March 1 ~ A Gospel That Doesn't Point Fingers but Points Towards Values

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Genesis 12:1-4a

Psalm 121

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

John 3:1-17

Sermon by Joel Crouse

Our gospel today gives us a line that is so familiar it can almost slip past us:

“Indeed, God did not send Jesus into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  Not to condemn. But to save.  Not to judge, but to serve. 

But is this true?  Jesus appears to spend his fair share of time pointing out what was wrong in the world. He sometimes couched his ideas in parables, but we understood: the person who walks by a dying man and doesn’t offer help– that’s wrong. The person who devalues someone because they are just a woman at a well – wrong. The person who would trade his beliefs for money and honour - wrong.

How easy and delicious that feels. The world gets so simple. The person who breaks a law: Wrong. The person who lies: Wrong. The person who fails to help: consider yourself judged. And we have so many targets today for our condemnation and judgement. We are living in a moment when so many people are doing harm so publicly, so casually, so boldly. The headlines come at us like a flood. Leaders spew racism with impunity, or lie brazenly when we can see the truth for ourselves. Communities have been unjustly targeted. Our own country is continually insulted. Rage-baiting is rising. The ethical bar is falling. 

We could spend our whole day handing out condemnations, and we might even feel a little better at the end of it. Until we didn’t. 

Yet how do we save a world with so much wrongdoing, without condemnation? How do we serve the gospel without clear values, without judging?

Let’s take an example that seems small, but really isn’t.

After the United States men’s hockey team won the gold medal against Canada, they got a call from the President of the United States. And during that call, Mr. Trump showered them with praise and glory and then offered up a private jet to the Oval Office. And then he made a joke, telling the men that he would have to invite the women’s team – also gold medal winners – or else he would be impeached. The room filled with laughter, all of it caught on camera. 

In most of my social media feeds, the judgment was swift. These men, most of them professional hockey players, had allowed their teammates to be belittled, even though they had also won gold with far fewer resources, and had received no call from the president. My feed filled up with insulting memes and critiques of the men’s team - even more so when all but five of them showed up for the State of the Union celebration. 

Those jokes were funny; the judgement felt deserved. 

But was it useful? If we were trying to right a wrong, to save rather than condemn, did that judgement accomplish anything?  I don’t think so.

In the first place, it focused a lot of attention on the people we were condemning – a group of people who make a lot of money to play a game, and who live in an entirely different world from the rest of us.  

Secondly, by focusing on the joke and on how the men’s team laughed, we made them the story – so much so that when the captain of the women’s team was asked questions about it in a press conference, she pointed out that here she was, a gold medal winner, having to explain someone else’s behaviour.

Thirdly, by focusing on the players in the room who laughed, we missed the few in the group who cheered for the women. The story could have been: these hockey players refused to go along with a sexist joke. But judging was more fun.

Fourth: instead of judging, we could look more widely at the story, and ask ourselves, “Who needs saving?” By elevating allies, we shift the conversation back to why a certain group would need allies at all. By asking how this kind of belittling joke plays out in the resources and support the women get, we have focused on a problem we might fix. By lifting up graceful winners and honorable losers, we define the world we want. 

And this is the difference between condemning and saving, between judging and serving. In fact, Jesus spent his ministry using what was wrong in the world to highlight what was right. The person who stopped for the dying man – that’s the Good Samaritan we remember. The words of the woman at the well -- that’s the focus of the story Jesus tells.  The tax collector is defined not by his job, but by the choices he makes within it. Jesus may have dodged temptation in the desert with the devil, but when the disciples don’t do the same, they are not condemned.  They are embraced by Jesus to try again. At each stage, Jesus urges us not to spend time on people to be judged, but to look behind them and around them to the people we need to serve. This is why we have a gospel that reveals values, but does not point fingers.

And so, like Jesus, we must be careful that in naming harm, we do not define contempt. That in fighting justice, we still believe in redemption. That we can say “this act was wrong,” without also deciding “this person is beyond hope.” That when we do point to wrongdoing, it is not just a way for us to reassure ourselves: “I am not like them.” For of course, one way or another, we are all imperfect; we all have parts of ourselves that merit judgement.

Now let’s be clear, Jesus was hardly mealy-mouthed. We all know where he stood; his values are clear to us – and yet he made them clear by focusing on what he wanted to save, and not by becoming mired in condemnation. That is not wishy-washy. It is strength. 

Let this be part of our Lenten journey: when we feel ourselves judging, let us stop for a moment. Take a breath. Is this judgement - even a just one -useful? Who am I ignoring when I focus on this judgement? What better cause am I missing? Sometimes, like that rude joke in a locker room, you will see that the focus should be on serving the brunt of the joke, rather than on judging the joker. Or you may recognize that within that very same person we are judging there is also a someone who needs our help.  

