October 4 ~ Where am I in the story?

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Sermon by Pastor Joel

Isaiah 5:1-7

Psalm 80:7-15

Philippians 3:4b-14

Matthew 21:33-46

This week, we remembered our country’s difficult history with Truth and Reconciliation Day. We heard stories about the terrible toll of residential schools and the struggle for people to move on from that tragic policy.

At the same time many of us followed the developments around the Cornell University sexual assault case. There has been intense debate about what should have happened, and what didn’t. Who should have stepped up, and who didn’t. The more details unfold, the more we decide where we stand.

This happens so often – when we hear stories of sexual violence or racism or scandals by politicians. Our conversations focus on what we think really happened. Who was in the wrong? Who should pay? Whose side am I on?

But I’d argue there is a more important question – one with more potential to stop the same injustice from happening again and again.

This harder, more thoughtful question is: Who would I have been? Whistleblower? Activist? Defender of the status quo? Bystander?

Would I have demanded justice for my indigenous neighbors when I saw their children taken from them? Would I have asked questions when I knew the school was operating in my town?

Would I have believed the victim? Would I have challenged the group at the risk of being cast out? Would I have spoken up when everyone else was staying quiet? Or would I have convinced myself it wasn't my business?

In our world today, we see clearly how much one power-hungry or corrupt leader can change the course of history. They may start the injustice. But the uncomfortable truth is that throughout history most great social wrongs were only sustained by ordinary people who failed to see themselves clearly in the story.

Segregation. Residential schools. The exclusion of women from public life. The criminalization of 2SLGBTQI+ people.

Most people living through those moments did not think they were the bad guys. Most thought they were decent people. And that is precisely the problem.

Today's Gospel is about people who cannot see themselves in the story.

Jesus tells what seems at first like a simple, though grim and tragic, parable. A landowner carefully plants a vineyard. He builds a fence, with a watch tower and wine press and then leases the vineyards to his tenants. But when the harvest arrives, and servants come to collect the landowners share, they beat them and kill them. The landowner sends more servants, and they are also killed. The landowner then sends his son, for surely the tenants will respect the son. But they beat and kill the son as well.

Jesus then asks the religious leaders a question: "What should happen to these tenants?"

They don’t even hesitate - they know exactly what justice requires. They condemn the tenants. They identify the villains. They pass judgement.

And then slowly, it begins to dawn on them: The chief priests and the Pharisees realized that he was speaking about them. They are the tenants they have just condemned.

The trap that Jesus lays for the Pharisees, depends on one basic truth of human nature. We are very good at identifying sin in other people. But we are often blind to that same sin in ourselves. That is the genius of Jesus' storytelling.

That question is just as uncomfortable today as it was then. The temptation is always to place ourselves beside Jesus. But the Gospel tell us again and again to look at ourselves more honestly. Where are we really in all these stories?

When we read about homelessness, about Indigenous communities waiting for clean drinking water, about violence and exploitation, are we the person helping, the person noticing, the person passing by? Are we, in fact, part of the problem?

Martin Luther said, God’s law functions like a mirror. The mirror does not condemn us, it shows us the truth, and some truths are unpleasant.

In our second lesson, we hear Paul reconciling his own personal unpleasant truth. Paul was a respected, successful Pharisee. He had a list of shiny credentials. He was convinced he was doing God’s work. He considered himself the hero in his own story. Until he met Jesus and realized he was the opposite.

Many people would have continued to living a self-serving lie. But Paul made an incredibly brave choice: he chose to look at himself honestly, and own his mistakes. Staring into the mirror, he no longer saw a hero. And that honesty, not only allowed him to change, but helped him learn how to spread positive change to others. Where else does any transformation and any repair, any reconciliation, begin but with honesty. With truth.

Thankfully, discovering we are not the hero is not the end of the gospel, but the beginning.

Because once we truly recognize ourselves in the story, we have a choice. Just like Paul. Just like the Pharisees. We can become defensive. Or we can change.

God has not abandoned the vineyard. God is still tending and pruning and nurturing it, hoping for a good harvest. And that is the work of the gospel-led life as well. To have the courage to see when we have failed, when we remained silent or judged too quickly, when we benefited while others were harmed. And then, having looked in the mirror, to become better than we were yesterday.

When we read the Gospel, when we watch the news, when we encounter injustice in the world, let us not first ask, "Who is right?" or "Who is wrong?”

But instead: "Where am I in this story?"

Because the moment we can answer that honestly is the moment God can begin to change us. And changed people can change the world. Amen.

September 27 ~ Turn and Live

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Sermon by Pastor Joel

Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

Psalm 25:1-9

Philippians 2:1-13

Matthew 21:23-32

I was once told that the best parenting skill is a short memory. The mistakes our kids make when they are young – and for that matter, the momentary failures they experience - don’t define them. Address the mistakes, work through the failures, but don’t think they lock down who your child will be next week, or next year. Those mistakes and failures, just say they are on the path, in our usual human way, to becoming a person, hopefully their best self. Isn’t that a path we are all still on?

Our current round of readings are yet again addressing one of the most significant of human failings: judgement without empathy. This is the person who doubts apologies and questions motives, yet never seeks the answers that might build a more compassionate picture. They are the ones who say people never change, yet are the first to say how this life event or that experience was life-changing for them.

