October 11, 2026
Where would you rather be right now?
I am not asking y'all to get up and leave. But it might be worth sitting with that question for a minute, because it was asked of me and a group I was with on a mission trip to Bowling Green, Kentucky, after the tornadoes hit there five or six years ago. We went with a Disciples mission program called Be the Neighbor. It was more than just showing up to help people in need. It was meant to train us in the work, so that when we came home we could do the same thing in our own community. It was a very intentional, spiritual program, and the first morning, during our devotional time, that was the first question we had to answer: where would you rather be this week?
They gave us five minutes to sit with it and write down our answers. As a father with a young child in school, my answer was pretty easy. I wanted to be at home with my family, in my normal routines. But I have to be honest, as easy as the answer was, it kind of stung. Shouldn't I want to be here? Shouldn't the answer be that I want to be right where I am? I made this choice, right? I did not have to go on this trip. I chose to go because I wanted to go.
But the reality of our lives is that we always have more than one option, more than one thing we might want to do. Making a choice does not erase the fact that we could have chosen something else. And that honors something true: oftentimes when we answer God's call on our lives, we give up something we might rather have been doing. Any choice requires sacrifice. That is why we often do not like making choices, because once we make one, we have to give something else up. And especially when it comes to following God's calling, whatever we choose, we are going to give something up.
Be the Neighbor invited us that week to be honest about it. To say, you know what, there are things I would rather be doing than getting up at 7:00 in the morning after sleeping on the floor of a youth center in a church several hours from home. That does not mean I do not want to be doing this. But when we deny that we have choices, when we deny there are other things we would rather be doing, we just push down something that is going to keep on existing. It will either make us miserable, or it will convince us that all of this was somehow our own making.
I think that is exactly what we see in this morning's gospel reading. The tenants have become certain that this vineyard, the one that was dug out and built for them, is theirs. They deserve it. They have told themselves a different story, even though they have a pretty good deal. They did not have to build the vineyard. They did not have to buy the land. All they have to do is give back a portion of what comes out of something that is not their own.
So often in life we convince ourselves of other stories, stories that deny reality, that deny the truth. It seems kind of strange at the end of the parable when the tenants decide, "Well, if we kill the son, we get the vineyard." Does that make sense? Is that how things usually work? No. But they have told themselves a story where they are their own creators, their own makers. They do not believe there was someone there before them who made the vineyard and let them tend it. Their story goes: we deserve this vineyard, this vineyard is really ours, and all we have to do is eliminate the competition and we get to keep it for ourselves. They do not want to be tenants anymore. So they come up with a story where they are owners instead.
What in our lives do we own? What in our lives do we treat as ours to decide what to do with?
It is easy to read the rest of this parable, know Jesus is talking about the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the chief priests, all the ones who abused God's way and the stewardship God had given them, and say, "Oh, this story is about some bad religious leaders." It is easy to say we have got some bad religious leaders today too, and they are the problem. But what stories do we tell ourselves about the land we live on? About God's creation being ours, and about us deserving it? When God comes asking for the fruits of our labor, do we give freely? Do we receive those in need as Christ himself?
What stories do we tell ourselves about what is ours, about what belongs to us? Y'all, I am right there with you. A couple of weeks ago we were sitting down to dinner, and Tammy reached over to take a tater tot off my plate, and I said, "Uh-uh, that is my tater tot." I still had two left. I could have shared one and still had a tater tot for my last bite. And y'all might not have noticed, but I do not need the extra tater tot. If we think we do not do this, we do.
The thing is, the story still living in my brain is the story of being the middle child, one of three in a family where we grabbed stuff from each other and it became a jungle. Somebody reaches for your plate, and that fork suddenly becomes a weapon. Get away, back off. That story got ingrained in my mind: people should not be able to just reach onto my plate. That is mine.
Jesus calls us to learn a different way. The cornerstone Jesus talks about is, yes, Jesus himself, but it is also the way of Jesus, which is the way of reality, the truth about the world. Jesus does not come telling us about a way that the world around us does not already make clear and plain. He calls us back to the way the world is ordered. He reminds us that we did not make this earth, and we cannot own this earth. But we can accept the incredible covenant we have received from God.
The tenants forgot they had a pretty darn good deal. If you have ever been a tenant or a renter, when you have a bad year, do you get to pay less? Anybody got a deal like that anywhere in their life? No. But the deal for these tenants is that you give back a portion of whatever the vineyard produces. Have a bad year, the vineyard does not do well, you are in the middle of a huge drought and the only rain you get is five inches in one weekend? Okay, you do not have to give as much back, because it did not produce as much. Have a good year, and everybody thrives in the middle of the abundance.
