October 4, 2026 | Word Out!
Download the Bulletin from October 4, 2026
READINGS
First Reading: Isaiah 5:1-7
1 I will sing for my beloved
my love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
2 He dug it and cleared it of stones
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded rotten grapes.
3 And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
and people of Judah,
judge between me
and my vineyard.
4 What more was there to do for my vineyard
that I have not done in it?
When I expected it to yield grapes,
why did it yield rotten grapes?
5 And now I will tell you
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
6 I will make it a wasteland;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it.
7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are his cherished garden;
he expected justice
but saw bloodshed;
righteousness
but heard a cry!
Second Reading: Philippians 3:4b-14
[Paul writes:] 4b If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
7 Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 8 More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. 10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
12 Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have laid hold of it, but one thing I have laid hold of: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Gospel: Matthew 21:33-46
[Jesus said:] 33 “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went away. 34 When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. 35 But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36 Again he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. 37 Then he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ 39 So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40 Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” 41 They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”
42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:
’The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?
43 “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits. 44 The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”
45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. 46 They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.
SERMON— Guest Pastor Kristy Daniels
Well, here we find ourselves in the middle of this very long green season, Sundays after Pentecost. We’re using the color green to remind us that it is a season of growth and life, meant to be a season of growth in our understanding of what it means to be disciples, what it means to pick up our crosses and follow Jesus. And so we have some very beautiful and very challenging texts that encounter us.
Today’s might not be your favorite. There’s a lot of violence in our text for today, a lot of things that maybe we would like to overlook. But I remind you, we are in Year A, and Year A comes from the Gospel of Matthew. And Matthew is a person who likes gnashing of teeth and other violent things.
So, what are we to learn from these texts, as followers of Jesus? We are Lutherans, most of us, probably maybe not all of us, but that would be true in my congregation; we’re not all Lutheran. And Lutherans are big believers in grace. And that is such a wonderful, beautiful thing. And I think sometimes when we get so focused on grace, we forget about the other things.
So do we have a good and gracious God? Yes, we do. A God who loves us and went to the cross for our sakes? Yes. And sometimes we fall into this trap: It’s so easy to do, that because we have a God of grace, we can do whatever we want for the rest of our lives. And we still have a God of grace who loves us, who went to the cross for us. But we believe as Lutherans, people who have received grace by faith, not by our works, that we don’t do good works in order to receive salvation.
We do good works out of joy because of what we have received. So when I read this text, that’s what I think about. How are we to live our lives, having received the Good News? God’s promise, that God loves us, sees us for who we are, and loves us, works in us and through us to bring about God’s plans.
Well, in case we’ve forgotten, we are human. (Nobody here looks AI, but not yet.) And humans are prone to go their own way and do their own things. And even when our intentions and hearts are in the right place to do the right things, there’s collateral damage, right? There’s things that we do. There’s things that we leave undone, that we should have done. There’s things that are just outside of our control.
And so, are we worthy of God’s gift of grace? No, and we are reminded of that in our texts for today. And yet God loves us and is preparing the kingdom for us. In our text for today, Jesus is speaking to the leaders of the people.
And they are the ones who’ve had the time and the luxury to study the law, to get things right, to make the rules, to decide who’s in and who’s out. And of course, they’ve decided that they’re in—because that’s what we do. We’re human, right?
And Jesus says, hold on here just a second.
You’re living by the law and not by the grace of God. You’re living, but you’re not ensuring that others get to live and experience God’s mercy and love and forgiveness. You’re keeping people out, whereas God is inviting people in.
And that “cornerstone” on which they are going to break is Jesus, who has come for them, just as he has come for us, into the world, so that we can know whose we are. And in that knowledge, we can go out and love God with all that we are, and our neighbors as ourselves. We know that that is a very real challenge of what we are called to be and do.
So, in a very simple phrase, when I was thinking about this text, I feel we are called to walk the walk, not just to talk the talk ,as disciples. That requires that we’re constantly looking inward to see where we are, what we need, what we’re feeling, what we’re experiencing, where we feel we are being called to grow and to change; to allow ourselves to be pruned.
And we’re looking outward to the needs of the world, where we individually and communally are being called out into the world. This is a challenging and exciting and crazy time for this congregation and a time of transition. But it’s still a time where we can really step back and assess: Who are we? What does it mean to be here on the hilltop in Queen Anne? Where are we being called out into the world? Where are we really excelling and inviting people in, meeting people out on our lawn so that people can understand this gift we have been given?
One of the things I’ve started doing the last couple years, one of my seminary professors gave me a book that she helped to edit, and it’s the Minister’s Prayer Book, updated edition. And it’s fantastic. It requires a lot of dedication to get through it, because the daily devotions are very long. But this is just one part that I had on Thursday, and I thought I would share it with you because it resonated with me and our readings for today.
“We speak to one another on the basis of the help we both need. We admonish one another to go the way that Christ bids us to go. We warn one another against the disobedience that is our common destruction.
We are gentle, and we are severe with one another, for we know both God’s kindness and God’s severity. Why should we be afraid of one another? Since both of us have only God to fear. Why should we think that our brother would not understand us when we understand very well what we meant when somebody spoke God’s comfort or God’s admonition to us, perhaps in words that were halting and unskilled? Or do we really think there is a single person in this world who does not need either encouragement or admonition? Why, then, has God bestowed Christian brotherhood upon us? “
That is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
So, sometimes we forget one of the blessings that we have been given: a community, where we are known and valued and respected; where we are seen as the gift that we are; where we are nurtured and cared for when we’re grieving and mourning; when things are heavy; where we encounter people who get to rejoice with us when things are going our way; where people can speak the truth to us in love and we can hear it, because we ourselves are called to speak that truth in love as well.
When we come to this place, we come individually or in pairs or family units or with our friends, and that’s something of value. And when we gather in this place and we hear the beautiful music and God’s word for us, we become something else:
We become the body of Christ. You, we, are the body of Christ for the sake of the world. We are called to forgive, to see clearly, to teach, to admonish, to nurture, to listen, to believe, to care, to cure, to be.
All of those things, and more, are challenging and terrifying. And so we are invited to this table where Christ’s body is broken and blood poured out for us, for strength, for nourishment, for encouragement, for a reminder of whose we are, as we are propelled from this place to continue the work that Jesus had begun.
As we go from this place, if we go the correct direction, we walk by those waters where we are reminded that we have been put to death, and raised to new life, beloved children of God; that we can step out without fear, because we know whose we are, and we know that we do not go alone.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.