What Was Never Ours to Keep

Jesus tells a parable in Matthew about a landowner who plants a vineyard and leases it to tenants before leaving the area. When harvest time arrives, the landowner sends servants to collect what is due. The tenants refuse. They mistreat the servants who come to them, and eventually they kill the landowner’s son.

It is a difficult and violent story. But before the violence begins, something has already gone wrong. The tenants have been entrusted with a vineyard. They work it. They tend it. They undoubtedly invest time and energy into it. Somewhere along the way, however, they begin acting as though the vineyard belongs entirely to them.

That attitude is part of what makes this parable a worthy reflection. It would be easy to distance ourselves from these tenants because of what they eventually do. But their underlying temptation is not particularly unusual. We can become possessive of things that have been entrusted to us.

We do it with our time. We do it with our money and possessions. We can do it with our abilities, our relationships, and the communities of which we are a part. Churches can do it too. We can begin to think of a ministry, a building, a tradition, or even a congregation as something that belongs to us rather than something entrusted to our care.

There is a subtle difference between caring deeply about something and believing that it is ours to control. 

That difference matters when we think about what we do with everything God has placed in our lives.

Our lives are filled with gifts. Our time. Our abilities. Our relationships. The communities where we live and the earth beneath our feet. The resources available to us. Even the church community we share. Financial resources are certainly among those gifts, but they are only one part of a much larger picture.

At Trinity, generations before us worshiped, served, gave, repaired, changed, struggled, prayed, and passed something along. We are doing the same thing now. Trinity does not belong only to those of us who happen to be here at this particular point in its history. We have been entrusted with its worship, building, ministries, relationships, and mission for a time. Part of our calling is to care for these gifts faithfully and allow them to serve people beyond ourselves.

The same is true of our individual lives.

Scarcity tells us to hold tightly. There might not be enough. Someone might take what we have. We might need it later. If we loosen our grip, perhaps we will lose something.

God’s abundance invites us to see things differently.

Abundance does not mean pretending that resources are unlimited or that wise boundaries do not matter. It means trusting that God’s grace and the resources we hold in trust are not a scarce commodity that we must hold when challenges appear. Grace is given freely. We do not earn it, purchase it, or have to protect our share of it from someone else.

What we sometimes call stewardship begins as a response to that grace.

We do not give so that God will love us more. We do not serve so that God will owe us something. We do not share our gifts to prove that we deserve a place in God’s kingdom. We respond generously because grace has already been given.

That changes the question.

Instead of asking only, “How much can I afford to give away?” we can begin asking, “What might God make possible through what has been entrusted to me?”

Sometimes the answer will involve money. Sometimes it will involve an hour of our time, a skill we have developed, a relationship we can nurture, a willingness to listen, a building or resource that can be shared, or simply showing up when someone needs another person beside them.

Generosity loosens our grip enough for the gifts entrusted to us to become gifts for somebody else.

Maybe that is one of the invitations hidden within this difficult parable. We can care deeply for what has been placed in our hands without pretending that it exists only for us. So this week, consider what you are holding.

What has God entrusted to your care?

And what might become possible if you opened your hands just a little wider? 

Kevin+