That is the order of the world God has shown us. When things are good, we can share in that abundance and give where we are able. When things are not as good, we can trust that God will find a way to help us and provide for us. But too often we do not think that deal is quite good enough. We do not believe the covenant God has offered us is enough, because what if we need more? What if we want more? What if we do not get our way in the world? So we start telling ourselves other stories. We convince ourselves there are other ways, better ways. You know what, I am going to own this place, and then I can choose what I give back to God and to the world around me. Sometimes it will be a lot, and sometimes it will not. But the reality is that the world is producing far more than enough. It is us, it is our stories, that are holding back the thriving, abundant nature of creation.
When we look back to the Ten Commandments in Exodus, it is easy to say they are good rules for living. They are not just rules for living. They are reality. "I am the Lord your God," the maker of heaven and earth. For followers of Christ, that is the beginning of our reality. And when Jesus talks about the cornerstone breaking us or crushing us, he is saying that when we come up against that reality, it is going to break us if we are not willing to live into it, to build on it, to let it be our cornerstone. When we try to live out other stories, eventually they break us. When we try to hoard and bring in as much as we can just for ourselves, that is a weight and a burden we were not made to carry.
The Ten Commandments rooted the people of Israel, and they call us to be rooted in the reality of who God is and what God does. "You shall have no other gods before me." That includes yourself. That includes the idea that you deserve it, that you made it, that you built it all on your own. No other gods, including wealth and possessions, including success, including so many other things. It is easy to read the Old Testament stories about Baal and the other idols and think, gosh, we would never do that. What would you rather be doing right now? We all have idols. We have to keep learning how to move God back to the top of the list, and to name it: yes, that is an idol. That is something that rules over me if I am not careful. There are other things I want, other things that matter to me, but I want to choose God, and I do not want to get the order wrong.
Jesus pushes us and challenges us to live into the reality of the way God has made the world. "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God." It is not about what you say after you stub your toe, y'all. It is saying that God is up to something God is not up to. It is saying God blessed me with something I did on my own. It is claiming God has done something God has not done, or that God has not done something God has done. Using God's name in vain is when we start telling those stories that go against the way God made the world. Now, if you stub your toe, there are other things you can say. But when we start talking about what God is up to, we had better be paying attention to what God is truly up to, what God is really doing. There was a line about preaching in our opening hymn, and I thought, I had better be ready today, huh? If we are going to sing about the honesty of preaching, we had better be honest. We are the people of God. We are called to live lives of truth, lives that proclaim the reality of what God is doing in this world.
The religious leaders of Jesus's day heard him tell this story. And please notice, Jesus is not the one who says God is going to come back and kill all of y'all. It is the religious leaders themselves who pronounce God's judgment and destruction on anyone who would make the vineyard their own. Somewhere in there, they know it is not right. But even after they realize Jesus told this parable against them, they go and fulfill it. They start plotting to arrest him instead of learning and repenting of what they had been doing.
Will we be open to the work of God? Will we be open to God's messengers? Will we be open to the Son of God, knowing Jesus can come to us in so many ways? Jesus told us he would come to us in the least of these: in the hungry and the thirsty, in the sick and the unhoused, in the naked and the imprisoned. Do we listen for the message of Jesus there, calling us to share the fruit of the vineyard God has given us? We are called to listen, to receive the challenge, and to trust that God is absolutely up to goodness in this world.
And here is the thing, y'all, I want to be clear: this is not all a call to repentance. Jesus says the kingdom of God will belong to those who produce fruit for that kingdom. So every time someone who was hungry gets fed, every time someone who was unhoused finds shelter, every time someone gets socks on their feet when they are cold, that is us sharing the fruit. That is us producing from the vineyard and giving back to God what God asks of us. This is not saying we are not doing it. It is saying let us keep watching for the ways we can do more, do better, and live more fully into the truth of God's story. It is not either-or. Jesus did not pronounce that deadly judgment, because the way of Jesus calls us to repentance instead, to keep living more and more into the reality of what God is doing in the world.
None of us are going to get it right all the time. But last night, I let Oliver have my biscuit.
Let us listen. Let us hear what God is calling us to in the world. Let us remember the truth that our lives are not only our own, they are meant to be shared. What we have received is grace, and so we can share that same grace, open-handed, with everyone we meet. Amen.