2026-10-01
Brooke Strong
Vineyard Tales
Thursday, October 1, 2026
The Federated Church of Chagrin Falls
The Bible is full of vineyards.
They are places of beauty and abundance, places of work and waiting. People plant them, tend them, inherit them, fight over them, sing about them, and sometimes forget to whom they belong.
The prophet Isaiah even begins one of his most challenging prophecies as a love song: “Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard” (Isaiah 5). The vineyard has been carefully planted and lovingly tended. Everything necessary for life has been provided. And so the beloved waits to see what will grow.
Jesus picks up that old vineyard song in this Sunday’s Gospel reading, Matthew 21:33–46. Once again there is a vineyard. Once again it has been entrusted to others. And once again the question is about its fruit.
It can be tempting to hear Jesus’ story and immediately begin deciding who the “wicked tenants” are. Christians have done that before, sometimes with terrible consequences—especially when the parable has been used to condemn Jewish people and imagine the Church as their righteous replacement.
But perhaps Jesus’ story is not giving us a judge’s chair.
Perhaps it is giving us a mirror.
What have we done with the world entrusted to us? What are we cultivating together? Who enjoys its abundance, and who bears its costs? What kind of fruit is growing from the ways we have learned to live with one another and with the earth itself?
This Sunday is also World Communion Sunday, when Christians around the world gather at Christ’s table. There we receive bread from the field and fruit from the vine—gifts of soil, water, sunlight, human labor, and ultimately God’s grace.
We come not as owners, but as recipients.
Perhaps that is where tending the vineyard begins: remembering that this wonderful world was never ours to possess.
It is beloved.
It is entrusted to us.
And God is still looking for its fruit.
Read Before Sunday
Matthew 21:33–46
As you read, pay attention to what belongs to whom. The landowner plants the vineyard, prepares it, and entrusts it to tenants. Notice what happens when the tenants begin to act as though what has been entrusted to them belongs to them.
Questions for Reflection
- Where do you see the vineyard of God around you?
- What fruit are we cultivating together?
- What might it mean to tend this world as something beloved rather than something possessed?
I look forward to arriving in Jerusalem with you this Sunday.
For the Life of the World,
Pastor Michael
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