Reach out. Stay rooted.

Sermon by Rev. Joel Crouse

Fifth Sunday of Easter

April 28, 2024

Acts 8:26-40

1 John 4:7-21

John 15:1-8

Every summer, a group of university students in my neighborhood head west for tree-planting. They travel to Alberta to live in a tent in the wilderness. Each day, they take their seedlings and bend down into the soil and plant them – they are paid per seedling. And to get paid, they have to do it rain or shine, or, as is happening too often now, even if the air is filled with smoke from wildfires. Planting trees helps grow back our forests. But it is hard work. The young people who last the season come back a little tougher, a little more resilient. They have endured. It’s a job that prunes you – cuts you down, so that you may build up again.

I have had jobs like this all my life. My brief and terrible stint catching chickens. The backbreaking work shovelling gravel from the corners of the lakers in Welland. Working as the chaplain at Centracare, the oldest psychiatric hospital in North America, where I saw consequences of human trauma and abuse. These were jobs that pruned me – they stripped down my expectations, my body, and my perceptions so that I might grow back stronger.

This is the metaphor of our gospel this morning: ‘I am the vine,” Jesus tells us. “You are the branches.” Those who grow rooted in the gospel bear much fruit. Indeed, we may be pruned by God to bear more fruit.

And what is the act of pruning, but the holding back of that natural growth that may stall the productivity of the rest of the vine? As any gardener knows, pruning is an act of care, to help the plant grow to its full potential, a cutting away of the edges so that the center may grow stronger. Sometimes, nearly the entire plant is cut down, and yet it returns the next spring stronger than ever.

We may not feel that way when it is happening. When I was shoveling gravel, I didn’t think: “Wow, the lessons I will learn!” And yet, now I know it taught me the experience of hard labour. By the time I got to Centercare, I went much more quickly from pruning to awareness.

But often we come to understand these difficult times – whatever they are for each of us – as more than time we survived. But as time where we grew back better, wiser, stronger.

However, we know that there are parts in us that also deserve to be pruned away – the parts that judge too quickly, act too harshly, forgive too slowly, and help too little. But God shows us how to prune those parts back, even though they are constantly growing, so that we can have restraint, so that we can be better, so that we might stretch even beyond ourselves and bear the fruit of the gospel.

Sometimes we may look for an answer from God and fail to hear it: it is given to us this morning in our second lesson: we are given love in its purest form by the God we trust. And, if we can accept that truth -- that we have value -- then we might also love more perfectly. We are told that when we love others – our brothers and our sisters – God lives in us. So, when we ask, “How can we be closer to God?” we are told how: by loving those around us. By loving ourselves. And where is the love, we ask? It’s ours to create. And not with fear and judgement, for that is not love.

The truth is, unlike the tree that stands stoically for its pruning, we do not like it. We complain about it; we fight it. We want life to be easy and ever the same. Being pruned asks much of us. To see the upside of bad experiences, to savour the hard tests in life, to accept our mistakes so that we might learn from them. If God prunes out branches, then it is in us, in our decision to love and trust, in God and one another, that allows us to grow into branches on the vine.

And what is the role of those branches, when rooted in the gospel? We become strong enough to stretch where love seems not to exist and take it there ourselves. That is how God comes to us. Not when we sit idly by, but when we find ourselves, as the second lesson tells us, doing acts of love for our brothers and sisters.

I suspect we all know someone who we think is different or weird. Who we don’t like. Who we’d rather not bother us. But it’s this very thinking that God tries to prune away. So that our lives are not only about the fruit that grows easily, but also about the kind we need to cultivate.

We can’t know the future or change the past. All we can do is consider the ways that our decisions affect others, how our society’s laws and values make outsiders of some, and what individual power we might have to change that. Down the road, we also need to ask ourselves what happened, and what might have been done to stop that. Perhaps as we ask, we will look around, and we will see, for the first time clearly, a lost sheep. And maybe we will reach out.

Amen.

WHAT MOTIVATES US TO LEAD?

Sermon by Rev. Joel Crouse

Fourth Sunday of Easter

April 21, 2024

Acts 4:5-12

1 John 3:16-24

John 10:11-18

For all the difficulty we seemingly have these days at incorporating the teachings of Jesus into society, Jesus as a leader is pretty hip. Forget what he said; let’s focus on what he did to get people to listen. You can go on the Internet and find out how Jesus was, in fact, the ideal CEO – among other things, you’ll learn that he remembered to say thank you. You could crack open a business book like The Leadership Wisdom of Jesus, and pore over chapters like “Cleanse Your Insides,” and “The Golden Rule and Beyond.” In Medium last year, Colin Shawger, MBA, wrote an essay with the headline: What Businessmen can learn from the Teachings of the Son of God. Those lessons include: ”Lead with Humility,” “Practice Empathy,” and “Set a Clear Vision.” In 2000, a Brigadier General in the U.S. Army penned a now famous essay on why Jesus would have been an effective military leader. There is even a complicated Venn diagram if you want to look it up. Key to the skills that Jesus had was that he trusted his team, talked to them straight, seemed like the kind of guy who enjoyed a good lunch, and got down in the trenches with the troops.

