April 10th, 2022

What a party! You can tell they were having a really good time on the streets of Jerusalem that day. After all, everyone loves a parade. And for most of the people in Jerusalem, life was pretty bare bones – subsistence living, really. They were more than eager to stand at the side of the road, waving palms and cheering, hoping for a glimpse of the celebrity everyone had been gossiping about. “Hosanna!” they shout. “Hosanna!” We can imagine them craning their necks, hoisting their children on their shoulders, hoping for a peek so they could say, later, that they had been there. We all know, however, that there were shadows looming over that parade. Any wise person standing in the crowd would have understood this, even as they applauded from the sidelines. Certainly, Jesus knew. And the disciples, much as they prayed otherwise, knew it, too: this could not end well. It’s an old story in human history: the people’s king – the popular leader – who goes up against the establishment. The ones who succeed – who topple the reigning power, usually lose something of themselves in the process, with their strategizing and forced alliances. The ones who run head long, without guise or subtlety, who stand up to be counted: well, history has proven that lesson as well. More often than not, when the dust has settled, the establishment is still very much established. And Jesus, as we know, was not aiming for subtlety: he was walking righteous steps toward his destiny. Not that he wasn't a showman as well: the donkey - that was a pretty smart move. But he was trying to change the game - not play the same old one. It would take much more than a party at the city gates. The thing about Palm Sunday is that the whole celebration in Jerusalem feels off - like an event staged for social media. Perhaps this is foresight - we know what is to happen. We already know there are whisperers in the seemingly joyful crowd, spreading hate like a cancer. But aren’t we, too, just like the mob? A party is so much easier. Let someone else worry about the clean up the next day. We could also say the same about society in general. Until the pandemic knocked us down and forced a wake-up call. But this week, we learned from UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the fight to keep global heating under 1.5 degrees had reached an immediate now-or-never stage. This is not a surprise - scientists have been warning us for years and years. And yet we continued to party - buying stuff insatiably, driving bigger cars, wanting bigger houses, and not pushing back against the interest-driven profit over the environment. Now here we are with the world’s fossil fuel energy supply threatened by war and the pandemic shaking us all out of our revelry. Now here, even with Covid cases creeping steadily up again, we are so keen to abandon rules and mandates - so eager to party - more voices are beginning to ask whether we are on right path. Perhaps, like the people of Jerusalem, we hope for a saviour - someone sure and steady - to step in and set things right - even though, as Christians, we already had that saviour, someone reminding us to take careful, conscious steps in the world. A party is so much easier. Let someone else worry about the clean-up the next day. Perhaps, in the end, this is why the mob turned so quickly against Jesus in the days that followed. They were disappointed: he, who was called a King and the Son of God, had not, with a wave of his hand, fixed their problems. In that doubtful space, a seed could be planted by leaders nervous about the crowd’s loving this Jesus a little too much: perhaps he was a charlatan? Perhaps he’d come not to give power to them but to take it for himself. Perhaps he was not who he said he was at all. And so the narrative cycles on repeat: a masterful act of disinformation and conspiracy. Who does this guy think he is, anyway? Perhaps, in the end, this is why the mob turned: deep down, they were the angriest with themselves. What if, instead of waiting, instead of partying, they had laid the groundwork for the arrival of Jesus? Taking their own challenges to the corrupt leaders of the city. Asking their own questions about unfair laws. They missed their chance: Jesus, who might have helped them get there at last, became the scapegoat for their own failures. They missed their chance – and that is where Palm Sunday leaves us, heading into the darkest day of our faith lives – our most horrible of failures. We have made some grave errors – and we have not been helpless puppets in the making of them. Palm Sunday is a day to wave palm branches and shout Hosanna. It is the day that marks Jesus’s arrival in the city, and that indeed was a celebration. But the party of Palm Sunday is not the lesson - the party was only concealing what was already underfoot. - what everyone should have been able to see. What was warned of repeatedly on the journey to Jerusalem? What are we also missing? There is one more week of Lent – and it should be the hardest week of all. If we don’t own up to our mistakes, if we don’t see the world as it is, and not just as we wish it were - as the people of Jerusalem would soon have no choice to do – then we go right back to partying, while the shadows gather. This is the week – this is the time in our communities, and in our country – to see the shadows for what they are. And to get ready for the next step. The people of Jerusalem got their wake-up call – a hero, a saviour they loved, was left to die on a cross. How long will we stay awake? Amen

