Be a voice of love in a hateful wilderness

Sermon by Rev. Joel Crouse

Sunday of the Passion

Palm Sunday

March 24, 2024

Isaiah 50: 4-9a

Philippians 2: 5-11

Mark 11: 1-11

And so, here we have arrived, on the last day of sun before the storm. Palm Sunday is like the part in the disaster movie where life is still normal, people are still singing “Happy Birthday,” celebrating at restaurants, making vacation plans. And yet, we the viewer, know that the weird newsclip on the TV isn’t just a blip, or the guy coughing next to them isn’t just sick, or the fighter jet flying overhead isn’t on a training mission. We’ve been there – remember four years ago, when we heard about a virus in Wuhan, when we thought it was just another cough? We’ve been those people. But this time, on Palm Sunday, if we transported back to stand among that jubilation, we would know. We would know what’s coming.

That’s why we can never truly bask in the celebration of Palm Sunday. But we should try. Imagine being those people in Jerusalem who have been hearing about a travelling preacher and teacher who heals the sick and soothes the stranger. Some people say he is not just a preacher but a king. Some people whisper he has come to free the poor and oppressed. And finally, he has arrived at the gates of the city.

And what does he do? He asks for a colt, not a stallion, to carry him into the city. The people are jubilant. Could this humble guy really be the Messiah everyone is talking about? When they listen to his word, they hear him speak against tyranny and for justice. He travels with friends from many places. They are in awe. They put palms on his path and cheer his journey into the heart of the city. Who doesn’t love a party for a good cause?

What would we see with our knowledge, standing in that crowd? A crowd to make a memory in a city the size of Jerusalem would have to be large and diverse and noisy. All through Jesus’s journey, he had been attracting people from all walks of life,; of course they filled the streets of Jerusalem. That is the point, and the gift, of Palm Sunday: no one in the parade looks the same or tells the same story. We have all come to our faith and our beliefs with different backgrounds and by different routes. And yet, in this moment, on this day, standing in the crowd, all we see is unity.

There would be people craning their necks to get a look. Others squeezing through to reach out to Jesus as he passed. People breaking out in chants and songs. A glorious, noisy, happy crowd honouring a man well-deserving of being honoured.

But, what else do we see, with our knowing eyes? We see the frowning man in the crowd with his arms crossed, who refuses to sing; he leans down and says something scornfully to his neighbor beside him. We see the woman who cracks an unkind joke about the dirty sandals on this supposed king’s feet, and the shabby colt upon which he rides. We see the spy for the religious leaders, watching closely, yet not participating, then scurrying away.

We see what we so often see in our own world, on our own Facebook and Instagram feeds -- how quickly a sneer or an insult can suddenly shift the whole tone of the conversation, how easily a question lobbed to cause confusion and spread misinformation can spark conspiracy.

We see how quickly that happens in our own day and age - humans have not changed that much - for all our education and ability to search facts, the vehicle for misinformation has become even more effective. Consider the current conspiracy thinking around Kate Middleton, which seems on its surface to be frivolous entertainment on Twitter. Most likely, she is recovering from surgery, as had been said, and will appear next week for Easter service. But there have been manipulated pictures and questionable videos and a lack of disclosure about her medical issues - as is her right - that have made even people who don't care about what the royals are up to, jump on the conspiracy bandwagon. That's a larger issue for us: what is real and what is not? How do we properly fact-check? How can we be discerning? What happens when significant pictures are manipulated - for instance in the Middle East or Ukraine? (My journalist partner would point out here that it was the professional media who first identified the royal picture as having been altered and told newspapers not to run it; The Globe and Mail also has a detailed process for checking photoshopping and AI in photographs.)

Imagine if Jesus appeared today in the crowd, what conspiracies might spread about him - even faster than they did among the crowd in Jerusalem. The gospel doesn't just guide us to be loving and kind, it coaches us to be discerning. We are called to question the source of information, to think critically about what people say, "must be, or has always been," to frame our response against what the gospel would say is right. If Jesus is our guide through this, he set the example over and over again of questioning authority, debating assumed truths, searching for clear answers. That is as much the journey of faith as any other path.

