God gives us powerful tools in order to be active workers for Love, Peace and Hope in the world.

Sermon by Pastor Joel Crouse

Sunday October 1, 2023

Well, that was quite a week in our Parliament. The Speaker of the House of Commons resigned, a mea culpa from the Prime Minister, headlines around the world that linked together two unfortunate words - Canada and Nazi. I know you will know the details, but just quickly. Two Fridays ago, Ukrainian President Zelensky spoke before Parliament. After his speech, the Speaker of the House paid public tribute to a man he called a “Canadian and Ukrainian hero” in the chamber, and not one but two unanimous standing ovations followed. What also followed was a lesson in why we should always study history, because as it happened, the man served in a Ukrainian division trained by the Nazis and commanded by the SS. It took a while for people to figure out what had happened - but soon the full weight of the mistake became clear. Russia used the false claim that Ukraine is a Nazi state to justify its invasion; now they had video of Zelensky applauding someone who served under the Nazis.

It was a mistake. It’s clear to anyone who saw his comments on that Friday that the Speaker meant only the best. But sometimes good intentions are not enough: sometimes we need to own up to our failure, apologize and face the consequences. So by Tuesday, the speaker had resigned. However it came about, he owned up to his mistake. The Speaker must have the faith of the members of the House of Commons, and he had lost it. We can judge his mistake as foolish and feel sympathetic to the situation he found himself in. But he also had to rise to the standards of the position he held.

That’s really what our gospel is about this morning: do we put our money where our mouths are? Do we do as we say? Do we live as we claim to live?

In the gospel, Jesus offers up a parable to deal with questions about belief. The chief priests and elders of the people, as we’re told, are giving Jesus the gears, challenging his authority. Jesus asks them a simple theological question: “Do you think the baptism of John came from heaven or human origin?” The elders wrestle with this question amongst themselves. What to say, what to say? If they say the baptism was divine, then Jesus will ask why they didn’t then believe what John had said about Jesus? If they say it was of human origin, then the crowd might turn on them. So they came back with no answer at all: We do not know. They took the weak middle road to cover their butts.

Jesus then follows up with an easy parable. The first son refused to work in his father’s vineyard, but then changes his mind and goes. The second son says he will go, but then does not. Which did the will of the father? The first, of course, the elders answer.

The focus of this parable is usually on the first son – the stand-in for the taxpayers and the prostitutes – who sees his error and corrects it in time. The lesson here is just that - doing the right thing in the end matters more than the place where the person started. You can change the path you are on.

But the second may be even more relevant to us these days. We live in a world of words, more than at any time in history. There is no cost to words. We can read pretty much whatever we want with the click of a button. We can clarify nearly every question with a Google search (Though I am not vouching for the answer). And we spout off as much as we choose, on Facebook, Twitter, our own blogs, on comments on other blogs and to other people’s tweets. Our words cost nothing to say. Take little effort to publish. And are easily tossed, then lost on a mountain of more words. Who can blame us for becoming careless with them?

But all our words-for-free age has really done is expose how often we are also careless with the things we believe, the truths that we say we value. We claim to want to be kind, and then we post insults on Twitter. We claim to support equality, and then we shut up when insults are made because we don’t want draw attention to ourselves. We speak too much when it doesn’t matter, and we speak too little when it does.

This bar, let me tell you, is especially high for those of us who sit here each Sunday, listening to the words of the gospel, praying for social justice. Words, all of them empty, if the action doesn’t follow.

That is only part of the problem with how the chief priests and elders responded to Jesus’s question. They were more worried about the reaction their answer would cause, than about speaking what they believed. There are many examples in the gospel of Jesus taking questions of faith and wrestling with them, but always when the questioner answered honestly. By saying “We don’t know,” the priests weren’t even true to themselves.

There is no other way around it – we must be willing to confront what contradicts our own beliefs, what is morally wrong, or sexist, or homophobic, or racist – with real answers, with clear words. If we truly believe what we pray for each Sunday, we cannot be mute the rest of the week. When I meet young people who are so vocal in their opinions, I am proud of them. But I also worry that they will become adults who learn to be polite when the situation calls for something stronger.

We are powerful tools to be forces of change. We are called to do the labour in God’s vineyard. God does not want us to sit on our hands. God encourages us to be active workers for love, peace, and hope in our lives and in the world. Amen.

