March 29 ~ Sunday of the Passion

Due to the youngest member's pageant, there was no recorded sermon - only the printed one is available this week

Isaiah 50:4-9a

Psalm 31: 9-16

Philippians 2:5-11

Matthew 21:1-11

Sermon by Joel Crouse

In Jesus’s day, Jerusalem was accustomed to impressive displays.  When kings and Romans came to Jerusalem, they tried to outdo one another -- to impress people with their importance.  They rode great horses and dressed in rich garb.  They entered the city trailing an entourage -- soldiers and servants and hangers-on.  The people of Jerusalem were accustomed to these great parades just as we in Ottawa are accustomed to great parades when dignitaries come to town. 

But Jesus didn't work that way.  The Chosen One came into the Holy City accompanied, not by soldiers and servants, but by a ragged band of disciples.  He came riding, not on a great white stallion, but on a donkey.  His humble procession made a statement.  It proclaimed that the Almighty God chooses to work, not through displays of power, but through displays of humility.

We saw it at Christmas.  We saw a baby born, not in a palace, but in a stable, dressed, not in fine silks and linens, but in swaddling clothes: attended, not by princes, but by lowly shepherds. 

On Palm Sunday, we see it again.  Jesus comes into Jerusalem in a way that proclaims his humility, not his power.

This Holy Week, we will see it again and again.  Jesus will move through the week, doing Godly work.  Cleansing the Temple.  Denouncing the rich and powerful.  Teaching the disciples.  Lamenting over Jerusalem.  Gathering the disciples to share bread and wine.  Praying in the garden. 

And then we will see Jesus arrested, mocked, and beaten within an inch of his life.  We will watch a good person marched through the streets like a common criminal, and hung on a cross to die. 

Let me ask you a question.  If you were God, would you have done it that way?  Would you have brought Jesus into Jerusalem on a donkey?  Would you have allowed him to die on a cross?  I doubt it!  I know that I would have done it differently! 

God didn't care about installing Jesus on a throne in the Temple.  God cared about installing Jesus on the throne of our hearts.  God didn't care about impressing the people of first century Jerusalem.  God wants Jesus to be forever in our lives.

And so, God did it differently than you and I would have. God's ways are not our ways. Nothing demonstrates that as clearly as Palm Sunday and Good Friday.  God has a grand vision, and that vision could never be realized by a display of human power.  God's vision can be realized only by humble service—by great love.

We have seen something of that in Canadian news lately in the reporting on emergency rooms across this country. The stories have been heartbreaking: patients waiting for hours and even days, some cared for in hallways and overflow spaces because the system is stretched beyond what it was meant to bear. And yet, in the midst of all that strain, doctors, nurses, paramedics, and support staff still show up to tend to the sick, comfort the frightened, and serve people at their most vulnerable. The system looks weak. The circumstances look broken. And yet compassion continues to appear through these dedicated health care professionals.

That is often how God works. Not first through spectacle. Not through domination. Not by overwhelming force. But through people who keep loving when they are tired, keep serving when the moment is hard, and keep showing up when the world would call the situation hopeless. God often demonstrates that there is godly power in weakness—in suffering—in adversity. That was true on Palm Sunday. It was true on Good Friday. It is still true today.

So, what does all of this have to do with us?

Palm Sunday and Good Friday remind us that God does not work the way empires work. God does not come riding in with force, intimidation, or spectacle. God comes in vulnerability. In tenderness. In courage. In long-suffering love. And that matters, because that is still not how most of the world works.

First, we do not need to give ourselves over to despair when we look at the state of the world. There is so much cruelty, so much fear, so much injustice dressed up as strength. It can feel overwhelming. It can feel as if the worst voices are the loudest voices. But Good Friday tells us that even when violence seems to win, it does not get the last word. God is still at work in the rubble. God is still bringing life out of what looks finished. God is still opening futures we cannot yet imagine.

Second, we do not need to lose heart when our own lives fall apart. When grief comes. When health declines. When a relationship ends. When the plans we built our lives around no longer hold. Faith is not about pretending that pain is beautiful or that suffering is somehow good. Faith is about trusting that God stays with us in the pain, and that even there, especially there, love can still do its quiet work. We pray not because everything is fine, but because we need strength to keep going. We pray for courage, for clarity, for companionship, and for some hint of hope when the road ahead is hard to see.

