September 25th, 2022

Sermon By Rev Joel Crouse

When I was in Grade 10, my parents went away to a church convention, and a woman in our parish named Hilda Findlayson bravely came to stay with me and my brother. Mrs. Findlayson was a teacher. She didn’t have kids of her own, but she was an adult, in my life, who always seemed interested in what I had to say. I remember how she made her stay as special as she could. She bought us ice cream, which we didn’t often get back then. While my parents were away – and, let’s be honest, perhaps because my parents were away, I decided to shave my head. I remember coming home to Mrs. Findlayson, and she just looked at me. She didn’t judge. She didn’t freak out. She just said, “On my watch? Really?” So I guess if I had to say what something was that I liked about church growing up, I would have to say this: meaningful community. As a teenager, it was meaningful to me that an adult not related to me cared about what was happening in my life and didn’t judge me by my mistakes. I had a sense, way back, that church communities were special places that built those kinds of relationships. When death happened, when sickness came, they didn’t go silent and awkwardly slink away; they went into action, baking and cooking and offering support. On Sunday mornings they small-talked and had big discussions about meaning and faith. They mixed up generations in ways few community spaces do. Of course, they were not perfect. There were controversies and cliques. People didn’t always get along. But the common thread was the gospel and trying to live up to the ministry of Jesus and be purpose-driven people as best we could. It’s been my lifelong experience that when people are striving for that goal, meaningful community is what results. Isn’t that, in fact, what our very grim gospel is ultimately about? Jesus didn’t actually spend a lot of time, dividing people up between those worthy and those unworthy; the focus of his ministry wasn’t hell, but rather creating a heaven on earth. So I think we go wrong when we get distracted by all the hell and damnation part of this parable. If we – the comparatively wealthy of the world – just get defensive and offended – we also lose sight of the real message. It is not really about who is too rich and who is poor. It is not about how much money you need to give up to get into heaven. Or whether poverty is being depicted as a noble plight that brings you closer to God. This is a parable, to my mind, about meaningful community. We sometime struggle with how to define that in our church lives and in our own lives. What truly gives life meaning? What makes a community of people meaningful? These are parts of the discussion we will have this morning: what should our ministry as a community look like? Where, in the face of so much need, should we focus our time and treasure? What’s our brand? Those are important questions: ones we shouldn’t just ask once, but steadily, in our faith and church journeys. The definition of meaningful community – the kind that makes a difference – might take time to become clear. But we certainly know what it is not. And it is not the story of one person, rich and well-fed, warm in his grand house, while another person lies at the gate - freezing and sick and abandoned. We can see right away what is wrong with that picture: the one who is able to give is hoarding, and the one who needs help is not getting it. The relationship is not only broken: it doesn’t exist. Lazarus, lying at the gate, is not ignored; he is not even seen. His life seems to have no purpose, not even to make the rich guy inside feel a little guilty about his life’s lottery ticket. And the rich guy, overflowing in wine and food, lacks purpose and meaning as well: What will be his ultimate contribution? And so Jesus reminds us that when we are the haves in a story, it is much harder to give, and so easy to get distracted away from the choices that give life value. We create a trap – a hell – of our own making. How we get out of it is by belonging and being part of a meaningful community. That is what Lazarus and the rich man could have given each other. All it would have taken was opening the gate. I still connect with Mrs. Findlayson, and not only because she gave me some cover from my mom when she came home to find my hair gone. She was part of one of my first meaningful communities, the beginning of the places I have discovered throughout my ministry. They have always been created by imperfect, sometimes squabbling-yetalways-trying groups of people. I look forward to our communities continuing to create something meaningful and purpose-driven from the gift of the gospel. Amen

