A Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 22, Year A)
and A Liturgy for the Care of God’s Creation
October 4, 2026
Text: Matthew 21:33-46
Now, O Lord, take my lips, and speak through them. Take our minds, and think through them. Take our hearts, and set them on fire. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Growing up in Enterprise, one of the most formative and memorable experiences of my childhood was participating in Boy Scouts.
I started as a Cub Scout in first grade and continued in Scouting all the way through high school, eventually earning the rank of Eagle Scout, which is one of my proudest achievements.
I have my parents to thank for that! They encouraged me to keep going when it would’ve been much easier to give it up and focus on other things.
During those years, I learned so many valuable lessons about how to be a good and responsible citizen and helpful skills that I carried with me into adulthood.
One of my favorite activities in Scouting was getting to go camping on the weekends and learning all the skills that went along with camping. We went to places like Lake Jackson down in Florala and St. Andrew’s Bay in Panama City. And of course, we spent a lot of time at our local scout camp in New Brockton—Camp Alaflo.
One of the things we learned early on as we were learning how to be responsible campers was a rule called “Leave No Trace.” Basically, it meant that when you left a campsite, you should leave no trace that you were ever there. And not only that, it meant that you were supposed to leave it better than the way you found it.
One of the ways we practiced that was at the end of every camping trip. After everyone had packed up their tents and we were ready to leave, we would all form a long line, standing shoulder to shoulder.
Then, we would walk across the campsite together, almost like a long police line. When we came across a piece of trash in our path, we would pick it up and throw it away. We would sweep back and forth across the entire campsite, making sure there was no trash left behind. And it didn’t matter whether or not we were the ones who put it there. We picked it up anyway.
That experience of learning how to be a responsible camper instilled in me a respect for the earth and for God’s creation. It probably explains why, even today, it makes my blood boil when I see someone throw trash out of a car window or when I see trash scattered along the side of the road.
It makes me upset because it means that someone had such little care and regard for the earth that they couldn’t take the time to throw away their trash where it belongs.
Those experiences in Scouting instilled in me a reverence for the earth, long before I ever had a way to put it into spiritual or theological language.
By learning to “leave no trace” and to clean up after ourselves, we were learning to care for something much bigger than ourselves so that the people who came after us could also enjoy its beauty. We were learning to think not only about ourselves, but about those who would come after us.
And on a spiritual level, we were learning to tend and care for something God had given us—not to use it just for our own purposes, but to be good stewards of God’s great gift of creation.
Because the earth is not a garbage can—and it’s not ours to do with as we please. The earth and all of God’s creation have been entrusted into our care—not to use however we want or to expend all of its natural resources for our own benefit.
When we read in the story of Creation that humanity has been given dominion over the earth and its creatures, that doesn’t mean we get to use everything frivolously or however we please.
It means practicing good stewardship and taking great care of that which God has given us.
Stewardship is really at the heart of our Gospel reading for this morning.
Jesus tells a story to some religious leaders about a landowner who planted a vineyard.
He put a fence around it, dug a winepress, and built a watchtower. The landowner did everything necessary to prepare the ground and create a vineyard that could produce good fruit.
But then he entrusted that vineyard to tenants. He leased them the land to care for while he went away to another country.
When the time for the harvest came, the landowner sent his servants to the tenants to collect the produce that belonged to him.
But the tenants began to act as though everything belonged to them.
They abused and killed the landowner’s servants. And eventually, when the landowner sent his own son, they killed him too, thinking that if they killed the heir, they could keep the inheritance for themselves.
At the end of the parable, Jesus asks the religious leaders what the landowner will do when he comes.
And they answer that he will put those tenants to death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at harvest time.
Jesus then tells them that the Kingdom of God will be given to a people who produce the fruits of the Kingdom.
And when the religious leaders hear this, they realize that Jesus is talking about them.
This story is a warning from Jesus about what happens when we’re unfaithful to the work God that has called us to do.
Just like the landowner, God calls his people to work for the building up of his Kingdom on earth, and part of that work means taking care of all the many gifts God has given us.
It also means remembering that everything we’ve been given comes from God and that nothing actually belongs to us.
The tenants’ mistake was that they began to treat something entrusted to them as though it belonged to them, which is why this parable is a great lesson about stewardship.
It invites us to consider what we’ll do with what God has given us to take care of.
Part of our calling as builders of God’s Kingdom is to care for God’s creation—to be good stewards of the gifts and natural resources God has given us.
If we read this parable through the lens of creation care, then it becomes a call to care for the environment and for all the creatures of the earth.
They are not ours to squander.
They are not ours to do with as we please.
They’ve been entrusted to us to tend and care for, just as God intended from the very beginning.
As I was writing my sermon for this morning, I came across a commentary about this Gospel reading that talked about two very different economies at work.
There’s an economy of domination, and there’s an economy of grace.
The economy of domination says that the things entrusted to us are expendable. If something benefits us, we can take it and use it however we want. We can consume it. We can take from it until there’s nothing left.
But that’s not the economy of God.
The economy of God is one of grace, and grace begins by recognizing that everything we have is a gift from God. And because it’s a gift, it isn’t meant to be hoarded or used only for ourselves. It’s something to be received with gratitude, cared for faithfully, and shared with others.
As human beings, we’ve learned to live in a world that often thinks of creation as expendable for our own benefit. But we have to learn to think about creation, not through dominance, but through grace.
Practicing good stewardship of God’s creation isn’t just about what we’ve been given.
It’s also about how we use it.
It’s about what kind of world we want to live in and what kind of world we want to leave behind for those who come after us.
Our decisions—even some of the smallest ones—can make a difference.
From September 1 to today, we’ve been observing the “Season of Creation.” This is a relatively new observance in the life of the Church, and it’s not just for Episcopalians.
Christians from many different denominations around the world have begun setting aside this season each year as an intentional time to think about God’s creation and the responsibility God has given us to care for it.
It gives us an opportunity to think about what it actually means to practice good stewardship of the earth and its resources.
It gives us an opportunity to ask ourselves, “Will we be good stewards of what God has entrusted into our care?”
Or, will we be like the wicked tenants in Jesus’ parable and treat God’s gifts as though they belong entirely to us, to use and abuse for our own benefit?
There are big questions right now about the work of creation care and our impact in the environment, and many of them can feel far beyond anything we can do as individuals.
But there are things we can do right here, in our own lives and in our own community.
They can be as simple as turning off the lights when we leave a room.
Or turning off the water instead of allowing it to run.
Taking the time to recycle things that can be recycled.
Picking up a piece of trash when we see it lying beside the road—even when we weren’t the ones who put it there.
Volunteering in the Good News Garden at church.
These may seem like small things.
But they’re everyday acts of stewardship.
Or, we may feel called to get even more involved and find even bigger ways to work for the care of creation.
All of these are ways of remembering that what we’ve been given is not just ours to consume. It’s been entrusted to us by God.
That’s what I first began learning all those years ago as a Boy Scout, walking shoulder to shoulder across a campsite and picking up trash that wasn’t even ours.
We were learning to leave something better than than the way we found it.
We were learning to think about the people who would come after us—not just ourselves.
And without realizing it, we were learning something about stewardship and how to care for a gift that we neither earned nor deserved.
May we all learn to do the same.
Let us pray:
O merciful Creator, your hand is open wide to satisfy the needs of every living creature: Make us always thankful for your loving providence; and grant that we, remembering the account that we must one day give, may be faithful stewards of your good gifts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