Third, we should never underestimate the power of humility, service, and love. The world teaches us to admire wealth, dominance, and success. Jesus teaches something else entirely. He shows us that the people who change the world are often not the ones at the centre of attention, but the ones who keep showing up. The ones who feed, comfort, listen, accompany, and serve. The ones who make room for others. The ones who choose compassion over ego. The ones who understand that love is not weakness. Love is strength disciplined for the sake of someone else.

Palm Sunday is, in its own way, God’s great leveling. It tells us that no one gets a higher place in God’s parade because of status, power, certainty, or religious polish. We all come the same way: needing grace, needing humility, needing one another. And if we are going to follow Jesus, then we have to learn to see beyond ourselves, beyond our own comfort, beyond our own assumptions, and pay attention to the lives of those around us.

So where are we in the parade?

Are we standing back, waiting for God to make the first move, even though God already has? Are we more concerned with how we look than with who is being left out? Or are we willing to step forward and make room for the wounded, the weary, the poor, the grieving, the overlooked? Are we willing to bend low enough to recognize that Christ still comes among us, not in glory as the world defines it, but in need, in vulnerability, in truth?

Find your place in the parade. Not as someone watching from a safe distance, but as someone trying to make a positive difference in the world. Lay down whatever you can in the path of Christ: your pride, your fear, your comfort, your assumptions, your willingness to stay uninvolved. And then walk on in hope, trusting that God is still making a way — in us, among us, and through us. 

Amen

March 22 ~ The Love that Releases Us from the Ambiguity of Grief

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/3ef8bd_b2ab0ce2a561423e8fc7be3863f1ef85/720p/mp4/file.mp4

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Psalm 130

Romans 8:6-11

John 11:1-45

Sermon by Joel Crouse

Regret can be one of the most toxic choices in our lives. It is often the thing that brings people to my office, or comes up when I am sitting with them in their homes or on their death beds. Regrets about bad choices. Regrets about paths not taken. Regrets about an unkind word that will never be forgotten. No parent or partner – or pastor - gets through life without carrying a load of regrets, a situation they wish they’d handled better, kindness they didn’t offer when it was most needed, a hug they didn’t give the last time someone walked out the door. “If only I had done this,” we say to ourselves. If only I hadn’t said that. If only I could have been better. If only.

In our gospel today, we hear one of those “if only” moments.

Jesus learns that this friend Lazarus is ill. He is the brother of those feuding sisters: Martha – working busily in the kitchen, angry at her sister -- and Mary -- sitting at Jesus’s feet, listening to him. They get word to Jesus to come, but he doesn’t come right away. By the time he arrives, Lazarus, we learn has been in the tomb for four days. Martha, never shy about speaking her mind, approaches him and says, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

And eventually, Martha gets word to Mary, who also goes to Jesus, weeping at his feet, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Seeing how everyone is grieving, because Lazarus was much loved, Jesus himself begins to weep. And people whisper among themselves: “See how he loved him.” And a few others begin to level blame. “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

If only Jesus had done differently, Lazarus might still live.

It is human nature, as we know, to want to find something or someone to blame. To solve the mystery. To have an answer upon which we might lay our grief. Our brains do not like ambiguity. We don’t enjoy uncertainty.

And yet, learning to live with grief is about learning to find a measure of certainty in the ambiguity. To know that it is okay to wonder, “if only,” while coming to accept that there will be no answer. To know that closure is really just a word we like to use to make ourselves feel better – especially when we are witnesses to grief. But grief itself never closes up and goes away. It just becomes something else. Eventually, that something else is new life.

In a way, our gospel gives us an easy way out – a secret door to dodge the journey upon which all people who grieve must travel. Jesus steps in, and brings Lazarus back to life. “Lazarus, come out!” he calls. And we are told that the “dead man comes out, his face wrapped in cloth.” And Jesus said, “Unbind him and let him go.”