September 18th, 2022

Sermon By Rev Joel Crouse

You cannot serve God and wealth. That last line in our gospel this morning lands with a bit of a thud right now. Most of us probably aren’t feeling particular wealthy – or at least not relative to how we felt when inflation was low, interest rates were rock bottom, and the stock market was soaring. All around us, we are watching life get more expensive just when life is finally – finally! – getting back to sort of normal. If coming to church meant being poor, that would be a hard tithe indeed. But as with most of the wisdom of Jesus, and the lesson of the gospel, that’s an oversimplification of what Jesus is really saying. In fact, if we pay attention to the complexity of this particular gospel message, it might be the one we most need to hear right now. Jesus packs a lot into his talk to the disciples. First, he introduces us to that parable of the manager who is in trouble. He is being called to answer to a rumour that he has been mismanaging his employer’s property. Worried about losing his job, he goes back to the people in debt and offers them a deal. For the one who owes 100 jugs of oil, he cuts the deal to 50. The farmer who owes 100 bales of wheat now only has to pay 80. And the weird thing is that his boss, when he finds out, slaps the manager on the back and congratulates him for being “shrewd.” Of course, the parable is an obvious one, on the surface: if the boss is God, and the manager has made some mistakes, he solves them, not by taking it out on others, but by showing mercy to those in his power. He doesn’t drag them into his mess, but instead eases their burden. You might say the shrewdness is realizing that when he’s out of a job, he will need friends: he’d better bolster their friendships now. So no, it wasn’t pure altruism. But what altruism is pure? A person realized that when all was said and done, he would need community, and he gathered that community, but using the power he had to make life easier for those in it. That he gained something from it – friendship – doesn’t diminish the act - so long as the manager didn’t make the mistake of pride and hold it over his friends. Most of the time, doing a kindness for someone else usually pays off in kind one way or another. But why was the manager’s boss congratulatory? He was now getting less. I suppose the lesson there is that God is happy with something from us, happier than with nothing at all; and doesn’t want our debts to weigh us down and consume us. But this gospel is really about the manager, so let’s stick with him. And let’s remember that Jesus is talking to the disciples in this case: people who have already decided to follow the gospel and walk with him. It is a very specific audience, and his message to them isn’t about introducing the gospel, but about focusing on the finer points. And this point mainly is, cheat with earthly wealth, and you cheat the gospel. Jesus was trying to make the disciples understand that there is not one set of gospel rules over here and another set of earthly rules over there. There is only one set of rules. If we are shrewd with our personal possessions and money; we must also be equally shrewd with God’s treasure on earth. The gospel calls us not only on Sunday, but on every other day of the week as well. If we are disciples, we are disciples with every decision we make. “Whoever is faithful in very little is faithful in much,” Jesus tells the disciples. The gospel isn’t a faucet we turn off and on. Let’s go back to the manager. He could have reacted all kinds of ways to the threat of losing his job; he could have lied about it. He could have pointed the finger at someone else. He could have grabbed what he could and made a run for it. All those choices might have left him a little richer, at least for a while, but they would also have left him alone. Instead, he showed mercy, and built a community. Jesus goes on to present the problem with that famous line, about serving two masters. A person comes to hate the one and love the other; or to be devoted to one and neglect the other. So we must choose: God and wealth are not in opposition, on their own. It is our slavish devotion to wealth that leads us away from God. This is a time for caution: when we are stressed and anxious, worried about our own futures, we tend to turn inward, to protect what we have at all costs. But Jesus, of course, would advise the opposite: look outward to the need around, and to the people you love; don’t get trapped within yourself. Be shrewd, for yourself, yes, but also for others. Because, of course, hidden in that gospel is the real secret to wealth. When we are shrewd and wise with those around us, we gain important currency for ourselves. We become people of integrity. When we practice the gospel – not only by not cheating at all costs, but also by risking what we have for others, by giving others a break, we grow in wealth, through community and self-worth. When we can live easily with our own actions and look back on our lives as having given more than taken, we are rich indeed. It is true: you cannot serve God and wealth. But to serve God is to be wealthy. Amen.