And so, standing in the crowd in Jerusalem, we might listen closely, and think for ourselves. "Who is this Jesus guy anyway?" you hear someone ask. Well, who do we know him to be? "Maybe the religious leaders are right about him?" someone else asks. Yet we know, all along his journey to Jerusalem he has engaged with leaders; what do we understand about these exchanges? When we know context, when we search our own beliefs and reasoning, instead of being swept up in the mob, in any mob, the answers almost always become clearer.

But back in Jerusalem, we don't see that happening. The happy, noisy crowd is beginning its journey to an angry, judging mob.

We see Judas, scowling in back of those disciples travelling with Jesus. And we know how a rash choice made of greed and selfishness can wreak terrible harm. We know that harm can come from the inside as much as from the outside.

We know what is coming. Yet what does the knowledge grant us? The power to stop what is to come? Can we change the mind of the scornful man with a good argument? Can we help the woman see the rich world that Jesus is describing? Can we turn the spy? Can we stop Judas? We can try. Maybe they will listen. But the mob will turn. We will be a voice of love in a hateful wilderness.

And that, we would realize, is our job. Standing in the crowd, watching Jesus pass by, knowing all that he has been, all that he has done, and the lessons he has taught, we understand that this is the reason for the gospel: to be the voice of love when the world needs it. So yes, it falls to us, standing in this crowd on Palm Sunday, and in every crowd, to shake hands with the scornful, show generosity to the petty, and offer forgiveness to the selfish.

That is what we learn standing in the crowd on Palm Sunday, watching it become a mob. If we are not the voice of love, then what chance do we have? And so, Jesus will ride past, the colt plodding on the palms thrown before it, and the world will cheer. And we will know. And our actions are to be a response to that knowledge, each and every day.

Amen.

In sacrificing, we gain

Sermon by Rev. Joel Crouse

Fifth Sunday in Lent

March 17, 2024

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Hebrews 5:5-10

John 12: 20-33

Not long into the pandemic – whose four-year anniversary we recognized this week – a journalist I know well wrote an article about how we might remember this time, and what might get us through it. Part of her story quoted a study that a professor named Karen Blair at St. FX university had been doing where she was collecting the diary entries of Canadians during that first year. One of things she asked them to do was to write messages they would have wanted to know seven days earlier. The journalist, who read the messages said they felt as if the country was having a collective anxiety attack.

Some people sent practical advice back in time: Stock up on masks. Fix the Internet. Others sent personal insights: This is real. I know nothing feels real, but it is. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. It is okay to cry. Life goes on.

They were also asked to write questions to themselves, that they would then answer seven days later. How stressed are you at work right now? Holy [cow], you have no idea. (I edited that for the pulpit.) Did you get to get to see Grandpa? No, he died before I got better.

People -- so many people -- were losing their lives. Others were losing their livelihoods. Our children and youth were losing their way of life, and their idea of how life was supposed to be.

And I remember, how in the middle of the pandemic, coming off a particularly rough, locked-down and lonely winter, when this gospel came around, with Jesus telling us how those of us who lose our lives will gain them, and those who keep their lives will lose them, and they were not the words we needed to hear -- not in the moment, when we were already in so much pain. We knew loss. Each and every one of us.

Now, three years later, toward the end of our Lenten journey, this gospel speaks to us again, and how do we hear it now?

How do we hear that call today from Jesus to hate our lives so that we might gain them? That caution that those who love their lives will lose them.

The gospel is a foreshadowing of the resurrection, and of the path that Jesus is on and the death to which he is heading. But while speaking about the future, Jesus reaches out to us with those searing words in the present. If you love your life too much, if you are too comfortable, you will lose it. If your life is hard and challenging, you will keep it.

