April 2 ~ Maundy Thursday

Video will be uploaded within the next few days

John 13:1–17; 13:31b–35

Sermon by Joel Crouse

There are nights in the church year that feel almost too intimate for a sanctuary. Maundy Thursday is one of them. Tonight the Gospel doesn’t give us an idea. It gives us a scene. Water. A towel. A body leaning forward. Hands doing the thing that is normally beneath notice. The kind of work that keeps a household human.

John begins with a sentence that feels like a deep inhale: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” Not “to the end” like a deadline. “To the end” like the full stretch of love—love that goes beyond what is comfortable. Love that doesn’t quit when it gets complicated. Love that gets its hands dirty doing the right thing.

Jesus gets up from the table, takes off his outer robe, ties a towel around himself, and begins to wash feet. And immediately the story collides with our instincts. Because everything in us wants love to stay dignified. We want love that looks good and can be thanked properly. We want love that doesn’t ask too much and stays at the level of words and intentions.

But Jesus kneels.

He touches what is dusty. What is tired. What has walked through the mess of life. What smells like the day. And he does it without explanation, without a speech, without demanding that anyone understand first.

This is the first uncomfortable truth of Maundy Thursday: Jesus does not only call us to love. Jesus insists on loving us in ways that dismantle our pride.

Peter, of course, says what we’re all thinking: “You will never wash my feet.”

It’s not just modesty. It’s the panic of being seen. Because if Jesus washes our feet, we have to admit we have feet—real ones—feet that get dirty, and need care, and are not impressive. We have to admit we are not self-sufficient—that we are not above need. And that is hard for us. Hard for capable people. Hard for anyone who has survived by staying in control.

Jesus says, gently and firmly, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” In other words: this is not a symbolic add-on. This is the shape of the life we share with Christ. A life where God’s love comes close enough to touch what we thought was secret, but is seen by God. A life where grace is not abstract; it’s embodied.

And then Jesus turns it outward: “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

Now, at this point, some of us want to spiritualize it—turn it into a general reminder to be kind. But Jesus is not vague. He is showing a pattern: love that reaches others at their level. Love that takes the posture of service. Love that does not cling to status.

And it’s here that the progressive edge of this text shows itself. Because foot-washing is not only about personal humility. It’s also about how power works. In every society, there are people expected to do the dirty work while others remain untouched by it. There are bodies that get served and bodies that do the serving. There are people whose needs are treated as inconvenient and people whose needs are treated as urgent. There are those who are expected to “keep it together” and those who are allowed to fall apart.

Jesus steps right into that arrangement and breaks it open from within. He does not romanticize suffering. He doesn’t bless hierarchy. He does not say, “This is just the way things are.” Jesus kneels and says, with his body: this is what God is like.

And then—almost as if he wants to make sure we don’t miss it—John gives us the second half of tonight’s text. After Judas leaves and the night deepens, Jesus says, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified…,” and then: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you…. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.”

It’s important that he says this when everything is about to go wrong. Love is not a strategy for when life is stable. Love is what God does when life is unraveling.

And the commandment is not “Be nice.” The commandment is “Love one another as I have loved you.” With towel-love. With kneeling-love. With stubborn-love. With love that refuses to discard people. With sacrificial love.

This is the point where the church has to be honest with itself. If our “love” doesn’t move us toward people outside our financial status, then it’s not like what Jesus showed us. If our “love” extends only to those who agree with us, it’s probably not acting like Jesus. If our “love” never costs us anything—time, comfort, money, reputation—then it might be something else entirely.

This is why we, as a community, don’t just politely hand money over to other groups trying to love like Jesus. We make the meal for the homeless, and sandwiches for youth living on the street, and quilts for people who are cold, and serve coffee and pie to people living in shelters, and deliver flowers to those who feel forgotten or lost. We do these hands-on, earthly things as an embodied response to the love and grace we have already received from Jesus.

Tonight Jesus doesn’t give us a theory of atonement. He gives us a basin. He gives us a towel. He gives us a picture of God that is so close to human vulnerability that we can barely stand it.

And then he says, essentially: this is what we are for.

So, if you think tonight about Jesus’s foot-washing, don’t spiritualize it. And if you come up for communion, don’t think of it as a reenactment of the Last Supper. Let it be what it is: a living sign that Christ is still among us, still bending low, still washing what is dusty, still giving of himself and insisting that we belong to one another.

Because this is how Jesus loves to the end: not by remaining above the mess, but by entering it—by taking what is ordinary and making it holy.

And if we let him, that love will unmake us and remake us. 

Amen

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