce fruit, not in shadows and types but rather by a pure and perfectly stainless service that is in spirit and truth, as being offered to God, who is an immaterial Being.

If any one should say that the vinedresser is the Son, this view also has a suitable reason on its side. He is our Advocate with the Father, our propitiation,^[1] and the gardener of our souls. He constantly prunes away whatever is harmful and fills us with rational and holy seeds so we may produce fruits for him. He spoke of himself, A sower went out to sow his seed.^[2] It does not influence the glory of the Son to assume the character of the vinedresser. The Father assumes it himself, without being exposed to any blame for so doing. The Son said to the holy apostles, I am the Vine; you are the branches; my Father is the Vinedresser.^[3]

There was in the synagogue a woman who for eighteen years was bowed down by infirmity. Her case may prove to be of great benefit to those who have understanding. We must gather what is to our advantage from every quarter. By what happened to her, we may see that Satan often receives authority over certain persons who fall into sin and have grown lax in their efforts toward piety. Whomever he gets into his power, he may involve in bodily diseases since he delights in punishment and is merciless. . . . The accursed Satan is the cause of disease to the human bodies, just we affirm that Adam’s transgression was his doing, and by means of it our bodily frames have become liable to infirmity and decay.

The members of the church are similar to this vine. They are planted with the root of faith and held in check by the shoots of humility. . . . He placed in the church a tower of apostles, prophets and doctors who are ready to defend the peace of the church. He dug around it when he had freed it from the burden of earthly anxieties. Nothing burdens the mind more than concern for the world and lust for either wealth or power.

An example of this is in the Gospel. We can read the story of the woman who had sickness caused by a spirit, and she was bent over so that she was unable to look upwards. In fact, her soul was bent over. It inclined to earthly rewards and did not possess heavenly grace. Jesus saw her and addressed her. She immediately laid aside her earthly burdens. These people also were burdened with lusts. He addressed them in these words, Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.^[1] The soul of that woman breathed once more and stood up like a vine around which the soil has been dug and cleared.

The incarnation of the Word and his assumption of human nature took place for the overthrow of death, destruction and the envy harbored against us by the wicked Serpent, who was the first cause of evil. This plainly is proved to us by facts themselves. He set free the daughter of Abraham from her protracted sickness, calling out and saying, Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity. A speech most worthy of God, and full of supernatural power! With the royal inclination of his will, he drives away the disease. He also lays his hands upon her. It says that she immediately was made straight. It is now also possible to see that his holy flesh bore in it the power and activity of God. It was his own flesh, and not that of some other Son beside him, distinct and separate from him, as some most impiously imagine.

The whole human race, like this woman, was bent over and bowed down to the ground. Someone already understands these enemies. He cries out against them and says to God, They have bowed my soul down.^[1] The devil and his angels have bowed the souls of men and women down to the ground. He has bent them forward to be intent on temporary and earthly things and has stopped them from seeking the things that are above.^[2]

Since that is what the Lord says about the woman whom Satan had bound for eighteen years, it was now time for her to be released from her bondage on the sabbath day. Quite unjustly, they criticized him for straightening her up. Who were these, except people bent over themselves? Since they quite failed to understand the very things God had commanded,^[3] they regarded them with earthbound hearts. They used to celebrate the sacrament of the sabbath^[4] in a literal, material manner and did not notice its spiritual meaning.

Not understanding this, the ruler of the synagogue commanded that no one should be healed on the sabbath since the sabbath is an image of a future day of rest, days of rest from evil deeds, not from good works. It is commanded that, neither bearing the burden of offenses nor being devoid of good works, we shall celebrate future sabbaths after death. The Lord then is seen to reply spiritually when he says, You hypocrites, does not every one of you on the sabbath day untie his ox or his donkey and lead them to water? Why did Jesus mention another creature? He showed the future to his opponents, the rulers of the synagogue. The Jewish and the Gentile peoples would lay aside the thirst of the body and the world’s heat through the abundance of the Lord’s fountain. The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master’s feeding trough.^[1] The people who were fed on the food of common hay, which before it is plucked up is withered away,^[2] received the Bread that came down from heaven.^[3]

But he says that you are loosed from your infirmity, and she is loosed. Well, do you not also unloose your belt on the sabbath? . . . Did she that very day begin weaving or working at the loom? No, he says that she was made straight. The healing was a labor. No, you are not angry because of the sabbath. Since you see Christ honored and worshiped as God, you are frantic, choked with rage, and waste away with envy. You have one thing concealed in your heart and profess and make pretext of another. For this reason you are most excellently convicted by the Lord, who knows your vain reasoning. You receive the title that fits you, being called hypocrite, pretender, and insincere.

