It All Belongs to God

Beloved in Christ,

The gospel lesson appointed for this Sunday comes in the middle of an extended arc where Jesus’ critique of the religious leadership in his day becomes increasingly sharp. He tells a story about a vineyard owner who carefully plots out, protects, and tends to the land that will produce the precious fruit. The tenants who lease the land and participate in that work, however, don’t want to hand over the owner’s share when the time comes. When asked what should be done with them, Jesus’ listeners shoot back that they should be “put to a miserable death.” Yikes.

It all seems like a simple allegory foreshadowing the religious leaders’ rejection of and violence toward Jesus, with an overlay of divine vengeance we find distasteful. It would be easy to dismiss it as just that, or hear it as a critique of the way leaders in any context can be clueless from time to time in their closed-mindedness. 

But it’s always a mistake to deflect and imagine the scriptures are addressed to someone else, and not to us. There’s a profoundly important question being put to all of us here: who does your life belong to? To whom or what are you accountable? For whose benefit do you live, and work, and strive?

We’re all naturally inclined to think like the workers in the parable. We tend to imagine our life is about what we want or think we deserve. I will get mine, and you can get yours. But following Jesus calls us to make a shift that is as shocking as it is liberating: Your life, the gospel tells us, is not ultimately about you. Your living is not for your own benefit. Your life as a beloved, baptized child of God is about God, and we live to give ourselves away in love toward the God who gives Godself away to heal and save the whole world. True liberation and healing are found, not in choosing or possessing anything we want, but in giving ourselves away to God.

Paul gives us a glimpse of what this looks like in our reading from Philippians. When considering the many gifts, credentials, and identities he carries, simply states: “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” 

God has planted, tended, cared for, and nurtured the life you live, and the life of our beloved church. It all belongs to God. Our work is to hold tight to Jesus, to be held tight by Jesus, and to offer every beautiful fruit that ripens among us to God’s great work to embrace the whole broken world in love. 



Grace and Peace,

The Right Rev. Craig Loya