Jesus came into the world not to condemn but to save. And so, we are called in the world, not to judge but to serve. Especially this world. And especially now.  

Amen

Feb. 22 ~ The temptation of turning stone to bread and the temptation of easy answer

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Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Psalm 32

Romans 5:12-19

Matthew 4:1-11

Sermon by Joel Crouse

For this Sunday, I was given a sermon from the Eastern Synod’s Climate Justice Committee to read to you. After some thought, however, I am not going to read that sermon - not in its entirety. A copy, however, is available to anyone who wants it.

When I read and reflected on the sermon provided, it didn’t sit right with me. We live in a complicated time, and the words I speak must reflect that. We have to approach this age - when so many of our values are threatened, our sovereignty is challenged, our climate is being destroyed, our children don’t have jobs, and still in this wealthy country, we have people without homes dying on the street. In fact, in January, I buried a man who died on our city streets; no one even knew his name.

In this difficult world, Jesus gives us guidance; and I, from this place, seek to represent that guidance, to pose questions that I hope reveal something of the gospel. As your pastor, I can walk with you toward an answer. I can support you in your search. But your answer, in the end, is between you and God.

In our gospel, this morning, we hear the story of Eve’s temptation by the serpent in the Garden, and the Devil’s temptation of Jesus in the desert. I want to address both - although the Synod’s sermon touches only on the latter.

For starters, I don’t think we should ever read that story about Eve in church, without requiring the pastor to address it. Without the pastor’s comments, too many parts of the Bible have left judgement mistakenly cast on women. We all know the story: God tells Eve and Adam not to eat the apple; the serpent convinces Eve to take a bite, she shares it with Adam, and they leave the Garden of Eden forever. There are so many aspects of this story that have always made me wonder. First, why did God, knowing our human failings, understanding our desire for knowledge and our innate curiosity, place such a test upon us, dangling an apple that would separate us from God within such tantalizing reach? Also, why were we expected to live in paradise forever, when it is against our very nature - when we are a species designed to reach for the future, to grow and change?

Perhaps the lesson here is that God never intended for us to remain in the Garden of Eden forever; but to go out in the world and fail and succeed where we could. By leaving the garden, we acquired free will, the ability to choose our fate; and years later when Jesus arrived on the scene, he honoured and valued that free will by creating a gospel that was a guide and inspiration but not a cage.

In that sense, what did Eve do but hope what all mothers do for their families? That they would find their own way into the world, learn from failure, rejoice in life’s happy moments, and come to know themselves more fully. Who among us, had we been in Eve’s situation would have been able to resist that apple forever? Let us not sit in judgement. To be curious and searching is to take risks. And do we not now as a society see curiosity as the driver for wider thoughts and innovation?

In the desert, the devil presented Jesus with questions with surprisingly simple answers. I do not mean that the questions themselves were easy, only that once Jesus had heard them the answers came easily.

First, the devil tells Jesus, who has been fasting, to turn stone to bread - surely the Son of God can pull off that trick, and the human part of Jesus must be hungry. But Jesus refuses: one cannot live by bread alone. Once you have turned the stone to bread for expediency at the Devil’s request, what then?

Next the devil tries to get Jesus to leap from the top of a temple in a city: either to be saved by God and revered for his miracle or cast to his death. But Jesus refuses again: he will not seek glory - and certainly not by putting God to the test. He doesn’t need glory - which is self-serving and not gospel-serving; and he doesn’t need to test a God he already believes in.

Finally, the Devil, now desperate it seems, says to Jesus: If you just worship me, I will give you everything you desire. Jesus firmly refuses: “I worship God alone.”

Now when I say these answers were easy, I mean in the context of who is asking and who is answering. For us, they are much harder - and we face these temptations all the time, from all kinds of devils. We are tempted to take the easy way out. We are tempted to show off for the sake of our own glory. We are tempted to bend our own values for personal gain. The devil does not appear so clearly to us in the desert; our temptations are so subtle we often don’t hear the questions being asked.

What is true for humans is true for the society that humans created. And certainly, the most damaging way we have given in to all three of these temptations has been at the expense of the Garden of Eden that we have been blessed to live in and charged with its responsibility. Our easy ways out, our overconsumption for glory, our greed, have brought ruin to every corner of the world. We know we need to change our ways more than what we are doing. We know we will need to make ourselves uncomfortable, that we may have to sacrifice - and yet we struggle to do so. We have acquired free will and yet we remained trapped by our lesser selves.

