Sermon by The Very Rev Chris Yaw, 10/4/2026
Don’t Let Your Blessing Become Your Curse
Sunday, October 3, 2026 | Proper 19
St. David’s Episcopal Church, Southfield, MI
The Very Rev. Chris Yaw
There is a strange thing that happens to us humans when we get something good.
We start out grateful for it.
Then we get accustomed to it.
Then we begin to expect it.
And eventually, if we are not careful, we decide we deserve it.
Think about your first car.
Remember that?
Maybe it was rusty. Maybe the radio only worked when you turned left.
Maybe the heater had two settings: “Antarctica” and “surface of the sun.”
But it was yours!
You walked out into the driveway and thought, “I have a car!”
And then somewhere along the way, a car stopped being an astonishing blessing and became something that darn well better have heated seats.
This happens with houses.
It happens with jobs.
It happens with health.
It happens with money.
It happens with relationships.
It even happens with church.
The extraordinary becomes ordinary.
The gift becomes an expectation.
The blessing becomes an entitlement.
And I wonder if one of the great spiritual dangers of life is not simply that we might lose our blessings.
I wonder if the greater danger is that our blessings might lose us.
Because sometimes hardship drives us toward God.
But prosperity can quietly convince us that we don't need God at all.
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And that brings us to this rather unpleasant little story Jesus tells this morning.
Jesus says there is a landowner who plants a vineyard.
And notice how much work this owner does.
He plants it.
He puts a fence around it.
He digs the wine press.
He builds the watchtower.
This isn't some vacant lot with a couple of grapevines.
This is a thriving enterprise.
And then the owner does something extraordinary.
He entrusts it to somebody else.
He leases it to tenants.
Here you go.
Take care of it.
Work it.
Enjoy it.
Make something beautiful out of it.
And when harvest time comes, we'll share the fruit.
But somewhere along the way, the tenants forget one crucial fact.
They are tenants.
They start behaving like owners.
Bosses.
Entitled.
When the landowner sends servants to collect what belongs to him, they beat one, kill another and stone another.
The owner sends more servants.
Same thing.
Finally he sends his son.
And the tenants say:
“This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.”
And there it is.
The whole spiritual problem in one sentence.
They have confused stewardship with ownership.
They have forgotten whose vineyard it is.
And before we turn these people into cartoon villains, I think Jesus would like us to notice how easily we do the same thing.
Because you and I live in a vineyard.
You woke up this morning breathing air you didn't manufacture.
Your heart was beating before you remembered to tell it to.
The sun came up without consulting you.
You inhabit a body you did not create, on a planet you did not form, surrounded by people you did not breathe into being, enjoying talents and opportunities and relationships that you certainly participated in developing, but whose raw materials arrived as gifts.
Even life itself arrived before we had anything to say about it.
And yet somewhere along the way we start saying:
My life.
My money.
My house.
My career.
My time.
My body.
My talent.
My church.
My pew.
Careful with that last one.
Nothing reveals the doctrine of private property quite like an Episcopalian discovering a visitor sitting in their pew.
“Welcome to St. David's! We are delighted you're here. Now move.”
But Jesus says:
Tenant.
Tenant.
Tenant.
Tenant.
Not because God wants to diminish us.
Because God wants to free us.
You don't have to own the vineyard.
You simply have to help it bear fruit.
That changes everything.
The great theologian Walter Brueggemann has written extensively about the contrast between what he calls an “ideology of scarcity” and God's abundance.
Scarcity says there isn't enough.
So protect yours.
Hold tighter.
Build the fence higher.
Make the bank account bigger.
Keep outsiders out.
Acquire more.
Secure more.
Control more.
And the bizarre thing is that the more we acquire, the more frightened we can become of losing what we've acquired.
Eventually our possessions possess us.
Our success manages us.
Our status imprisons us.
The blessing becomes the curse.
Which may explain why Jesus talks about money and possessions so much.
Jesus doesn't hate wealth.
Jesus hates what wealth can do to the human heart when wealth becomes our identity.
Dorothy Day once said, “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”
That's a terrifying sentence.
I'd prefer something embroidered on a pillow.
But there it is.
Because Christianity keeps pushing us outward.
Toward the neighbor.
Toward the stranger.
Toward the poor.
Toward the lonely.
Toward the person who can't repay us.
Toward the person who isn't useful to us.
Toward the person who’d rather do us harm.