Shame fell then on those who had uttered these corrupt opinions, stumbled against the chief cornerstone, and had been broken. When busied in straightening his crooked vessels, they clashed against the wise Potter and resisted the Physician. They could make no reply. They had unanswerably convicted themselves. They were put to silence, doubting what they should say. The Lord closed their bold mouths. The crowds who reaped the benefit of the miracles were glad. The glory and splendor of his works solved all inquiry and doubt in those who sought him without ill will.

As the text says, the kingdom of God is like a grain of mustard seed, because the kingdom is brought by a word from heaven. It is received through hearing and sown by faith. It takes root through belief and grows by hope. It is diffused by profession, and it expands through virtue. It is spread out into branches. To these branches, it invites the birds of heaven, the powers of spiritual insight. In those branches, it receives them in a peaceful abode.

If the kingdom of heaven is as a grain of mustard seed, and faith is as a grain of mustard seed, surely faith is the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of heaven is faith. One who has faith has the kingdom. The kingdom and faith is among us. We read, The kingdom of heaven is within you,^[1] and Have faith in yourselves.^[2] Peter, who had all faith, received the keys of the kingdom of heaven to unlock it also for others.^[3]

There is written in these words of the Lord, Someone took and threw it into his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of heaven roosted in its branches. Let us look more closely to find out to whom all these things pertain. We said before that the nature of mustard might resemble the holy martyrs because they are rubbed by different sufferings. Since Scripture says, And it grew and became a tree, and the birds of heaven roosted in its branches, I think that this is more properly compared to the Lord Christ himself. Born a man, he was humbled like a seed and in ascending to heaven was exalted like a tree. It is clear that Christ is a seed when he suffers and a tree when he rises. He is a seed when he endures hunger and a tree when he satisfies five thousand men with five loaves. In the one case, he endures barrenness in his human condition, in the other he bestows fullness by his divinity. I would say that the Lord is a seed when he is beaten, scorned and cursed, but a tree when he enlightens the blind, raises the dead and forgives sins. In the Gospel, he says that he is a seed: Unless the grain of wheat, falling upon the earth, dies.^[1]

The leaven is small in quantity, yet it immediately seizes the whole mass and quickly communicates its own properties to it. The Word of God operates in us in a similar manner. When it is admitted within us, it makes us holy and without blame. By pervading our mind and heart, it makes us spiritual. Paul says, Our whole body and spirit and soul may be kept blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.^[1] The God of all clearly shows that the divine Word is poured out even into the depth of our understanding. . . .

We receive the rational and divine leaven in our mind. We understand that by this precious, holy and pure leaven, we may be found spiritually unleavened and have none of the wickedness of the world, but rather be pure, holy partakers of Christ.

The grain of wheat is Christ, because he was spiritual leaven for us, and many think that Christ is the leaven that enlivens the virtue which we have received. Since the leaven in the flour surpassed its own kind in strength and not in appearance, Christ was preeminent among the fathers, equal in body, incomparable in divinity. The holy church is prefigured in the woman in the Gospel. We are her flour, and she hides the Lord Jesus in the inner parts of our mind until the radiance of heavenly wisdom envelopes the secret places of our spirit.

There are three measures: of the flesh, of the soul and of the spirit. This is truer of the spirit in which we all live. . . . The woman, who prefigures the church, mixes with them the virtue of spiritual doctrine, until the whole hidden inner person of the heart^[1] is leavened and the heavenly bread arises to grace.^[2] The doctrine of Christ is fittingly called leaven, because the bread is Christ. The apostle said, For we, being many, are one bread, one body.^[3] Leavening happens when the flesh does not lust against the Spirit, nor the Spirit against the flesh.^[4] We mortify the deeds of the flesh,^[5] and the soul, aware that through the breath of God it has received the breath of life, shuns the earthly germs of worldly needs.

A woman took some yeast when the church, by the Lord’s generosity, secured the energy of love and faith from on high. She hid this in three measures of flour until the whole batch was leavened. She did this when she performed her ministry of imparting the word of life to parts of Asia Minor, Europe and Africa, until all the ends of the world were on fire with love for the heavenly kingdom.