One of the kids and I were talking the other day. I don’t know how we even got on to to this. It might have been a a teachable moment about sharing or something, but at one point they said uh they referred to my room and uh I don’t know. I I guess I I thought that this would be an appropriate time to get technical. I uh I said, “Well, technically it’s not really your room.” I I mean, it is your room. We uh you know, it’s where you sleep. It’s where all your stuff is. We call it your room, but technically this isn’t even our house. Uh it’s it’s one of those unique things about being an itinerant United Methodist pastor who lives in a parsonage. This really is our home. It’s where our family lives. It’s where our kids are growing up. It’s where we eat dinner. It’s where we celebrate birthdays. It’s where we do all the ordinary things that make a a home. But we also know that we only get to call it ours for a season. I’m reminded of how every time I have to fill out one of those forms, it might be a an insurance form or uh something with the credit union or something, they want you they want to know, do you rent or do you own and I neither option fits quite right. Uh so if there’s a if there’s another option other that’s the the box that I’ll usually check. I share this to say uh there’s something about living in that other category that gives a deep sense of gratitude. In fact, before we ever moved in, this church had done extensive renovations on the parsonage, making it into a a warm, inviting, safe place for uh our family to to grow in. And since we’ve been here, the the church has done a kitchen renovation. And each time these these things have happened, you know, whether it’s a big project like that or just a small repair of some kind, I’ve always felt personal responsible to get involved in some way or another if I can help, you know, help with something. Not only to make sure we’re being good stewards of the church’s resources, but because there’s just something about being entrusted with something. In today’s passage, Jesus tells a story about some people who find themselves in a in a similar position. They are living and working in a vineyard that does not belong to them. The landowner has planted it, put a fence around it, dug a wine press, built a watchtower. He’s done all this on the front end. Everything necessary to make this a good and fruitful vineyard. and then he entrusts it to some tenants. There’s nothing unusual about this arrangement. Their job is to tend the vineyard, to work the land, care for what has been placed into their hands, and when the harvest comes, to give the land owner the fruit that belongs to him. But then comes the problem, right? The tenants begin acting as though the vineyard belongs to them. When the landowner sends his servants to collect his share of the harvest, the tenants beat one and kill another. So he sends more and they do the same thing. Finally he sends his son thinking surely they will respect him. But by then the tenants have convinced themselves that they can have the whole thing. This is the heir. They say come let us kill him and get his inheritance. Somewhere along the way, they forgot something very basic. They don’t own the vineyard. They live there. They work there. They benefit from it. They have real responsibility for it. In some meaningful sense, it probably even felt like their vineyard. But technically, it wasn’t. it had been entrusted to them. I think there is a word in in here for us this morning, particularly as we begin spending some time this month thinking about stewardship because stewardship begins long before we ever start talking about money. Stewardship begins with the recognition that so much of what we call ours has actually been entrusted to us. Our time, our abilities, our resources, the relationships we have, the opportunities in front of us, the very years of our lives, our church. We call it our church and rightly so that this is our church family. This is where we worship and pray, grieve and celebrate. This is where people are baptized, where they are remembered. This is where friendships are formed, meals are shared, people are cared for, and faith is nurtured. But technically, this isn’t our church at all. We didn’t start it. Generations before us worshiped here, gave here, served here, built here, and cared for this place long before any of us arrived. And God willing, generations we will never meet will worship and serve here long after we are gone. It reminds me again of that house up there on the hill. Knowing that the parsonage isn’t really mine doesn’t make me care for it less. If anything, I think it makes me care for it more. People before me cared for it. People after me will live in it. And for however long our family gets to call it home, it has been placed in our hands. There’s a sense of responsibility. And maybe that’s not a bad way to think about the church. People before us loved this vineyard and tended it. God willing, people we will never meet will tend it after us. But right now, it has been placed in our hands. So maybe the question for us isn’t simply what does my church or our church do? Maybe it’s what has God entrusted to me and what am I going to do with it? Because that’s the other part I think of Jesus’s story here that’s really hard for me to just overlook. It isn’t enough for the vineyard simply to remain a vineyard. The landowner entrusted it to the tenants expecting it to produce something. And the same goes for us. It would be easy to think that being good stewards of a church simply means keeping it going, paying the bills, keeping the lights on, maintaining the building, making sure that there’s still a Cullowhee UMC here 20 years from now, 30 years from now, 40 years. But through his story, Jesus seems to be saying, “Hey, God doesn’t plant vineyards just so there can continue to be vineyards. A vineyard is meant to bear fruit.” Last week, after the Wesley Foundation yard sale, there was, as is often the case, plenty of stuff left over. Uh Jay and Wesley always work hard to get those items to wherever they need to go. And I had a little free time one day, so I tagged along uh and took some stuff to Goodwill. In the midst of that, one of our preschool teachers down the hall saw us and thanked us for what we were doing. Now, initially, I didn’t think much of that, but reflecting on it later, you know, I I thought, you know what? Why did she thank us? uh she isn’t directly involved in in the day-to-day work of Wesley. She wasn’t uh responsible for the yard sale. I don’t think this was her stuff that we were hauling away. There really wasn’t any particular reason that I’m aware of why she needed to really thank us. And so I wondered later maybe somehow she knew that Wesley’s ministry belonged to all of us. Not belonged to us in the sense that we own it, but in the sense that we’ve been entrusted with it together. Wesley may not be the particular ministry she spends her days working in, but she recognized that its work is nevertheless part of the work we share, which surely came from her recognition that the preschool is also something that we have been entrusted with. And I think there’s something beautiful about that. It’s like maybe that’s what it looks like when a community understands that the vineyard has been placed in our hands. We don’t have to be personally responsible or personally involved in everything that happens in the vineyard to recognize some responsibility for what God is doing through this place. We begin to see the ministry of this church not simply as something they do but as something we have been entrusted with together. That’s fruit. And once you start looking, you see it all over this place. You see it yesterday with the the wood that went out. You see it in in children and families who are loved here. You see it when someone who needs community finds a place to belong here. You see it when this congregation looks beyond itself to the needs of its neighbors. And then on the other side of that coin, when our neighbors look to us, either individuals or groups and organizations because, you know, to try to partner on some kind of project or program because they just know that’s who who we are. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to hear some of those stories. Not because we could possibly name everything that happens here, but because every once in a while it’s important to look around the vineyard and notice what’s growing. Now, I do have to warn you, there is a risk in doing this. We can step back and admire the fruit as though it somehow just appeared there on its own. We can say look at everything that our church or my church does except technically there is no separate entity called the church doing any of it. There are people doing it. People giving, people serving, people teaching and welcoming, people noticing a need and deciding to do something about it. people giving generously enough that ministries they may never personally participate in can still happen. It’s people who tend vineyards. It’s easy to talk about what my or our church does. It’s harder to ask what part will I have in it? And yet, I wonder if this isn’t one of the questions before each of us this morning. After all, for this particular season, this is one of the vineyards that God has placed into our hands. Not just to preserve, not just to maintain, not just to make sure it’ll still be here for whoever comes next, but to tend it, to take care of it, and by God’s grace to help it bear fruit. Generations before us had their turn. Generations after us will have theirs. But for this season, this is ours to tend. Not because it belongs to us, but because to us, each of us, it has been entrusted. Let us pray. God, we give you thanks for all that you have entrusted to us, for one another, for the opportunities you give us to love and serve for this church. Help us not to take your vineyard for granted and give us the willingness to tend the rose you have placed in our hands so that together we might bear good fruit. Amen.