Now there is great space in this gospel for our own understanding to fit – and for us to find comfort there as we wish. But the line that leaps out at me, as someone who has grieved deeply, are those final words that Jesus says: “Unbind him and let him go.”

“Unbind [the one you say you love so much] and let them go.”

For such a sad story – where a man has died, and his sisters and friends are inconsolable – those are peaceful words. They do not choke off the grief as frivolous, as if the friends and family of Lazarus did not believe enough. Or that they should be dancing at his tomb, because he was now with God. Jesus himself, after all, shared in their sadness. They do not discard the “if onlys” – Jesus never addresses them – he only urges the sisters to have faith, and to trust in the love that they have for their brother and the love that God has for them. That eventually it will be okay, because while it feels as if their love for him has been ripped away, it hasn’t. Real love, like the love that God has for each one of us, never dies and cannot be separated from us by a grave. And it takes time to reach that space where we come to understand that those we have loved and lost are not so far from us, just as God is not so far from us. At the tomb, Jesus tells them to “let Lazarus go,” to untether him from the constraints of their grieving so that they can reach that space of understanding for themselves.

It the midst of all those “if onlys,” it is certainty that Jesus places into the ambiguity of their sorrow. The certainty that releases them from finding someone or something to blame. That allows them to tell the story in a way that helps them heal. That certainty, that eventually it will be okay and new life will be found, even as the grief itself never ends.

I know this certainty to be true. I have seen it in my own family with a brother whose body lies in the belly of the ocean and a mother who lost the battle against colon cancer. I have seen it in many of your lives through the grief and loss that you have had to work through. The ‘if only’ moments were plentiful. The ambiguity of grief was real. And yet new life was found. The greatest gift of faith is this certainty that Jesus places into the ambiguity of our grief.

The gospel is full of wisdom and truth and certainties. This story of Lazarus is one of those precious stories that are often watered down into paper pop-up diagrams for children, proving the miraculous power of Jesus. Do not overlook the ‘if only’ moments and the ambiguity in this story. Because if we do, we will never know the true miracle of honest certainty that Jesus has to offer.

Amen

March 15 ~ What are Our Blind Spots That Prevent Us Celebrating the Joy of Others?

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/3ef8bd_5c142b13a0a1448bb2964d2714e7885a/720p/mp4/file.mp4

Samuel 16:1-13

Psalm 23

Ephesians 5:8-14

John 9:1-41

Sermon by Joel Crouse

We have in our gospel this morning an amazing miracle and an equally amazing reaction. A man who has been blind all his life has been given sight. And do the people he finally sees rejoice? No, they have question after question. Who did this and how? What day was this miracle performed and what rules might have been broken? Are you sure it was a good person who restored your sight? Can you say exactly how it was done?

By the end of this inquisition with the Pharisees, everyone’s joy is ruined. The now-seeing blind man is given an interrogation, not a celebration. His parents are challenged rather than congratulated. Everyone is looking for what’s wrong with this healing miracle, instead of rejoicing in its happening.

In such miracle stories, we tend to get focused on the small details: how did Jesus really give a blind man sight with mud on his eyes? Was it truly a miracle? Was he ever really blind, or only injured? And so on, and so on.

But I don’t think the miracle is the point of our gospel passage. The lesson we have to learn here is how we respond when good things happen to other people. And why, we don’t always respond with the joy they deserve.

This week, on my Facebook feed, a cartoon popped up, offering the secrets of a happy relationship. The first one was: happy couples don’t compete with each other. The second was: happy couples rejoice in each other’s success. The third: happy couples work as a team. And I thought, “Is this really a reminder we need – to view the success of our partner as lifting out own boat?” Surely, when Erin succeeds, I also rejoice, and vice versa. Our successes and failures are, after all, tied to each other.

But it reminded me, if we need to tell couples not to compete, what chance did the blind man in our gospel have – when confronted with the suspicion and jealousy of his own community?

And yet, let us step back for a moment and consider what is driving these reactions. First, the neighbors are full of suspicious questions. For one thing, they doubt the miracle is true – are we sure this is the guy? And then they question the miracle provider: who and where is he?