You don’t have to tell us: Jesus was one heck of a leader.

The thing is, whatever their agendas, all those writers are absolutely right. Jesus, born to a carpenter and a young mother, achieved something incredible in his 33 years on earth: in that short time, he managed to inspire people to see their society in a completely different way, and to create the foundation for a 2,000-year-old faith. That takes a special kind leadership, even if you do have the power of God behind you.

But what I would put to all those writers is the one question it often seems our leaders today forget to ask themselves: Why did Jesus want to lead in the first place?

Our gospel this morning may be our best – and our most comforting - description of how Jesus saw his role as our leader: the Good Shepherd. At this point in the gospel of John, Jesus has just healed a blind man, and he is now having to explain himself to the Pharisees, who refuse to believe that Jesus could have performed the miracle. To explain himself, Jesus uses the metaphor of the shepherd. He begins with a description of what he is not: he is not like the thief who sneaks in the back door to steal the sheep away; he is not like the stranger who is indifferent to the sheep. And he is not like the hired hand, who pretends to protect the sheep, but then abandons them when the wolves appear, or the work gets hard and his pay check doesn’t seem worth it.

“I am the good shepherd,” Jesus says. “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” The good shepherd does what is required to keep the sheep safe; he thinks not of himself, but of the best interests of the sheep. The good shepherd is motivated by love and not by greed. He becomes a shepherd to serve.

This is what Jesus tells the Pharisees, who have already proven themselves to a different kind of leader. Instead of celebrating the blind man’s lucky turn, they have driven him out of the synagogue for naming Jesus as his healer; they have turned his parents against him by interrogating them until they fearfully abandoned their son to his exile. The Pharisees – these supposed spiritual leaders – proved that what they were really worried about was their own power; they were worse than the thief who makes no bones about his motives; they are worse even than the hired hand who accepts a pay check with no plans to fulfill the job. They set themselves up as the good shepherds – but their altruism came second to their own desires.

We speak a lot these days about how our leadership, in so many areas of life, is in a deficit. We seem to live among thieves and hired hands – CEOs that will take their bonuses and run, and politicians who will do what they have to to get elected next time. And our complaints, endured in a democracy, are rather mild: consider how many nations have put their hopes on a leader who promised to free the people, only to end up with a dictator corrupted by power who enslaved them.

In this, Jesus stands apart; for all his power, which was greater than any on earth, he never lost sight of his motivation – the salvation of his sheep. So it is not the methods of Jesus that should fill books; it is his motives.

But let’s not forget the other players in this parable: the sheep. The sheep have a choice: they can rebel against the shepherd, or they can follow him; they can go to the shepherd who lured them with treats or stay with the shepherd who stands with them when it rains. We can lament our leaders; but we also created them. The parents we like to critique today are the product of families past, and of the dictates of society. The celebrities we disdain grew out of our own obsessions with beauty and wealth. The politicians we bemoan are the result of apathy or self-interest.

Sigmund Freud once weighed in on the reasons why we choose the leaders that we do. Freud saw the terrible consequences of the wrong choice first hand: he lived in Vienna when the Nazis arrived and Hitler inspired the cosmopolitan citizens of that city to betray, without much resistance, their Jewish neighbors and friends. What Hitler did, Freud argued, was make it easy for people: he dictated one simple, restrictive code of behaviour, and then provided an outlet for any of the restless tension that might result: by allowing them to act any way they wished toward a second group of people. We know the result all too well.

But we are predisposed to make those bad choices over and over again, Freud proposed – that is, to seek leaders who “simplify the world to explain our suffering, then identify enemies to focus our energies.” A healthier society – and, ultimately a happier society, Freud argued, lives in the tension of argument and difference, constantly balancing wants and needs with a moral code.

And this, I think, is where Freud inadvertently provides a deeper assessment of the leadership of Jesus, than some pop psychology against micro-managing. Jesus never resolves those tensions for us. He does not make our lives easier, by pointing out an enemy for us; he points the finger back at ourselves and tells us to get over our own suffering and look to our neighbor, and to befriend our enemy. His simple code - to love one another – is the hardest one for us to follow. He is the good shepherd: he sets the example by loving the sheep before himself. But what he asks of the sheep, in turn, is to do the very same thing.

Remember this parable, wherever you are a leader – at home, in the community, at work, at church. You can read a book on how to delegate. You can take a course on how to give a witty speech. But what Jesus hoped to teach the Pharisees that day, and what he hopes to instill in each of us, is that none of the style matters, if your motivation is not to serve others; when our own desires get in the way, our leadership falters. We risk becoming shepherds merely so the sheep will fawn all over us. Lead to Serve. And Serve with Love. That’s the most important lesson on leadership from Jesus, the Good Shepherd.

