We Must Care for What God has Given Us

Homily for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost

1 Corinthians 16:13-24......Matthew 21:33-42

The parable of the vineyard and the wicked tenants is a familiar one.  Sometimes people interpret it as a warning about God’s anger—and to some extent it is.  But primarily it is a story that explains the idea of stewardship—that is, properly taking care of what God has given us to take care of.

In a parable, we know, everything stands for something else.  So, in this parable, the landowner represents God, the father and creator.  The vineyard stands for the world that God has created.  The tenants are the human race, whom God put in charge of the world to take care of it for Him.  The slaves sent by the landowner are God’s prophets and saints, whom he sends throughout history to remind people of their responsibilities to God and to each other.  Down through the ages, people have abused and ignored God’s prophets, continuing—like the wicked tenants in the vineyard—to treat God’s world as if it is their own and they can do whatever they like with it.

Finally, the landowner’s son represents Jesus Christ, God’s own Son, who was also killed when He came into the world.  As the parable shows, those who killed God’s Son were to be punished and God would give responsibility to a new set of tenants—the Christian people, who respected and believed in His Son.

Some people have mistakenly concluded that this means that God has condemned all the Jewish people for rejecting and killing Jesus Christ.  They have used this as an excuse for hatred and violence.  The Church rejects this attitude and this behavior.  We appreciate and respect the Jews as the first people to worship the one true God, who made an eternal covenant with them, and through them gave the world the Law, the Prophets, the rest of the Old Testament—and the Living Word, God’s own Son.  They were not all ready to accept Jesus as the Messiah, but they were not all guilty of His death.  We cannot fully understand the place God has for them in His plan of salvation, so we cannot judge them.

For us Christians the message in this parable is that we have to take good care of what God has entrusted to us or we also may be punished.  We can identify at least three ways in which we must do this.

First, we have to accept and keep and teach the true Faith, the foundation of our Christian life.  Through the Holy Mysteries of Baptism, Chrismation, and Eucharist we unite ourselves to Christ and profess our belief, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we partake of the divine life.  Through study and in the other Holy Mysteries we deepen and strengthen our faith.  Sin insinuates itself into worship and theology; mistaken ideas and heresies continue to threaten the true Faith and lead people astray into sects and cults that claim to be Christ’s Church.  Our preaching and teaching and example can show the right way that leads to eternal life.

Second, we have to take care of God’s property in a literal, physical way—not exploiting and destroying the natural environment, conserving energy, protecting wildlife and wild lands, not wasting the good things of the earth, sharing our God-given abundance.  We also must take care of God’s house, our church property—keeping it clean and in good repair, picking up trash, cutting the weeds, even mopping the floor, scrubbing the restroom, and cleaning the refrigerator.

Third, our stewardship of God’s earth involves taking care of each other.  St Paul writes, “Let all that you do be done in love.”  He writes to the Christian community of Corinth that they should honor and imitate those who devote themselves to the service of the people of God.  In other words, we should act as God acts, in love and with care for others, not selfishly.  We should use our talents and our time and the gifts of prosperity God has given us in a way that benefits all the people of God, starting in our families, including the parish community, and extending to the larger community of neighborhood, city, country, and world.

This is how we do the work God has given us and how we respect and honor His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom we give thanks and praise and glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever and to ages of ages.  Amen.