September 11th, 2022

Sermon By Rev Joel Crouse

We sure do love our opinions. Knowing what we know, and holding to it, is comfortable

– and it is easy. When life was dangerous – and the things we needed to know were

based on day-to-day survival – it was probably pretty helpful, too. But today the world is

complicated and nuanced and noisy. Yet still, our brains are better at processing

information when we agree with it. Once we have an opinion, we are likely to notice all

the ways the opinion is supported – and ignore or miss the counter arguments. Social

media – envisioned as a place of bountiful opinions – has only made it worse. You can

spend all day in that infamous echo chamber, having your opinions bolstered and never

challenged. The algorithm will make it so. This is indeed the tragedy of the commons –

when our minds cannot be changed, we cannot find common ground, we cannot see

when we have got things wrong, and we cannot hold sway when we are right.

And yet we know holding so fiercely to an opinion is wrong, even when we so

desperately want to keep it. We sometimes feel, in the fight for it, that we have lost

focus on the opinion itself – that we have become about winning and not about believing

something. Indeed, we see all sorts of times in society when people have argued

fiercely against something – how many of us had relatives who swore they would never

wear a seatbelt and are now grandparents who would never think of putting their

grandchild in the car without one? They came around. Research over time shows we

often do – about smoking bans, about not using plastic bags at the grocery store, even

when it came to sensible choices we made the during the pandemic. Our minds can be

changed, just sometimes it happens while we are still kicking and screaming.

So isn’t our first lesson a lesson for us? In that reading, God is angry. To Moses, God

announces plans to consume the people, who, having been delivered from their

enslavers in Egypt, appear to have lost their way. But Moses pleads their case: give

them another chance, he says. And what does God do? God’s mind changes. God

takes a pause, listens to Moses, and decides that, yes, maybe those people have been

through a lot, and they do indeed deserve a break. And what does that say to us – who

are fallible in so many ways– that God’s mind can be changed? Should our minds also

not be so open?

In fact, we have many historical examples of great change happening in the world

because people changed their minds. Martin Luther, for one, walked away from one

way of understanding our relationship with God to create another. Many of the disciples

of Jesus were people whose mind were changed when they heard the gospel. In

August, Mikhail Gorbachev died, a figure who would have loomed large among those of

us who remember the cold war. Gorbachev was a member of the Communist Party in

the Soviet Union, and a successful one. But the reason we know who he is, why he is

admired in history – is because he changed his mind. His radical reform of the system

he had once supported led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and an end to communism and

the Soviet Union as we know it.

The Queen, who we honoured this week for her constancy and stability through 70

years on the throne, was, by nature of the job, less knowable to us. But for all those

resolute steps, the Queen who took the throne at 25 was a different thinker from the one

who formally appointed her last Prime Minister two days before she died. If reason

doesn’t change our minds, often life will take care of that for us.

And yet, wouldn’t it be better if it weren’t so hard? If we didn’t first dig in our heels, and

hold our position, and not just listen, or pay attention to the world around us? How does

any change happen? People share their opinions, and you begin to see sense in them.

Or you look around and see the way that what you believe is unsustainable for the

earth, or harmful to others, or selfish, or built on anger and not reflection.

This is what our gospel this morning is ultimately about: Jesus cares about the one

missing sheep because we have the room, the power to change our minds. We can

repent. We can choose to see the world differently. Surely this was true of the tax

collectors, who, having spent their lives taking, came to hear Jesus teach them how to

give. Surely this is true of so many sins of pride and judgement; letting go of them is an

act of changing one’s mind. What is the other side of hate but a mind changed to love?

Changing our minds, as God shows us in our first lesson, is not weakness, but strength.

The journey of being changed lies behind mercy and forgiveness, the two most life-

giving acts we have in our power. To do so, we must listen, and we must pay attention

to the world. We must know that when we plant our heels in the sand and refuse to

budge, we are, in truth, fighting for what matters.

Amen.