April 3rd, 2022

Generosity is good for us. Giving social support to other people is associated with better health, higher quality of life, and less loneliness. Spending money on other people makes us happier than spending it on ourselves, although we don’t always realize it. As a species, we have no doubt evolved to be generous – I help you, you help me. Altruism developed, some researchers suggest, as a way to keep communities working together. But giving and helping another person also gives our lives meaning and purpose, and that’s good for our mental health. Where and how we choose to be generous tends to follow patterns. We are more likely to help a specific person than an anonymous one. We prefer to help individuals rather than groups. We tend to be more generous with people who are like us. If we have only so much to give in our day, we like to know it is well spent. If someone notices, all the better; we like our generous acts to be witnessed. At the heart of the gospel this morning is a dissertation on generosity. Who should receive? What kind of generosity matters most? What should it look like? Especially, if there is only so much to go around. In our gospel, we find Jesus at the home of his friend Lazarus. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem with the disciples, including Judas, who is just days away from betraying Jesus to the authorities. Martha serves dinner. But when Mary uses some expensive perfume to anoint his feet, Judas protests angrily. That perfume should have been sold and spent on the poor. To which Jesus says quite firmly, leave her alone. “You will always have the poor, but you will not always have me.” There is a lot to unpack here. First of all, Judas, who is a few days away from betraying Jesus, is the last disciple we’d expect to be standing up for being selfless with the poor. We might more likely suspect that he wants the coin for himself. Right away, then, we get the signal that his objecting is wrong. It’s a kind of virtue-signalling we see all the time in society, a kind of surface generosity for show. Judas wants to be seen as generous, but he is only play-acting at it. Let’s consider, more importantly, the response of Jesus, which is, on the surface at least, a bit confusing. These lines have even been used to justify a certain ambivalence about poverty – if it is always with us, what can we do about it anyway? And is Jesus, a minimalist by every account, justifying an extravagant expense? Let’s start with the line – “You will always have the poor.” In fact, Jesus is quoting a line from Deuteronomy in the Old Testament. It’s the second part of that sentence that changes its meaning entirely: That is why I am giving you this order, 'You must open your hand to your poor and needy brother in your land.' In other words, if there will always be need, we must be constantly generous. And yet, Jesus goes on, there is space for different kinds of generosity. If we see poverty as a larger issue that needs to be addressed, we may also be generous on an individual level, just as Mary was doing for Jesus. Compassion is meant to be boundless, not restricted. It comes in many forms; Mary, knowing the path he was on, was doing him a kindness, one showing how much he was loved and valued. Perhaps this act of generosity helped bolster him to keep going; perhaps it showed him that his ministry had made a difference, and that he had a community. Given that it was also to be used in his burial, as Jesus himself says, it also reinforced that he would be remembered when he was gone. Surely, Jesus, in all his humanness, would need to hear this. In that respect, then, Mary’s generosity is a powerful act of love. What’s more, it likely made Mary feel better, as all that research has found. We shouldn’t feel badly when generosity makes us feel good – it is no less reason to do it. The positive emotion we receive when we are giving to people should only reinforce that it is the right thing to do, that the gospel is speaking through us when we act generously. Mary’s giving to Jesus was her response to his ministry. And when we actively respond to the gospel, we give our faith, and our lives, meaning. As it happens, though, that line from Jesus, is not entirely correct. We do not always have to have the poor with us; we do not have to accept poverty as a reality we cannot change. Some cities, such as Medicine Hat in Alberta, and countries, such as Finland, have been extremely successful in eliminating homelessness. They have done so using a Housing First model, which finds homes for people first, and then offers them supports as individuals. Isn’t that the wide definition of generosity that Jesus is describing in the gospel? We must try to solve the larger problems, but also see the individual opportunities to provide comfort and care. In this way we become the fully generous people that Jesus envisioned: people who see not only the big picture of the larger world, but also the unique stories of each person, and respond with generosity. Amen