God reminds us that fairness and equality are complicated, and oftentimes so are the solutions

Sermon by Pastor Joel Crouse

Sunday September 24, 2023

This morning’s gospel hits a note that I imagine all of us can relate to: the idea of fairness in life. We hear a story about a landowner who is paying people to work in his vineyard. He finds people at the start of the day, ready and willing to work, with no persuasion required, and he agrees to pay them a wage. At noon, he finds more workers at the gate, and he hires them as well. Again at 3 pm. And at 5, just when the work was ending. When evening comes, and it is time to get paid, the workers line up. The ones who started at 5 receive the same wage as those who started at 9. The all-day workers are angry – and who could blame them? They worked all day and ended up exactly the same as those who worked for a couple of hours. How is that fair? But the landowner is unrepentant and can’t be persuaded to reverse his decision. Instead, he says to the 9 am workers – you got exactly what we agreed. You gave up nothing so that others could get a wage. So why do you care? Are you envious of my generosity? And this, Jesus says, is the Reign of God: where the last may be first, and the first last. In other words: the landowner in the kingdom may not be fair – at least as we see it. Because this landowner is more concerned with being equal.

Now let’s be honest with one another: this still chafes. Just ask anyone with a little sibling who is always getting out of the dishes or getting special treatment, while they, as the eldest, are asked to do more chores. That’s not fair. Or ask those people who believe refugees shouldn’t be allowed a shortcut into our country, with health care and benefits and support from taxpayer dollars, while the rest of us work to get ahead. That’s not fair. Or what about the people who get social assistance but could get jobs if they just weren’t so lazy? That’s not fair. Or just ask any woman who has learned that the men in her office get paid more than her for doing the very same work. That’s not fair. No, seriously, that last one is really not fair – but we’ll get back to that.

Here’s the thing: and doesn’t every parent eventually get around to telling their child this: Life just isn’t fair. You learn it at school when the mean but pretty girl gets all the attention. You learn it at work, when the charmer who shops online all day at his desk gets promoted. You learn it in life when you stay healthy, and still get cancer. Life is not fair.

But actually, this is not the point of our gospel. We already know that life isn’t fair. The gospel is trying to get us to look at what’s behind that perceived unfairness – context, and perspective. Sometimes what seems unfair is just. And what looks fair is an injustice.

For one thing, I bet when you heard that gospel, you probably saw yourself as the worker who showed up at 9, and did the right thing, and still came out the fool at the end. But, come on now: have you never been the person who showed up at 5, who sneaked in the door, and received just as much benefit? Maybe you’ve been the person whose parents knew someone that helped you get a job. Maybe you benefited from a friendship, or a random circumstance? Maybe you just lucked out on genes, something no one can control. Even if none of those examples apply, we can’t say no, that’s not me: because we were born here in Canada, so right away that random circumstance puts us ahead of most of the rest of the world. A while back I was listening to an interesting radio conversation about whether the United States should have to pay reparations for slavery. One of the guests made an interesting observation: in the U.S., the discussion often focuses on the long-term disadvantage that African Americans suffered because of racism and slavery. But what is less often pointed out is the long-term advantage that White Americans gained by being the ancestors of plantation owners, or people who could always vote, and always had access to the best schools. To make things equal, you would want to consider not just the losses of one side, but the gains of another. We could have the same discussion here in Canada about the history of Indigenous Canadians. Non-Indigenous Canadians could do the same. The point is that maybe the worker in our gospel who arrived at 9 am had a car, and educated parents, and was the right sex, with the right-coloured skin and spoke the right language. And maybe the worker at 3 or 5 had no child care for their sick baby at home and couldn’t get to work on time, or didn’t know where to go for the job. The landowner in the gospel balanced their fortunes.

Does this mean we never have to fight for what is fair? If it all works out in the end, why does it matter? Of course it does: this parable doesn’t negate the call of the gospel to right injustices. But what it reminds us is that fairness and equality are complicated, and oftentimes so are the solutions. As parents, we instinctively know this: we don’t always treat our kids exactly the same because we see them as individuals who don’t always need the same thing. But we also need to remind ourselves that what is fair and equal changes with time and circumstances. We have to ask ourselves: what’s behind this picture? What am I not seeing? How does being seemingly unfair in this circumstance make life, my family, or society more equal and just? That’s why many argue that quotas – for gender and diversity – are fair even when they might not seem that way – they remove the disadvantage to the worker who showed up at 3 through no fault of their own and no true measure of their ability. Or why we allow in refugees to share our benefits – they came late because of wars they didn’t start and disasters they didn’t cause. Someday, we might be the ones late at the gate, looking for an unfair hand to make things better.

And ultimately, that’s what God, the landowner in the Reign of Heaven, is really saying when we find ourselves arriving early or late at the gate: You made it, and that’s what matters. It’s not that the first person gets bounced to the back of the line, or that the last person gets to sneak up to the front. That the last become first and the first become last is a way of saying, that before God, we’re all equal. There is no first, and there is no last. Our stories shape us, our lives define us, but they don’t decide our spot in line. A line – a rank, a title – are all human inventions. Not divine ones.