We can ask what Jesus meant, but deep down we know. Ultimately, he is talking about what really matters for us, and for our collective hearts on earth. It is often not the things we love most easily or that distract so readily. It is not the time we might spend down the rabbit holes on social media. It is not even the time we devote to winning praise and adoration. It is, in fact, the life the gospel describes -- one built on relationships and purpose and generosity of spirit. In reaching out, and sharing, and sacrificing for others, we gain. Hold on to our lives too tightly, and we lose the lives we most desire.

This is what so many of us learned in that time of hating our lives, of losing the things in life we thought were most important, the ones that, whether or not we would call it love, took up so much of our time. Yet many of us learned – or were reminded - that what we missed most was not the work, but the people. Not the material things, but the connection with family. We learned, in those days, essential lessons. They appeared in many of the hopeful messages that people sent back to themselves: Appreciate what is important. You’ll get through this.

We also learned that our individual actions could have collective consequences. We learned that we had to trust one another. Many of us learned to make the most of the times when we were able to be present, and to be more creative with our love when we could not be together. What else is all of this, but the lesson of hating life to gain it? But have we forgotten?

Early on in the pandemic, back when we thought it would last a few weeks, and then maybe a few months, but never a few years, researchers talked about how, after the Spanish flu, people kind of just went on, as if nothing had happened. Not much was even recorded about it. They just wanted to forget. They didn’t want to think about how this terrible disease had killed their neighbors and altered their lives. How vulnerable their society had suddenly felt, how threatened their safety. They wanted to move on and so they did - the lucky ones, anyway. In forgetting, they gained their lives. That’s part of why humanity is so amazing: our incredible resilience as a species. Our failure to learn from mistakes is perhaps one of our greatest weaknesses. So yes, they gained their lives – they went back to the way things had been and acted as if nothing had changed – and they lost. Two decades later, the Depression arrived, and then another World War. That war ended not with a flu, but a bomb. Last Sunday, the movie about the man who built that bomb and regretted doing so his entire life, won the Oscar for Best Picture. But someone had to make that movie because we were already forgetting. We gained our lives, our earthly comfort and peace in one of the safest, richest countries in the world, and over time, we lost our awareness of our own mistakes; we lost the lesson that would have taught us how to avoid making more of them.

I have to admit, this week, while driving to a hospital visit, that I heard on the CBC it was the fourth anniversary of the pandemic, I thought, has it really been four years? It feels longer, on some days. And shorter on others. But already it is starting to feel like an experience from another time, a moment that we are no longer in. I am sure I am not the only one. We have gained our lives, and we are losing that memory.

I would encourage us to take a moment to pause in our Lenten journey to reflect on the words of Jesus. What lesson did I learn in the pandemic that I have set aside too quickly? Now that it is over, and life is easier, what have I forgotten? When I am too comfortable in life, too smug, too proud of who I am, what am I missing? When I have sacrificed or risked a share of my happy life, when I have intentionally made my life a little harder through effort on behalf of someone else, what did I gain that I may keep?

“Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life,” Jesus says. “Whoever serves me, must follow me.”

To follow the gospel, we must suffer an uncomfortable, seeking, questioning, challenging life. Yet we never do so alone. Because Jesus goes on: “For where I am, there will be my servant also.” And the same must also be true: Where my servant is, there will I be.

Amen.

We are not abandoned in the wilderness

Sermon by Rev. Joel Crouse

Fourth Sunday in Lent

March 10, 2024

Numbers 21:4-9

Ephesians 2:1-10

John 3:14-21

It can be difficult for us to reconcile this vengeful God of the Old Testament with the loving, forgiving God who guides us in the Gospel. Our reading this morning from Numbers is just one example. Directed by God, Moses has led the people of Israel out of the brutality of slavery. They have travelled far, under even more brutal conditions.

But the trials are beginning to show. The euphoria of freedom is becoming weighed down by the reality of life in the wilderness. Should we judge the Israelites? They had already endured so much, and to escape one horrific situation to find themselves worn down and exhausted by yet more trials, would have been a lot for anyone.

But, boy, they certainly sound petulant, whining about their lot. There’s not enough food to eat and or water to drink. And what there is, they complain to Moses, is awful. They can hardly stomach it.