In particular this day, when thinking of our environment, our larger church wants us to think about the first temptation - to make bread into stone. Last spring, the Synod’s Climate Justice Committee, on your behalf, sponsored a “Pilgrimage for the Planet.” A group of Lutherans, some from this congregation, bicycled from Montreal to Parliament Hill in Ottawa to pressure the Canadian government to sign on to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. While we drew some attention, our hopes to have conversations with leaders were pre-empted by politicians leaving Parliament Hill to prepare for an election. So now, the committee’s effort is to encourage as many people as possible to call the Minister of the Environment during Lent and express the urgent concern to dramatically reduce subsidizing the extraction and production of petroleum products.

I suppose this endeavour; reminding our leaders what we want for our society is important, even if it does not lead right away to policy change. But as your pastor, I know that for some of you making this call, at this time, might be controversial. Our country is facing many threats; the world has many challenges. Our government is focused on making us less reliant on the United States and expanding our trade with other countries; we are an energy rich country; this is one of our most valuable resources. Can we risk not turning this stone into bread - just this one last time?

Of course, we know the danger: there will always be a next time. A new temptation to use what the earth gives us. But I want to suggest that two things can be true at once; we can recognize the need to protect our sovereignty - and agree as a nation that our dependency on oil needs to stop. We can ask our government to prioritize trade that is environmentally-friendly, to link our country’s future independence to modern green-energy, to focus on skills that will shape a new economy and mitigate climate change. When our government talks about expanding our AI industry, we can ask what energy will be used to run all that machine learning. And we can ask how our trade deals are encouraging other countries reduce their own independence on oil.

In the desert, the questions Jesus faced were about him: would he turn the stone, would he jump from the temple, would he switch sides for gold? We also face those individual questions each day, when it comes to our choices: will we buy Canadian? Will we use up all those leftovers? Will we reduce our consumption? Will we vote for politicians who support environmental policies? Will we set an example with our beliefs? As we see with both Eve and Jesus, those individual choices almost always have larger consequences, however they seep into the world.

So, while societal change may seem farther way - that call to the politician fruitless - society is composed of individuals, and enough individuals can change it.

The Committee mentions one example of hope that we heard about from Sophie Gebreyes a couple of weeks ago: in the recent Friends of Creation project around Lake Chad. Many congregations have been offering funds to support reforestation and sustainable agriculture in a region devastated by climate change. We are trying to fix a problem we largely created. But it should drive home the point that we must also work harder to prevent the problem at its source.

The Climate Justice Committee also rightly points out that our success lies in relationship. Let us all call the Environment Minister and express our desire to eliminate Canada’s dependency on oil - this is an essential goal. But let us also find ways to elevate solutions, to build up shared values, to give up a little so those without can have something.

Make the call to the cabinet minister, but do not stop there - for isn’t stopping there the same easy way out of responsibility? Educate yourself. Have conversations with your friends. Do not be tempted to adopt an easy answer; the solution lies in complexity. We must be curious like Eve to find it; and moral like Jesus to follow through on it. Always with our eye on the Garden of Eden, as our aspiration for the world.

Amen

Feb. 18 ~ Ash Wednesday

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Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

Psalm 51:1-17

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21  

Sermon by Joel Crouse

Ash Wednesday always arrives with a strange honesty. It doesn’t argue with us. It doesn’t flatter us. It doesn’t negotiate. It simply says: Here you are. You are dust. You are breath. You are loved. And you are not in control nearly as much as you pretend to be.

So, we come tonight with our foreheads open—ready to be marked, not because we enjoy being somber, or because we think God prefers gloom, but because truth-telling is a kind of mercy. The ashes don’t say, “Try harder,” or “Prove yourself,” or “Look how spiritual you are.” Ashes say, “You are human.” And then, quietly, “I love you no matter what”

And it’s striking that on a day like this, the Gospel doesn’t give us a hardened theological lecture. Instead, Jesus speaks about something very practical: what we do—our giving, our praying, our fasting—and why we do it.

“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them.”

That line feels more current than ever. We live in an age where being seen is almost a form of currency. We track attention. We measure impact. We curate ourselves. And in fairness, some of that visibility can serve real good. Public witness matters. Naming injustice matters. Solidarity matters. If you show up at a vigil in B.C. or march in Minneapolis or speak up and out—good. We need people willing to be counted.

But Jesus is not warning against public justice. He’s warning against performance that replaces the heart, a spirituality that becomes branding, and about doing “holy things” in a way that quietly turns the self into the center of the story.