March 27th, 2022

This morning, we hear the parable of the Prodigal Son, perhaps one of the most significant, and complex parables in the gospel. Certainly, for many of us, it will bring up an emotional response. How you respond to the Prodigal Son, will, I imagine, depend a great deal on your own story in your family. Were you the eldest, expected to keep everything together, upon whom everyone depended, while your siblings had more fun? Were you the one who stepped up to do the hard work, while the rest popped in once and while? Were you the quiet one who got less attention? The alternative one who always seemed to get too much criticism? Or were you the Golden Child, basking in adoration, who could do no wrong? Family dynamics are the setting for many of the stories and parables in the Bible. And of course they are - our families shape and define us. They lock us in a cage, or they set us free. They pull us down and lift us up. And long after we are grown, those roles and narratives really come back to us, sometimes without our even knowing it. Perhaps we care too much what people say. Or we can’t share our feelings with others. Maybe we feel unworthy. Or maybe, if we are lucky, we know our worth, we have an inner voice that is positive and affirmational, and we are happy. Not all of this, of course, can be laid at the feet of our families. But I have a been a pastor, a son, a father, and a partner, long enough to know, that for better or worse, our families leave their mark upon us. Let us consider our parable, then. We have three main characters: two sons and a father. Now the elder son is like many people I know and have met. He stays home and does his duty. He works like a slave and asks for nothing, not even a young goat to cook for his friends. Perhaps he had other dreams and ambitions, but we don’t know: the elder is defined by his choice to stay home. The younger son - he is a free spirit. He asks for his inheritance early, and then he goes off and parties it away. He has, we must imagine, a wonderful time - until the money runs out. Then, we hear, he is forced to do menial labour, feeding pigs, and eating little, until he has a thought: my dad might hire me back, and he feeds his servants. And so he heads home. And then we have the father, the parent figure. Clearly, he loves his sons, for he shares his wealth with them. He values the faithful company of the elder, and the independence of the younger, and he rewards them according to their wishes. When the younger son arrived home, having lost it all, how does this father respond? With love and happiness that his son has returned to the family, and throws a fancy party, and cooks a fatted calf. And the elder, toiling away, hears of this, and understandably, is enraged: where is his fatted calf, after working so hard for so long? But his father says, why shouldn’t we celebrate? For your brother was lost, and now he has been found. Perhaps a good way to understand the parable is to consider ourselves in each of these roles: how we would want to be treated, what we might be missing in the story. The gospel goes into great detail about the transformation of the younger son – who skips away joyfully with his inheritance, wastes it, and then has to labour just to get a bit of food on the table. What a lesson for a young man born into relative wealth to learn? What it is like to be truly hungry. Having learned it, he returns to his father, humbled and begging forgiveness, declaring himself unworthy. Rather than judging and scorning him – incidentally, as his brother does – his father sees his pain and forgives him. He is just happy to have him home. Let us not be too hard on the elder son, watching angrily from the fields. Who wouldn’t feel as he does? Not even a goat comes my way, and this sloth of a brother gets the fatted calf. But what is the elder son missing? What lesson is in this story for us? The parable is meant to add definition to our relationship with God, who is, of course, the father in this story. God welcomes us home when we make mistakes. Even when we feel unworthy, as the younger son says of himself, God sees our value. We make mistakes all our lives. The valuable action is in seeking to correct that mistake, in turning back to God. When we seek forgiveness, we are forgiven. The elder was missing an important point: he was invited to feast on the fatted calf. He was seeing a situation in which for him to win, his brother had to lose; but the love of God doesn’t work that way. God meets us where we are, and face-to-face with who we are. The parent loves the elder who stays; and the parent loves the son who must leave first to return. And there is not one kind of love for the first, and a second kind of love for the second; there is only love. Now, many of our families do not work like the gospel; our parents are not God. In real life, this parable may still chafe and irritate us, and that is okay. This is a story about agape or the love of God that is beyond human understanding, that is all encompassing, and unfaltering. It is a love to aspire to, or to stumble towards. The hope is that when we understand our relationship with God in this way – that in the drifting and stumbling of our lives we might know we are always loved and worthy. And we might also aim for that same kind of open, non-judging love with the people in our own lives. We don’t always get that right, not always, but the good news is we can go back to God and begin again. That new beginning was promised to the elder son, the same as the younger. A fresh start; freedom from the past. Perhaps, with the younger one home, the older would no longer have to work so hard; perhaps he could have the party with his friends and roast a goat. Perhaps, he might come to love and appreciate his younger brother. Perhaps, having seen his father show such welcoming love to a wayward son, he would feel more secure himself in his parent’s love. And maybe not. Maybe he could never let go of the bitterness he felt and was made smaller by. Like I said, it’s a complicated parable. Complicated, but for one simple lesson we are meant to learn: we may come and go; we may stumble and slip; we may be careless, and we may judge. But when we have woken up, we may always come home to God and find love waiting for us. Amen.