How many whiners did Jesus listen to? How did he respond? By turning their own words upon them or teaching them a lesson about being a Good Samaritan, or understanding that one prodigal son returning home does not displace them.

But the Israelites are not whining to Jesus. Instead, our God of the Old Testament, we are told, teaches them a lesson – by tossing poisonous serpents into their midst, to bite them.

Now it certainly does the trick and turns them around: they come back to Moses ashamed and ask for forgiveness. Lousy food is one thing; deadly snakes -, that is quite another.

But this hardly sounds like our God of the Gospel. So let us look at the story again.

The people of Israel were falling victim to a common human failing: forgetting to appreciate what they had. They were like people who, at first, when they win the lottery, are overflowing with joy and quit their jobs and make plans for all the great things they are going to do. And then life creeps in again - in the imperfect, frustrating way that life has of creeping in – and their happiness plummets. If they are lucky, it only falls right back to where it was before they got that winning ticket. There’s been plenty of research looking at how often this happens when people win the lottery. They get much happier for a while, and then their happiness falls back to regular levels. That’s because the lottery is not a ticket to happiness What sustains us for the long run is our approach to life – our faith, our attitudes, and our hopefulness.

Complaining too, is a human condition. This week, I read about how 15th century Germans coined a phrase for it: Greiner, Zanner. Or “whiner, grumbler.” Indeed, we are a discontented lot of Greiner, Zanners these days, it seems. Quick to snap at servers or at drivers who cut us off. Earlier this week, my social media feed gifted me with two middle-aged male travellers on the Vancouver Sky Train beating each other bloody. Read the comments under a typical newspaper story or post – full of vitriol. No matter how often we are told that life overall is better now than how humans had it in the past –with better medicine, better food, safer communities, longer lives – we seem to spend most of our time grumbling about the little things, while the really big problems, like climate change, just get bigger. Or we stop at complaining instead of acting.

But back to the Israelites. Listen, the wilderness could not have been fun. It’s possible, that even those Egyptian slavers were no longer looking so bad. At least then, they had food and water, a roof over their heads. They had known what to expect from one day to the next. But now their lives had become uncertain, and that triumphant feeling was fast dwindling away.

How God ultimately solves the problem of the serpents is the key lesson for us. Because Serpents are always turning up at our feet – not placed by God - but put there by life, by unlucky circumstances, by our own mistakes. In the wilderness, God doesn’t take the serpents away – for they will always be there. Instead, God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent, to heal the people who have been bitten, to give them a place to find hope, with everything going wrong.

In our gospel, we hear Jesus compared to that serpent lifted up by Moses in the Wilderness. Jesus is that solid ground in the wilderness, that place to bring our problems and our trials, and to be heard.

For we are told in the gospel, “God did not send Jesus into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Jesus.”

God does not put serpents in our paths; God gives us Jesus, the person to whom we may appeal when the serpents are nipping at our heels. The person who will hear us when we are whiny and complaining. The person whose teachings will remind us to have perspective, to have hope.

And what does Jesus remind us to do, when we are stuck in Greiner, Zanner mode? He reminds us to ask ourselves: what can we change about this situation? Who is really suffering? Have we tried to see the situation from a different perspective?

Perhaps we can be reassured by the fact that people are not so different today compared to the days of the Exodus. Maybe that’s more disappointing than reassuring. But let’s face it, we are also quick to forget the good thing that happened yesterday in the midst of the lousy thing that’s happening today. We judge first and open our minds later. We are often our own worst serpents.

We are mid-way through Lent. This would be my challenge to you for this week. Take some time to think about your complaints. Those things that really upset you. The people or action you hear yourself grumbling, even whining, about. And then ask yourself, am I being a whiner, grumbler? Am I creating my own serpent? Is this worth the time and energy I have put into it? Or, would I do better to change perspective and invest my energy elsewhere?

It is hard to stare deeply at the parts of ourselves that are miserly and mean. But Jesus is not here to condemn us for our imperfections. We will not be abandoned in the wilderness. Jesus is here to face the serpents with us, and to help us save ourselves from them.

Amen.