Which means maybe the spiritual question isn't:
What do you have?
The spiritual question is:
What is what you have doing?
You have money.
Fine.
What's your money doing?
You have a house.
Wonderful.
What's your house doing?
You have an education.
Wonderful.
What's your education doing?
You have influence.
What's your influence doing?
You have a healthy body.
What's your body doing?
You have a beautiful smile.
What's your smile doing?
You have a salary.
What's your salary doing?
You have stuff.
Strength.
Celebrity.
Connections.
A platform.
A reputation.
A church.
What's it doing?
Because your stuff, your strength, your celebrity, your smile, your salary are not simply for status.
They are for service.
That's what the tenants missed.
The vineyard was supposed to produce fruit.
Jesus finally says it explicitly:
“The kingdom of God will be…given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” Oct 4, 2026 - 19th Sunday after…
Fruit.
That's the test.
Not how impressive the vineyard looks.
Not how high the watchtower is.
Not how secure the fence is.
Fruit.
And that gives us a pretty good diagnostic tool for our own blessings.
If God has given me something good, I can ask:
Is this producing fruit beyond me?
Take your home.
Maybe one way your home bears fruit is hospitality.
Invite somebody over.
And don't tell me the house isn't clean enough.
Nobody who actually loves you cares about your baseboards.
If somebody comes to your house for dinner and leaves thinking, “The pasta was wonderful, but frankly I was disappointed in the grout,” don't invite them back.
Your table can bear fruit.
Your guest room can bear fruit.
Your front porch can bear fruit.
Your refrigerator can bear fruit.
Your home can become a little outpost of the kingdom of God.
Or consider money.
Some of us have more than we need.
Wonderful!
That's not something to feel guilty about.
It's something to feel responsible about.
Because generosity is not punishment for having money.
Generosity is one of the ways money becomes holy.
Give some away.
Help somebody go to school.
Support the food pantry.
Fund something beautiful.
Help somebody make rent.
Back an organization repairing some broken corner of the world.
Tip extravagantly once in a while.
Make somebody's day.
Let your money escape the gravitational pull of your own life.
Or maybe your blessing is knowledge.
You've spent forty years learning something.
Don't retire and lock it in a vault.
Teach somebody.
Mentor somebody.
Find a twenty-five-year-old who doesn't know what you know yet.
Give it away.
Maybe your blessing is time.
Maybe you have entered a season of life where you finally have some.
Don't just kill it.
Consecrate it.
Volunteer.
Visit somebody.
Read to a child.
Drive somebody to an appointment.
Call the person everybody else has forgotten.
Maybe your blessing is simply that people listen when you speak.
Then use your voice for somebody whose voice isn't being heard.
Because blessing isn't supposed to terminate with us.
God's gifts have destinations.
Howard Thurman, the great theologian and mystic who influenced the Civil Rights movement, famously wrote:
“Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive.”
But people sometimes stop the quotation too soon.
Because Thurman's point is that the world needs people who have come alive.
Your joy itself can become service.
Your music.
Your gardening.
Your cooking.
Your ridiculous encyclopedic knowledge of Michigan football.
Your ability to fix things.
Your ability to listen.
Your ability to make children laugh.
Your ability to sit beside somebody in a hospital room without trying to explain why God allowed this to happen.
These are grapes in the vineyard.
Make some wine!
And this is where Paul becomes so fascinating this morning.
Paul basically gives us his résumé.
And it is impressive.
Circumcised on the eighth day.
People of Israel.
Tribe of Benjamin.
Hebrew of Hebrews.
Pharisee.
Zealous.
Blameless under the law.
Paul has credentials.
Status.
Achievement.
Identity.
And then he says:
“Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.”
Paul isn't saying those things were inherently bad.
He is saying they became dangerous when they became the measure of his worth.
That's the difference.
Your education isn't the problem.
Thinking your degree makes you more valuable than someone without one is the problem.
Your money isn't the problem.
Believing your bank balance measures your importance is the problem.
Your success isn't the problem.
Needing everyone to know you're successful is where things get interesting.
Your religion isn't the problem.
Thinking your religion makes you superior to somebody else is definitely a problem.
Even morality can become an idol.
Paul had been very good at being good.
And then he met Jesus.
And discovered that salvation isn't a trophy for impressive people.
It's grace.
That's why our opening Collect this morning says something astonishing.
God is “always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve.”