What makes them - and let’s face it, us - react this way to another’s joy? This is an excellent question to pose during Lent, when we are forced to look honestly within ourselves. Psychologists have many theories concerning why we’re jealous about good news stories that don’t affect us. Perhaps we feel bad or insecure about ourselves – and when someone we know gets ahead, that makes those feelings worse, reminding us of our own failures. Or we hold to a scarcity mindset – there is only so much success to go around, so when someone else gets it, my chances fall. We fail to see the hard work behind the success, and assume the person just got lucky, and therefore did not truly deserve it. And we worry about being forgotten, left behind as others get ahead.

And yet, as you can see from the list, none of those beliefs have anything to do with the one succeeding. Our sense of worth, our own hard work, our own mistakes, our limited view of the world -- are all held by us. And the beauty of ideas that we hold ourselves is that we ourselves can let them go. In this case, we can say: “I have value. I can learn from my mistakes. That person worked hard and deserved it; I can also work hard for good things. The world has space for many successes. I won’t be left behind, because we are not in a zero-sum race: success is different for every person.”

Those are the neighbors, flawed but human. The religious leaders in our gospel are another story. Perhaps their inability to celebrate a miracle as a sign from God is also influenced by the human failings listed above. But something else is at play: the religious leaders feel threatened; their power is at risk. If some preacher-man trained to be a carpenter can make blind men see, how can they hold the attention of the people, which is what leaders out for themselves must do.

So, they cast doubts on Jesus, as a person. On the miracle for the day it happened. They threaten the parents of the man because they need witnesses to sell their story. Not once do we hear those in the gospel say, “How amazing it is that you can see after all these years.” A miracle they have not controlled, a success they didn’t make happen, good news that they haven’t created is unacceptable and not to be tolerated. If anyone can perform a miracle, then how will they hold our attention? So, whoever else performs a miracle must be denigrated, and discredited.

Who does that sound like? Certainly not a leader I want to follow. A leader would rejoice in every success, lift up all achievements, be curious about how they happened, and want to know if there was a way to repeat them. I am certain there were other blind men and women and children: do you hear anyone ask, how can we help them as well?

In asking questions to serve their own purposes, silence their own insecurities, and hold on to their own power, they fail not only the miracle, but also themselves. For the real beauty and freedom in life comes when we celebrate success, when we lift up another’s joy – in those moments, as the wise among us know, we are not brought down but instead lifted up.

Reading this gospel, I sat for a bit and reflected on the man in the centre of this tale. From what we know, he was blind for most of his life. A miracle has suddenly given him sight. Imagine what that must have been like. He was a pauper forced to beg, living in endless night. And suddenly, he can see the sun and the trees and the sky. He can see the faces of his parents. He can see his own face. He can walk without stumbling. Dance without falling. He can see an apple and pick it from a tree. He can pet a dog and look into its gentle eyes. His world has been transformed. And all anyone around him can do is ask: How did it happen? Who did it? Were any rules broken? And then they are so consumed with fear and suspicion that they drive the man out of the community, making the man even more of an outcast than he was when he was blind. Because when he was blind, everyone was very comfortable looking down on him.

How sad. How sad for us, as well, if we miss those moments because we are too consumed with what is inside ourselves to see someone else.

Jesus, however, not only sees the man; he seeks him out. Having been blind when the miracle happened, the man needs Jesus to clarify who he is, before confirming his faith.

Then Jesus tells him: “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.”

And so, with this line, Jesus draws a distinction between the two groups; first, the regular villagers, whose blindness stems from fear and anxiety and low sense of self-worth, for whom the gospel offers the vision of resilience, generosity, and meaning; and secondly, those who tell us they can see simply to hold onto power, to press a thumb upon the lives of others. Those people will be made powerless.

In our Lenten journey, let us consider the joy of the blind man, the gift of that miracle. Consider our own blind responses to another’s success. The lesson of the gospel is that we all have value, but it’s the curious and open among us who live best. The next time a metaphorical blind person tells you they have sight – challenge any negative thoughts that arise and respond to it with joy and praise. This is one important way that we who are blind shall all come to see.

Amen