Don't Dry Up Your Strength Complaining, Put It To Better Use

Sermon, by Pastor Joel

Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost

September 29, 2024

Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29

Psalm 19:7-14

James 5:13-20

Mark 9:38-50

The context of this sermon is

100% written by a human

My wife’s grandfather liked to tell this story: in the early 1930s, he worked for Nova Scotia Power, and one day, while driving along a dirt road, he came across a handmade sign. It read: “Pick your rut carefully; you’ll be in it for the next 20 miles.” He would tell this line with a laugh, usually while playing a game of “knock-for-nickels” while he cooked fudge in the kitchen. No doubt a person with a good sense of humour put up that sign, but like all good jokes, it also reflected a truth about human nature: we often get trapped in our own ruts. By definition, a rut is not a place you want to be. On a road with deep ruts, your car gets stuck. In life, a rut, the dictionary says, is a habit or behavior that has become dull and unproductive but hard to change. Ruts can get us stuck in life as well.

The Bible is full of examples of people who choose the wrong rut. In fact, the gospel is a rut-escaping kind of teaching. In this case this morning, we hear a lot about one very common kind of rut – the rut of complaining. Take, for example, the Israelites who followed Moses into the desert. They had been saved from slavery under the brutal reign of Pharoah, then led to freedom by Moses to build a better life. But that life wasn’t getting better fast enough. They complained about their food. The manna in Egypt, they said, was much better than the manna God provided in the wilderness. We know plenty of people like this – if we are honest, we are these people more often than we’d like ourselves to be.

The complaining rut prevents us from seeing the good in life. It gets us so focused on one small thing that we miss the big picture. Think of something you recently complained about – a bad driver, a cranky kid, an ache or pain. Sure, it might have been irritating in the moment, but when you step back and consider the day it happened on, did it merit complaint? In the complaining rut we spend more time grousing than complimenting, more time grumpy than engaging. We are in good company. Even Moses complained that he felt as if he were carrying the whole world on his shoulders when he led God’s people in the wilderness. Responsibility can also feel like a rut, if we lose sight of the meaning and purpose behind it. What God said to Moses applies to all of us. “If life is that bad for you,” God says, “do something about it.”

In our gospel, the disciples are also complaining. Some unnamed person was having more success at casting out demons than they were. They’d found a way not to admire the healing ability of this individual but to question his authority to do so. But, of course, the disciples were only human. They were threatened by this stranger, and jealous. And isn’t that often the heart of the complaining rut? We think our lives could be better; we are jealous of someone else’s success. The rut of complaining must surely begin with the bad habit of comparison, which social media has only made easier. Indeed, one of the main reasons that experts say social media is bad for mental health is that we chronically compare the truth of our lives with the fiction of someone else’s. Jesus quickly tries to nip this in the bud, with a lesson for all of us: it doesn’t matter who is doing the good work, he tells the disciples, but that the good work is being done. We are not in competition to “perform” the gospel better than anyone else; we are meant to live it truthfully as well as we can, for ourselves and for God.

Like so many people in our sacred text, all of us can, at one time or another, get stuck in the rut of complaining. This robs us of the very life we desire. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, it makes us over-glorify the past, rather than appreciate the present and work toward the future. No wonder, after expressing their lament, the Israelites said, “Now our strength is dried up.” Complaining is exhausting because we have to carry around the burden of it.

But more seriously, the rut of complaining puts our relationship with God out of joint. Because ultimately, our lament is really against God: why doesn’t God put order to the affairs of our life so that everything comes up roses? One compliant tends to lead to another, and suddenly, we are grumbling so loud that we cannot hear God at all.

So how do we get out of the rut of complaining? I suppose today, the experts would recommend a gratitude journal to remind ourselves of our blessings. We might call that prayer. Jesus, in our gospel, has another prescription. Instead of casting out our salty words to sting others, Jesus says, “Have salt within yourself.” Jesus was relentless in saying that change and renewal always begin at home. Before we take the sliver out of our neighbour's eye, Jesus says, take the 6X6 out of your own. Have “salt within yourself.” Use it to soften the hard edges, to preserve what is good. Let the salt sting in the wounds caused by our envy and greed, our broken ego and complaining words. Take an honest look inside. Let judgment begin within, Jesus says. And then let the salt do its healing work within you.