Amen.

saying sorry allows us to begin again

Sermon by Rev. Joel Crouse

Third Sunday of Easter

April 14, 2024

Acts 3:12-19

1 John 3:1-7

Luke 24:36b-48

Chances are, like me, you did something this week you should apologize for. (Hopefully, you already have.) The longer you live and the older you get, the more you realize that truly saying sorry takes a particular, deliberate approach – much more than the quick “Say you’re sorry,” that we teach our kids when they are little. There’s an art to the fulsome apology. Maybe you’ve seen the list online: never use the word “but,” listen to the person you have wronged, allow space and time for forgiveness, and move forward together in healing.

“If only he would say he was sorry, it would fix everything.” How many times has someone said this to me in the midst of a broken relationship? Just this week, I sat with a man I know whose longtime friendship has ended – or at least been interrupted – because one party to the conflict will not own up to their wrongdoing. But the one who feels harm is never looking for only two words: “I’m sorry.” What they really want is to be heard and seen, to know that the harm has been truly acknowledged, that the regret is real, that this reflection has brought learning.

That is not easy. To begin with, to apologize to someone you have wronged and travel along that path, takes vulnerability, self-awareness, and courage, especially since the ending isn’t clear. How tragic it is that saying sorry, which requires such strength, is so often seen as weakness.

This is one of those sin-heavy Sundays, a word, as most of you know, I tend to avoid. That’s because it usually gets used to point fingers, and to level blame, or to shut the doors of the church to one kind of person or another.

But our three readings this morning take us on a journey of sorts about our wrongdoings, how to process them, how to repent them and move on.

In the first reading, we hear Peter reminding the people what happened to Jesus and telling them that they have been offered forgiveness. But they have to take a step in that healing process: they have to acknowledge their mistake, and admit what they did wrong. “Repent, therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out,” Peter says.

In the second lesson, we are asked to consider what constitutes a sin, and what constitutes a righteous act. “Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.” And then we are cautioned: 7Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as He is righteous.”

And when we come to the third step in this morning’s reading, having been told about our failings and impossible responsibilities, we receive the comforting embrace at the end of the road: Jesus comes to the disciples, eats with them, and reassures them. What’s more, he urges them forward yet again, telling them to spread the news of the gospel, a message of repentance and forgiveness.

Wrestling with what’s right and what’s wrong, and when and where, and that the answers might be different depending on the timing and context of the question is the challenge of the moral life, the Christian life as followers of the gospel. We often imagine - or perhaps we just hope - that truly moral people reach a place where every deed they perform is righteous, where they always do their best, and their conscience never wavers with a doubt. Of course this is not true.

The truly moral life is one wise enough to see the constant exchange between repenting our mistakes and forgiving others. When we don’t see what we have done wrong, we become more likely to repeat our mistake; if we pass by someone in need of our help, and we never consider it again, we aren’t likely to stop for someone the next time it happens. We would, in fact, just keep walking by, on our own steady course. Instead, Jesus calls us to live life in stops and starts. We stop to repent. We move forward forgiven and forgiving. Again and again. We cannot vow to do the right thing, if we never admit when we are wrong.

This is why the gospel puts such a high value on repentance. It requires us to think, to pause, to reflect, to have a conversation with God. If you are admitting your part in an argument, you don’t just say sorry and shrug. Repentance requires an examination of what caused the fight - what was really behind it, what steps led to it, and why it escalated.

Repentance is the path to wisdom. If we see a bully - adult or child - and we do nothing, repenting, even after the fact, it’s too easy to say: I will step in the next time. Most likely, if that is as deep as you go, you will not, in fact, step in next time. Repenting is a process of thought and an examination of action: “Why didn’t I step in?” we need to ask. “What circumstances deterred me? Was it the people watching? Was it the nature of the bullying? Was I worried about myself?”

Finding those answers is what moves us forward - it makes us conscious of the things to watch out for, the pitfalls to be mindful of. It gives us the courage to do something different the next time. Perhaps we realize that the other witnesses felt the same as we did; or that the cost to ourselves was really very small; or that even if there is a cost - like detention or anger from the bully - we could handle it.

So you have repented - you have answered those questions. Why should forgiveness come next? How many times do we beat ourselves up about our own mistakes: why didn’t I do something? Why did I do that certain thing? Why didn’t I stay quiet? Why didn’t I speak up? If we have thoughtfully repented, we find it is easier to move on to forgiveness - the kind that Jesus speaks of, in which we are then motivated to try again.

The art of saying sorry is the practicing of faith. Because we are not perfect. Repentance gives us pause, prompts a state of reflection. It leads to forgiveness, for ourselves and for others. It allows us to begin again. Repentance isn’t the posture of the sinner. It is the habit of the faithful.

That is why it comes as a deliberate two-step in the gospel: Repent and Forgive. Only then do we begin to acquire the wisdom to be righteous - a journey that never reaches its destination. But surely along the way, we become more accepting of ourselves and others, more likely to learn from our mistakes, and less likely to walk on by those who are in need.

Amen.