Scripture: Matthew 21:33–42
One of the advantages of growing up as a sixth-generation Iowan in a small Iowa town was that I knew much of my extended family; not just cousins, but the generations that came before me. I knew two of my great-grandparents and many great-aunts and uncles.
One day, one such great-uncle, my paternal grandmother’s brother, asked if I would be willing to take his truck home to wash and detail it. He was getting older and could no longer move around very easily. And, of course, he was willing to pay me for it.
So Dad and I went over to his place—I was still too young to drive on my own—and drove his truck home, where I washed it, waxed it, shined the tires, and detailed the interior: vacuuming the carpet, cleaning the dust out of the vents, using Meguiar’s to polish all the vinyl, rubber, and plastic.
I had done all of this before on our own cars, but I remember my dad reminding me, “Son, this isn’t our car, so make sure you do a good job. Pay attention to everything you’re doing and take good care of your great-uncle’s truck.”
I was being taught the value of stewardship: how to care for someone else’s property. A few years before that, I had learned that this isn’t a trait everyone values.
I’d had a friend over to play, and since I’d been taught to share my toys, which wasn’t an easy lesson for me, we were playing together with a toy I valued. But my friend started playing pretty rough, and at one point he threw my toy across the room, leaving a big scratch on it.
I was horrified.
So horrified that at school the next week, we held a “trial” among my friends to determine whether my toy had been mistreated. If I recall correctly, we found my friend “guilty,” though it’s been far too long for me to remember what punishment we decided was appropriate.
We all know the feeling of being wronged, of having our property mistreated. But if we’re honest, haven’t we also been guilty of mistreating other people’s property?
We tell ourselves it doesn’t matter, that they won’t notice, or—worse—that there’s nothing the other person can do to us, so we neglect their things. Maybe, when a dark cloud has settled over us, we tell ourselves the other person deserves to have their stuff mistreated. I recall someone once telling me they’d stolen a DVD at a party because the host hadn’t thrown a very good party; they deserved it.
Or perhaps we simply don’t care. Take a walk around town: how many times do you see graffiti on public buildings, or watch people throw trash out their windows into the road? The value of public property doesn’t hold the same meaning for some as it does for others.
Today, Jesus reminds us of this dynamic.
He tells the parable of a householder who took the time to develop his farm. He planted a vineyard, built a winepress, even put up a hedge. When he left for another country, he rented the property out to some tenants. But these tenants didn’t value the ownership entrusted to them. When the owner sent slaves to collect his rent, they killed them. And again, when he sent his son.
We often hear this parable as an image of Christ himself, a foreshadowing of his impending crucifixion. That reading is true. But I think it can cause us to miss two things that matter just as much.
First, the vineyard is an image of Israel, of the Church, which has been entrusted to us. The Church doesn’t belong to us; it belongs to God. How often do we think of it as “my” church? How often do we insist that things be done “my” way, forgetting that “our” church is really Christ’s Church?
Even that interpretation is too small, though. In reality, all things belong to God, not just the Church. This world is his creation and, as such, belongs to him. Even our very lives aren’t our own. God is the source and ground of our life, and we simply share in his life. Put another way, we’re only renting this life from God. We are stewards of the life he has graced us with.
The second thing we often miss in this parable is that we are the tenants. We are the ones who have been entrusted with God’s property. We are the ones who owe him rent. And—this is the important part—we are the ones who have mistreated what belongs to him: the Church, the world, our very lives.
As Paul tells us, because we have gone astray, we have brought sin and death into the world. Because of our mistreatment of what we’ve been entrusted with, we have created a broken world. And because we allowed death to reign, it was necessary for Christ to become flesh and destroy death by his own death. And that, brothers and sisters, is the good news.
Though we, as humans, mistreated and put Christ to death when he walked among us—and let’s not fool ourselves into thinking we’d have acted any differently than the crowds of his own day—God does not turn his back on us. He continues to bless us: with sunshine, with rain, with families and friends, and even with his own Body every Sunday in Communion.
This parable reminds us that everything belongs to God, so that we might live in a new way.
Instead of hoarding what God has given us, we can offer it back to him, which we do at every Divine Liturgy. The gifts of bread and wine, brought forward during the Great Entrance, represent our lives, our faith, our hope, our church, the world. We offer it all up to God when we place it on the altar. In return, God receives our gifts, transforms them into the Body and Blood of Christ, and gives them back to us, transformed into something better.
It is a cycle of grace: God blesses us, we offer it back to God, and God blesses us again, more abundantly still.
In this way, every one of us shares in the royal priesthood, not merely tenants, but stewards. Good stewards.
When a man is ordained to the holy priesthood, the bishop places the Body of Christ in his hands during the Liturgy and says to him, “Receive this deposit and preserve it until the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, at which time he will demand it from you.”
I believe this is true for all of us. God has given us a beautiful world. May we receive it as stewards, and preserve it, so that when he demands it back, we can offer him what belongs to him.
Amen.