Mine to Manage
Sunday, October 4, 2026 • Preached by David Morreale
Summary: We all struggle with stewardship — the quiet, natural drift from tending something we've been given to acting like we own it outright. It shows up in small things: a room that was only ever borrowed, a calendar guarded like it's untouchable, a role held onto a little too tightly. It shows up, too, in how quickly we judge others, often without realizing we're describing ourselves in the process. Isaiah 5's "love song" about God's vineyard catches us exactly this way — inviting us to render judgment on a disappointing vineyard, only to reveal that we are the vineyard being judged. Jesus runs the same trap on the religious leaders of his own day in the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Matthew 21:33–46): people entrusted to care for a vineyard slowly convince themselves they're entitled to it, until entitlement turns to violence. When Jesus asks what should happen to those tenants, the confident verdict his listeners pronounce turns out to be their own. But none of this is the end of the story. The vineyard that went to ruin gets replanted. The stone that gets rejected becomes the cornerstone. Judgment, however real, is never God's final word. So the invitation isn't to panic over what we've started treating as ours that wasn't — it's to put the gavel down, remember who it actually belongs to, and ask what fruit it's meant to produce in our hands right now.
We're invited into Isaiah 5 to render a verdict on a disappointing vineyard, only to discover we are the vineyard being judged. Where have we been quick to pronounce judgment on someone else, only to realize — maybe not until later — that the verdict actually belonged to us?
The slide from tending to owning rarely announces itself. It looks like a calendar we guard too fiercely, a role we hold onto a little too tightly, a child's life we manage like a second chance at our own. What's been entrusted to us that we've quietly started treating as something we own rather than something we tend?
The vineyard was handed over before anyone had produced a single grape — gift always comes before fruit. What fruit is actually being asked of us right now, with whatever's currently in our hands?
Passage for Reflection: Matthew 21:33–46
33 "Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. 34 When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. 35 But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36 Again he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. 37 Finally he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.' 38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.' 39 So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.
40 Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" 41 They said to him, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time."
42 Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the scriptures: 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes'? 43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom."
45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. 46 They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.