What does that look like? Sometimes, it is acceptance: some days it rains, and you bring an umbrella. If, like Moses, the job is too big, seek help and delegate some authority. If, like the disciples, you find yourself envying another’s good works, give thanks for the good work being done. (Even better, welcome it.) If you see wrongdoing, don’t gripe and point fingers; seek a resolution. Do not dry up your strength with complaining. Put it to better work. We will be better and happier people. The world will be a better and happier place. “Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.”  Amen.

Who is the greatest

Sermon, by Pastor Joel

Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost

September 22, 2024

Jeremiah 11:18-20

Psalm 54

James 3:13—4:3, 7-8a

Mark 9:30-37

The context of this sermon is

100% written by a human

Humanity has a bad habit that we cannot seem to give up. It is a habit that we know is bad for us, for those around us, for the world we live in. This habit endangers our very future as a species, and yet we struggle to give it up. We struggle because it’s the way it has always been done. We struggle because it costs money and time and sacrifice to change it – which is the way of most insidious bad habits. What’s more, this bad habit will require the most fortunate to give up more than the least. To break our habit of consuming fossil fuels at the cost of the world, the greatest - as the disciples say in our gospel this morning - will have to sacrifice the most.

This weekend, some of our members participated in a rally for a treaty that hopes to address our use of fossil fuels. Coal, oil, and gas are responsible for 86% of all carbon emissions in the past decade. Scientists warn us that if we don’t change our ways, temperatures will continue to rise above what is liveable for human civilizations: our cities will become unbearably hot, the oceans will rise, and the forests will burn – even more than they already are.

Yet this treaty recognizes that we can’t just give up a habit cold turkey. We also can’t give up a habit just by talking about it. First, we have to stop making it worse – in this case, by not expanding the use of fossil fuels. We have to give and receive support, with nations with the capacity helping those without transition more smoothly into forms of green energy. And we need to ensure that this happens in a just way – with new green-energy jobs and opportunities – so that people, and countries, are not left unfairly behind.

And yet, how often, even when it comes to our bad habits, are we just like those disciples, bickering about who is the greatest? Let’s pause here for a moment, because what is this argument really about? The disciples on the walk between towns have to sheepishly admit to Jesus the nature of their argument. But what did they mean by “greatest”? Was it who had been a disciple the longest? Who was the most pious? Who was the best at crowd control? Who was the most generous? Who was the best healer? Or was it something smaller: who was the most loved by Jesus?

In the end, isn’t that what most of our “who’s the greatest” conversations come to? Praise and adoration. We want to feel secure and loved and safe. And we have translated that in our world to mean wealthy and ambitious and successful. That drive for wealth has led to larger houses that need more air conditioning and fancier cars that use more gas. It has led countries to measure value not by the happiness of their people, or by the functioning of the care their systems provide, but by the size of their economies, and how many Fortune 500 companies exist within their borders. The economy is important, and a healthy one drives innovation and creativity, but it must be balanced against care for humanity and the world – indeed, a fossil fuel treaty seeks to create that better, more sustainable balance.

If you think about it for us as disciples, arguing about who is the greatest is never sustainable: someone seemingly greater usually comes along. There’s a reason why the trophies we win usually have little meaning to our children and grandchildren: their value falls the minute they have been walked or driven off the lot by the receiver, so to speak. But then we also have to ask ourselves how we measure greatness. Surely the disciples ran into this problem. In fact, if you consider the list of qualities that define greatness, isn’t the joke on them? Didn’t the gospel require a helping of all those “great” qualities to come together?

Jesus settles the discussion once and for all. Whoever wants to be first of all must be the last of all. Because the gospel is not about awards and accolades; it is about service. And then Jesus placed a child among the disciples, and said, “Whoever welcomes this child, welcomes me.” Surely, he meant this lesson on several levels: A child requires selfless love and care. A child offers love purely. A child sees the world as it could be, and yet might be.

And is this not the place where we need to get to solve so many of the problems we face – not just our own individual problems, but the larger daunting ones we need to solve together. We cannot be clambering over one another as the disciples were, for fame and glory. We must break the habit of seeing “the greatest” as a goal unto itself. We must redefine what is great in acts of service, kindness, and generosity.

Whoever wants to be first must be last. After all, if we are all trying to make room and space for someone else, if we are all giving our space in line to another, and if we are all sharing what we have, then the result may be that no one is the greatest. But we will all be good. And that child placed among the disciples will know a better world.  Amen.