Think about that.
God is more generous than we are prepared to receive.
The universe is not fundamentally stingy.
Grace is not being rationed.
God isn't sitting in heaven with a clipboard saying, “Yaw again? Didn't we just give that guy something?”
God gives.
And gives.
And gives.
And then says:
Now you.
You become generous.
You become merciful.
You become hospitable.
You become forgiving.
You become courageous.
You become a blessing.
Because maybe that's what blessing ultimately means.
A blessing isn't merely something good God gives to you.
A blessing is something good God intends to give through you.
That's a completely different understanding of prosperity.
And it means prosperity isn't merely financial.
Somebody sitting here today may say, “Chris, this sermon doesn't apply to me. You should see my checking account.”
Fair enough.
But you've got something.
Everybody does.
Maybe you're rich in patience.
Rich in experience.
Rich in friendship.
Rich in compassion.
Rich in knowledge.
Rich in time.
Rich in resilience.
Rich in humor.
Rich in prayer.
Rich in the peculiar ability to walk into a room where everybody is anxious and somehow lower the temperature.
You're standing in a vineyard.
Something has been entrusted to you.
And the question is:
What fruit is it producing?
Because the opposite of this is what Jesus warns us about.
The gated life.
A life turned inward.
Protecting.
Accumulating.
Defending.
Controlling.
Eventually the walls meant to protect our blessings become the walls that imprison us.
And this is why the Christian life continually opens doors.
Look at our Eucharist.
We come to this table and what do we hear?
“The Gifts of God for the People of God.”
Gift.
Gift.
Gift.
And then, after we receive it, what happens?
We don't stay here.
The liturgy kicks us out.
…Quite politely, because we're Episcopalians…
But nevertheless:
Out you go.
Our post-communion prayer says:
“Now send us forth in the power of your Spirit, that we may proclaim your redeeming love to the world.”
Receive.
Then go.
Be blessed.
Then bless.
Be loved.
Then love.
Be forgiven.
Then forgive.
Be fed.
Then feed.
Be welcomed.
Then welcome.
That's the rhythm of Christianity.
Inward for transformation.
Outward for mission.
And maybe this week each of us could identify one blessing that has gotten a little stuck.
One thing God has given us that has slowly become mostly about us.
Maybe it's your money.
Maybe it's your house.
Maybe it's your expertise.
Maybe it's your influence.
Maybe it's your time.
Maybe it's your faith.
And ask:
God, how could this bear fruit for somebody else?
Not someday.
This week.
Invite somebody.
Give something.
Call somebody.
Teach somebody.
Forgive somebody.
Encourage somebody.
Feed somebody.
Show up somewhere.
Open something you've been keeping closed.
Because here's the beautiful part.
Jesus isn't asking us to destroy the vineyard.
He wants the vineyard to flourish.
God isn't against abundance.
God is the source of abundance.
God isn't against prosperity.
God is against prosperity that forgets its purpose.
God isn't asking you to become less alive.
God is asking you to make your life fruitful.
That's why I love the hymn we'll sing in a few moments:
“God is love, and love enfolds us, all the world in one embrace.”
All the world.
That's how big the vineyard is.
And there are people outside these walls right now who need some fruit.
Someone needs the thing you know.
Someone needs the time you have.
Someone needs the encouragement you can give.
Someone needs the resources you can share.
Someone needs the welcome you can offer.
Someone needs the love you've received.
So don't let your blessing become your curse.
Don't clutch it so tightly that the gift becomes a possession and the possession becomes an idol and the idol becomes a prison.
Remember whose vineyard this is.
We are tenants.
Stewards.
Caretakers.
Recipients of astonishing grace.
And someday, when the harvest comes, I don't think God is going to be terribly interested in how much vineyard we managed to claim for ourselves.
I think God will want to know:
Did it bear fruit?
Did somebody eat because you were here?
Did somebody feel less alone?
Did somebody discover their dignity?
Did somebody encounter mercy?
Did somebody find welcome?
Did somebody glimpse Jesus because the blessings entrusted to you did not stop with you?
Your stuff.
Your strength.
Your salary.
Your smile.
Your house.
Your heart.
Your influence.
Your one beautiful, complicated, temporary life.
It's all vineyard.
So tend it.
Share it.
Open it.
Give it.
And let it bear fruit.
Because you were never blessed merely to be blessed.
You were also blessed to become a blessing.
Amen.