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.

Relationships are about mutual care, mutual consideration, and mutual compassion.

Sermon by Pastor Joel Crouse

Sunday September 10, 2023

This summer, on holidays, I binged a TV show about a hijacked airplane. I want to make it clear: this was a completely ridiculous show based on highly implausible plot points. Shakespeare it was not. Not even its name was original: Hijack. I watched it and forgot it. Until this week, that is, when I sat down with today’s readings on conflict.

In the show, a mediator played by Idris Elba gets trapped on a hijacked plane. Because he is Idris Elba, his character is tough and strong. But he spends most of his time on the plane talking to keep the situation calm. And he accomplishes this over, and over again with one trick: he figures out what other people ultimately want or need, and he keeps an eye on what he ultimately wants, which is to get home safely to his family. With that goal in mind – he is willing to compromise, to walk back an insult, to accept restraints, to save one of the terrorists. Now, of course, in between there is a lot of silly action and drama. But ultimately, his character survives because he listens, and pays attention, and figures out what people need to resolve the conflict. (And in this case, land the plane and walk away.) He is constantly looking for common ground. Intelligent compromise, even when it is painful (quite literally), is his superpower.

Our conflicts are – thank goodness – a little more earthbound. But they are often very destructive. Friendships end. Family members are estranged. Communities break down. These conflicts may not be life or death. But they often hijack our lives. They can be devastating to us. I have met people who truly grieve no longer speaking to once-close members of their family, and yet can hardly articulate what started the fight in the first place. Somewhere along the line, they failed to see what the other person wanted or needed. They even forget what they themselves wanted or needed.

Our second lesson, which is a kind of re-branding of the ten commandments by Jesus, tries to teach us to keep the focus. Yes, Jesus says, the Ten Commandments, as they were traditionally presented, are important: don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t covet. All those classic nuggets. But they are focused on the law; they lead either to a binary world of right or wrong, or a distracting moral debate about context. Jesus says that ultimately, they should be packaged up into one commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself. Love, Jesus says, does no wrong to the neighbor. And therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

It’s important to consider that statement in full: Love your neighbor as yourself. Love is a relationship – between ourselves and another person. It is about mutual care, mutual consideration, and mutual compassion. If we can be compassionate for ourselves and our mistakes, so should we be with the mistakes our neighbor makes against us. If our wants and needs are important to us, the wants and needs of our neighbor are of equal importance. If we value our lives, we must also value the life of our neighbor.

Think of our Idris Elba back on his hijacked airplane. His only goal is to get home safely to his family. But if that is all he values, he will never achieve that goal. He would insist on his way, and conflict would ensue. Instead, he has to consider what his captor wants, and the ways that they might have shared interests. The obvious one, of course is that they also want to land safely and get home to their families. There are all kinds of incremental moments on the show where Idris could get angry and react in the moment – and thus, put his goal at risk. But he holds his focus. What is the best action here, he asks, so we can all get what we need?

We lose sight of this all the time. We choose to stew over a careless phrase made in an argument, even if it means all negotiation stops. We fail to work at seeing the perspective of the other person and jump to conclusions about their meanings without asking for an explanation. We become obsessed with the law: his actions weren’t right; she shouldn’t have said that. We fail to focus on love: what is it we both want? How can this conflict be resolved by meeting or compromising on what we both need?

Jesus surely knew that conflict was a virus that can destroy communities. So in our gospel, he gives very precise instructions for dealing with it. Indeed, those instructions are etched into our justice and governance system. As Jesus describes it, if you have conflict with someone, first seek them out and try to talk it out. If you can’t figure it out between you, bring in someone else to help. If that doesn’t work, seek out the help of your community.

Let’s say our neighbors builds a fence across our property line. We can stomp over to his house, fuming, but to what end? If we end up yelling at each other, is he more likely to move the fence? If we try to understand how this happened, and learn it was an honest mistake, how much closer are we to the goal? If we learn the neighbor had different facts about the property line, we might seek a second opinion together. And so on. But if our entry point is – I like my property, you like your fence, so how can we solve this? – rather than blame and scorn, we might avoid all of that. If we first go with grace – loving our neighbors as ourselves – odds are higher we will get our metaphorical plane landed safely and be enjoying burgers on the BBQ by sunset.

But what if none of that works? What then, Jesus? Well then, Jesus says, treat those people as you would a tax collector. But that’s a trick answer. Because how did Jesus treat tax collectors? He welcomed them; he stayed open to their discipleship. And so what Jesus is saying is not that we cut that person from our lives forever. Jesus is making a case for healthy boundaries. You might not invite that tax collector to your family table. But you would still answer when they are in need. You would still listen to their overtures should they come. You would stay open for the day when an opportunity comes to heal the wound and end the conflict. Just as you would want that grace for yourself, you would extend it to others.

Not easy. Jesus, after all, spent the bulk of his time negotiating or advising about conflict between strangers, between sisters, between parents and children. There were plenty of times during that TV show when I just wanted Idris to take control and do something daring and definitive, instead of backing down; it would have felt better in the moment. There are times in all our lives when we don’t back down when we should; when we talk when we should listen; and when we find ourselves deep in a conflict having forgotten how we got there.

The gospel has some advice there, as well: it calls us to ask, each and every day, what matters? What matters today, in this moment? What will matter a week, a month, five years from now? Indeed Jesus gives us the answer: Love your neighbor as yourself. Amen.