Listen, life isn’t fair. If it was, why would we need the gospel? But God wants us to remember to think carefully so we don’t mistake equality for unfairness, and to look clearly so we see unfairness that we can make more equal. And also to know that whether we arrive first or we come last, whether we get lucky or misfortune falls, in our relationship with God, there is always a place saved for each of us. We don’t need to get in line for it. Amen.

God wants us to find peace in the presence of pain and difficulty

Sermon by Pastor Joel Crouse

Sunday September 17, 2023

Peter went to Jesus, and asked him: If someone sin against me, how often do I need to forgive them? Seven times?

And Jesus said: Not seven times, but I tell you seventy-seven times.

Seventy-seven times. I don’t know about you, but that is number I struggled to reconcile. And yet, as I thought about it this week, I realized that this number is actually pretty reasonable. When I see relationships break down, or fall apart, it is never because someone forgave only once. It is because they forgave what they saw as slights or mistakes or inconsideration or hurts to their person, again and again and again. No one ends up estranged from family or departed from a good friend without feeling pain; and in some cases the work that goes into it amounts to seventy-seven times of going back and trying again.

But perhaps the number distracts us: what we really need to tackle is what it means to forgive.

I will speak today about my own journey with forgiveness. I know many of you are struggling with your own efforts to forgive. We spend a lot of time hashing out what went wrong and who did what, and much less time figuring out what healthy forgiveness looks like.

Even if I had that answer perfectly clear, I doubt I could achieve it. I have been an imperfect forgiver, and when I read the gospel, I am forced to dwell on that reality. Indeed, I have spent my own fair share praying on the subject of forgiveness. What did I pray? Sometimes, I focused on my feelings of hurt and injustice, my own perception of wrongdoing on the person who I felt, as Peter does, had sinned against me. At other times, I spent a lot of energy beating myself up for not being able to easily reach a place of forgiveness, for not being able to fully repair the relationships and return to the love and acceptance I once had for the person involved. I prayed on my own thirst for justice. I lamented my failure as a person of grace to forgive. I look inward with recrimination and outward with finger-pointing. And none of that got me very far.

I have previously described my idea of forgiveness as a triangle. We often get stuck at the base the triangle. In one corner, there’s the one we need to forgive; in the other, there we are, trying to be forgiving. But at the peak of that triangle is grace – grace and God. That is where healing and understanding lie. That is where I found it.

Martin Luther talks about the grace within and the grace without. There is the grace that we achieve as individuals doing our best, the grace we aspire to, the grace we demonstrate that inspires others. And then there is the grace of God, which surpasses all understanding. The grace of God which carries every burden and somehow never falters. The grace of God which celebrates imperfection. The grace of God which understands when we falter. The grace of God which says: you have done your best; let me carry the rest for you.

How does that relate to forgiveness? First of all, what do we mean by forgiveness? In the parable in our gospel, we hear the Reign of God compared to a king who forgives a man his debt, but then condemns the same man when he does not forgive the debt owed to him. Just as God forgives us, we are told, we are meant to forgive others. But God represents perfect love, and perfect forgiveness. And we are not perfect. We can never forgive as God does.

The base of our triangle suggests that to find forgiveness we need to change, or we need the person who wronged us to do the changing. But what if we seek out the third point, and ask what does God want? Do I think God wants us to live in painful relationships for the sake of forgiveness? I do not. Do I think God wants us to fight with the one who wronged us until they, somehow, see reason? I do not. Does God want us to stew in hate, or wallow in sorrow for the years remaining? Why would a loving God want such a thing?

God wants us to find peace and kindness and acceptance. To forgive, we don’t need to forget. We don’t need to restore things as they were. Often, we should not. Forgiveness is the acceptance of situations and people we cannot change. It is about showing kindness to the people around us, and equally, to ourselves. It is about finding peace in the presence of pain and difficulty. We do that by knowing ourselves, by being honest with God, and practicing kindness. Forgiveness is sometimes about leaving the debt on the ledger but not asking it to be paid, and not expecting it to be wiped away. Just leaving it there for God to manage. Because time and grace often take care of our life’s accounts in unexpected ways.

I think the hardest part about the struggle to forgive is what else it steals from us. It taints our time with those we most love. We can become so focused on the pain we feel that we overlook the people who really care about us. We behave in ways that break other things and fix nothing.

Now, I see that forgiveness is like a hike up a mountain. We have no control over the weather or the terrain or any other hikers on the trail. We control only the steps we take for ourselves. For those, we look to God, and we ask ourselves: Are we being kind to others and to ourselves? Are we being present to those who need us and love us? Are we serving where we are able? If we can answer those questions with a yes most of the time, we leave the rest with God. Forgiveness can be messy work that requires trust in God. May we know ourselves, be honest with God, and practice kindness, trusting that time and Grace often take care of our life’s accounts in unexpected ways. Amen.