One day tells its tale to another
Today’s Gospel is all kinds of complicated. It’s a violent story–full of beatings, stonings, murder, and calls for revenge. It also includes a familiar but not so easy to understand metaphor about Jesus’s identity – “the stone that the builders rejected [which] has become the cornerstone.”
Those aspects of the Gospel reading are important, but I’d like to focus on something else, on a detail that I really thought through for the first time this week: the people working in the vineyard are tenants. The landowner plants the vines, puts up a fence, digs a wine press, and puts up a watchtower. And then he entrusts the vineyard to others. If they fail in their task, the landowner might replace them, but those who follow will also be tenants, temporary stewards, there only for a time. Good tenants and bad tenants. But all tenants.
I wonder if that detail might actually be a key lesson we should take from today’s reading. Because we’re tenants too. We live in a world we didn’t make. We inherit the work of those who came before us. The things we build will one day pass to others. Maybe this parable is echoing God’s instruction to Adam in the Book of Genesis: to tend the garden, “to till it and keep it.” That sounds to me like a call to care for the earth, rather than to claim it as our own. It’s also a good reminder on this day when we also observe the Feast of St. Francis, the saint known for his love of all Creation.
All that we have, we hold in trust.
But the lesson doesn’t stop there. Today’s psalm widens our view even further. Not only are we tenants in a world we don’t fully control. We’re also participants in a Creation that develops over time.
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. One day tells its tale to another, and one night imparts knowledge to another.”
That verse reminds me of a hymn that we’ll sing after we receive Communion. We’ll skip the first verse this morning because its words are intended for the close of day, but let me read them to you now:
The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended;
the darkness falls at Thy behest;
to Thee our morning hymns ascended;
Thy praise shall hallow now our rest.
Our own lives, day after day, are marked by the cycle of time. And then the hymn’s vision zooms out to encompass the whole world:
We thank Thee that Thy church, unsleeping
while earth rolls onward into light,
through all the world her watch is keeping,
and rests not now by day or night.
And then the vision expands further still, to include all of time:
So be it, Lord; Thy throne shall never,
like earth’s proud empires, pass away.
Thy kingdom stands, and grows forever,
till all Thy creatures own Thy sway.
This perspective is a good reminder for us to hold on to in those moments when we think we have to do it all.
Even the earth hands on its work from day to day. “One day tells its tale to another, and one night imparts knowledge to another.” One ends. Another begins. That’s the pattern of creation.
This image reminds me of the voice of a choir that holds a tone for an impossible stretch. It sounds continuous. But the singers all take breaths when they need them. One pauses while the others continue, and the voice of the whole continues.
As tenants, we have responsibilities. We’re stewards of Creation. Stewards of our communities. Stewards of all the places in which we find ourselves. As tenants, as stewards, we’re directed to bring forth the “fruits of the kingdom.” In his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul tells us what those fruits might look like: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Those are the fruits we should seek in our care for the earth and for one another. Our responsibility is real, even when our time is limited, even when we know the work may remain unfinished.
The good news is that we don’t have to do it alone. We can carry the song when someone else needs a breath. And we can breathe when we need to, trusting that others will carry us in turn. We can ask for help, and offer it. We can pass on responsibilities to others. They may do things differently than we would have done them, but they will be tenants and stewards too. We can care for all that God entrusts to us now, and also leave room for those who follow to do their own work.
J.R.R. Tolkien put it well: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”
Even in the heavens above us, “One day tells its tale to another, and one night imparts knowledge to another.”
Cover image: Cropped and rotated portion of a photo taken from Artemis 2 on 2026.04.03 at 00:27:39 GMT from 10,143 km above the point at 1.4° S, 17.7° W on the Earth's surface. The Sun is directly behind the Earth from this viewpoint in time and space. The Earth visible is illuminated by moonlight. Original at https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/photo.pl?mission=ART002&roll=E&frame=188 .