Because here’s what happens: even our best impulses can get tangled up with ego. We can give, and still be trying to purchase moral superiority. We can pray, and still be trying to manage God. We can fast, and still be trying to control our bodies, our feelings, our lives—trying to become invulnerable.

Ash Wednesday shows up and says: you can’t.

You cannot out-perform your own mortality, or curate your way out of sorrow, or hustle your way out of grief. You can’t discipline your way into being unbreakable.

So, Jesus says, with that gentle firmness he’s so good at: Don’t do your faith for applause. Don’t turn God into an audience. Don’t turn your neighbor into a mirror. “When you give… when you pray… when you fast…”—notice he assumes these practices will be part of our lives. The question isn’t whether we practice them; the question is what they are doing to us.

And then Jesus offers this repeated phrase: “Your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

That’s tender language. The One who sees in secret. Not the God who scans for religious perfection, but the God who notices what no one else notices. The God who sees what we carry quietly. The God who sees the ache we don’t post. The God who sees the burden we don’t explain. The God who sees the prayers we can’t even form into sentences—just breath, just silence, just a kind of reaching.

In other words: the God who isn’t impressed by our display is deeply attentive to our truth.

So, what are these practices for? Giving, praying, fasting—these are not ways to earn God’s favour. They’re meant to help us reorient ourselves toward God.

Giving loosens our grip. It reminds us that our lives are not made safer by hoarding, and our hearts are not made larger by protecting what we have. Giving is practice in trust. It is also practice in repair—because in a world that is unjust, generosity is never just a private virtue. It is the public refusal of a system that says some people deserve abundance and others deserve scarcity.

Prayer, Jesus says, is not a speech for the crowd. It’s not a performance of certainty. It’s an honest turning—sometimes confident, sometimes angry, sometimes numb. Prayer is where we stop pretending we can save ourselves, and we let ourselves be spoken to. Prayer is where God is not used as a prop in our arguments but encountered as a steady patient presence.

And fasting—this one can be tricky. Some have been harmed by the way fasting has been preached, especially when it becomes shame or punishment. But Jesus speaks of fasting as a practice that doesn’t require theatrics. Not because it must be hidden out of embarrassment, but because it’s meant to be real. Fasting, at its best, is not self-hatred. It’s honesty about our attachments. You know, the things we use to numb ourselves and avoid feeling and quiet fear and escape loneliness. Attachments are the stuff we cling to as if it can save us.

Sometimes fasting is food or alcohol or rage. Sometimes it’s cynicism. Sometimes it’s the constant stream of news that leaves us informed but emotionally flattened. Sometimes it’s the need to be right. Sometimes it’s the habit of treating other people as problems instead of neighbors.

Ash Wednesday invites a fast that makes space—not to become impressive, but to become available. Available to God. Available to grief. Available to compassion. Available to the truth.

And then Jesus turns the corner: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth… but store up treasures in heaven… for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

That word “treasure” can sound like a religious metaphor, but it’s straight- forward. Our treasure is what we protect, what we prioritize, what gets our best energy. Our treasure is what we think about in the quiet moments.

And Jesus, in his own way, is asking: “What has your heart?”

Not, “What do you claim to believe?” Not, “What would you like to be true?” But, “What actually has your heart?”

Because this is what Lent is: a season of re-orientation. A season of deciding again what matters—of letting God gently challenge the small gods we’ve made for ourselves.

We do not enter Lent to prove we are worthy. We enter Lent because we are already loved, and love calls us into freedom. We do not repent because God is eager to punish. We repent because God is eager to heal. We do not confess our sin because we are obsessed with guilt. We confess because we are done pretending, and because the truth is the doorway to grace.

And sin—let’s be honest—sin is not only the private things we regret. Sin is also the harm that becomes normalized. Sin is also the systems that grind people down. Sin is also the way we participate, knowingly or not, in economies of exploitation, in cultures of contempt, in habits of dehumanizing those we fear or misunderstand.

Ash Wednesday is personal, yes. But it is also communal. It’s the church saying: we want our lives to be different—not just individually, but together. More merciful and courageous and just. More rooted in Christ than in the frantic spirit of the age.

So, when you come forward tonight, and the ashes touch your skin, hear what they are really saying. They are saying: “You don’t have to pretend anymore—you’re not what you’ve done—you’re not what people think of you.”

They are saying: you are dust—and you are free. Beloved dust. Free to store your life in the only place it won’t rot: in the trough of God’s grace—in love that refuses to quit.

In a few moments, you’ll hear the words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” If you listen closely—you’ll also hear the other words underneath: “Remember that you are Christ’s.”

Amen