There is no point in gaining the world, if you lose yourself in the end

Sermon, by Pastor Joel

Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost

September 15, 2024

Isaiah 50:4-9a

Psalm 116:1-9

James 3:1-12

Mark 8:27-38

The context of this sermon is

100% written by a human

A couple weeks ago, my Facebook feed offered up a particularly poignant thought exercise. Perhaps you have also seen it. The video showed a shaky black and white film of people, dressed in old-fashioned clothes, walking on the street, standing in front of their houses, doing regular things. The words reminded me of this reality. I’ll paraphrase: In one hundred years, strangers will be living in your house. In one hundred years, that car you coveted will be metal scrap. In one hundred years, no one will really remember you. Do you remember your great-grandfather? How much do you even know about him? The fact is that a lot of this will happen much sooner than one hundred years. More likely there will be no house at all, let alone a strange family. But the point landed home: the things we chase today, the stuff we so value, will mean nothing, to anybody we know, sooner than we can image. Storing up treasure on earth is a fool’s errand. 

And yet, don’t we love our treasure? The average house size in Canada was about 1,200 square feet in 1971. Today, the average house size is 2,200 square feet – even though families have gotten smaller not larger. According to an article in PIRG, Americans buy an average of 53 pieces of clothing each year – four times more than in 2000. (I doubt Canadians are far behind.) More than 100-billion items of clothing are produced in the world every year, according to the BBC – and as much as 65 per cent of that ends up in a landfill in 12 months. Meanwhile, gallons upon gallons of water are wasted, and farmland is lost, to create shirts we don’t need. The examples could fill this sermon. But to paraphrase the words of the gospel: what does it profit us to gather this treasure, but forfeit the world? Certainly, if we have in mind our legacy to our children, we risk leaving an impoverished one.

It’s a thought-provoking line in the gospel, spoken by Jesus. He says: Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for the sake of the gospel, will gain it. For what will profit them to gain the whole world, and forfeit their life?

Jesus says this line after a devastating exchange with Peter, who is arguably his closest friend. Peter is struggling with hearing Jesus talk of his terrible death. We can imagine that he must have heard Jesus explain the prophecy many times, to each new crowd. Who wouldn’t be conflicted about hearing how your dearest friend and ally was predicting for himself great suffering, betrayal and the most brutal of deaths on a cross. (The rising again would sound like a footnote, under those circumstances.) Peter, we are told, takes Jesus aside, and rebukes him. We can assume he said something like: Stop this downer talk, this isn’t going to happen on my watch. This cannot be the way our story ends.

Now Jesus has had plenty of people challenge his words – Pharisees, tax collectors, the woman with the sick child in last week’s gospel. He typically responded calmly. In this case, with Peter, his reaction is so vicious, so out of character, we might ask ourselves why.

We forget sometimes that Jesus was also human. And humans, by our nature, want to live. So I imagine having your close friend throw up doubts also highlighted your own doubts about the difficult path ahead. What was Satan to Jesus, but temptation? Temptation to make a different choice, a more self –serving choice. And so Peter, while expressing his concern out of love, was also tempting Jesus away from what he saw as his duty: to continue to spread the gospel, even at great risk to himself, even until he made the authorities so angry they would plot his death. And so Jesus says: there is no point in gaining the world, if you lose yourself in the end. 

Of course, we all, in the end, lose our lives. But this passage in the gospel speaks to what we do in the time we have, and the choices we make. That message on Facebook reminded us that most of what we do for material gain serves us in the moment. It’s not even fair to say it won’t matter in 100 years.  In 100 years, the choices we make about the environment and for the social good will likely matter very much. In fact, doing right for 100 years from now, will require gaining less today. We can’t continue to consume whatever we want, and live in houses too large for our families and trample over forests and farmland, without creating loss for our children and grandchildren.

Whoever loses their life for the sake of the gospel will gain it. Jesus is describing a selfless choice. His own – to face the cross. And ours – to live for sake of people we don’t know and future generations we can only imagine. Can we resist temptation, live meaningfully, exist in moderation, and deny our own wants for what the natural world needs? One hundred years from now, our names may be a mysterious line in a family tree. Our houses may be gone, our cars will be scrap, our clothes living long in a garbage heap. Our great-grandchildren may not know us when they see our faces in an old picture. But they will know the future created by our choices.  Amen.