Because, here in our readings today we have stories about the ability of people to change.

In Ezekiel, the people are complaining that life is unfair. They are trapped by the past. Some blame their parents. Others blame circumstance. Some believe their mistakes have permanently defined them. They cannot change – they are trapped.

But God pushes back on this: those who know better and commit a gross injustice against another, they will suffer – either for their mistake itself, or for the loss of joy and community around them. But those who say sorry for their mistakes, God says, their lives be saved. In other words, don’t live in the past, don’t make excuses for wrongdoing, don’t sit in the mess of your own guilt and shame – own up to it, say sorry, and do better. Turn and live, God says. So much power and wisdom in those simple words: Turn and live.

The entire reading rests on this seemingly radical assumption that human beings can change. And an even more merciful suggestion that God seems far less interested in tallying our mistakes, than seeing what we accomplish when we move past them.

In the gospel, the chief priests approach Jesus with a question about authority. But Jesus, as he often does, offers a different question entirely. He tells a story about two sons. The first son refuses his father's request. The second son agrees. One looks righteous. The other looks rebellious.

But then we learn: the son who refused, changes his mind and does what he is asked. The son who said yes to the request right away, doesn’t do it. Who is right? Jesus asks. And of course, we all say – the son who said no but then did as asked. Because the answer is clear: both sons did the opposite of what they said. But the second son shrunk into a smaller person – someone who cannot be depended on, who talks a good talk but is unreliable. The first son started poorly or slowly, but turned things around in the end; and we sense that a lesson was learned along the way. His story, I imagine reminds us of times when we have misspoken, or jumped to conclusions that we then regretted, and the second chances we wished to have been given. Jesus talks about second chances, about change for the better, about paths not being predetermined.

And this is his long story to make a very clear point: the pharisees are like the people who believe themselves to be pious, yet do not act honorably. But the tax collectors and prostitutes will go to heaven before you, Jesus tells them. Not because they were perfect. Not because they were pious. Because they were willing to change. And tax collectors and prostitutes are all of us – flawed and careless, willing, trying to change, trying to figure things out.

The religious leaders, by contrast, saw themselves as experts. They already had everything figured out. So they could sit back and judge. Monitor. Evaluate. And Keep Score. They could say who was righteous and who was sinful. Who deserved grace and who didn’t.

The only thing they did not seem to notice was what was happening in their own hearts. Which is what always happens when we judge – locking people into one place. It feels like we have things figured out; but we have lost the opportunity to do the important work of looking inward, to figure out ourselves.

Jesus isn't criticizing the religious leaders because they care about morality. He's criticizing them because they are focused on everyone else's moral development and not their own. It's much easier to evaluate another person's soul than our own. Much easier to identify another person's flaws. Much easier to spot hypocrisy somewhere else.

Paul spells it out perhaps the most clearly. He offers a life lesson that is the opposite of sitting in judgement: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” He urges an outward approach to the world that requires a belief in the value and goodness of people. “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interest of others.” And for guidance, he recommends a mind modelled on the example set by Jesus.

Jesus who tells us, we can learn from our mistakes and grow. We can fix what we have broken. We can change and be better.

And thank goodness for that. Because every one of us has been wrong about something. Every one of us has hurt people. Every one of us has needed forgiveness. And every one of us has the power to learn and change, grow wiser and become kinder.

The Gospel assumes that transformation is possible. More than that, the gospel insists that we be transforming people, and transformational communities. While we are busy making mistakes or judging others for theirs, God is always extending the same invitation – to get ourselves, as Ezekiel says, "a new heart and a new spirit."

Turn and live. Amen.

September 20 ~ Be slower to anger Less eager to judge More open to compassionate curiosity

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Sermon by Pastor Joel

Jonah 3:10—4:11

Psalm 145:1-8

Philippians 1:21-30

Matthew 20:1-16

As a society, we are increasingly learning the extend of the harm from political polarization. What threatens communities is often not disagreement itself. Communities can survive disagreement. What they struggle to survive is moral judgement. The moment we stop thinking, "That person is mistaken," and begin thinking, "That person is a bad person," trust begins to collapse. Cooperation becomes harder. Neighbours become opponents. Fellow citizens become enemies.

Researchers call this affective polarization. It is not that we disagree with one another. It is that we begin to dislike one another. We stop arguing about ideas and start judging people. When people perceive society as deeply polarized, other research finds, our trust in fellow citizens declines. We become less willing to believe others are acting in good faith, less willing to cooperate, and less likely to work together for common goals.

In other words, judgement does not merely harm the person being judged. It harms the judge as well. It shrinks the community, and erodes trust and distracts us from the work we are meant to be doing.

Which all makes Jonah—arguably the most human prophet in the entire Bible—feel remarkably modern. Nineveh was one of the great cities of the ancient world. It was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, located near present-day Mosul, Iraq. For the ancient Israelites, Nineveh was not just a foreign city. It was the capital of a powerful empire that had conquered, oppressed, and terrorized many neighbouring peoples, including the northern Kingdom of Israel. When people first heard the Book of Jonah, they would have immediately understood Nineveh as the enemy.

And it’s to this very city that God sends Jonah. Jonah does not want to go. But it’s not because he’s afraid, or because he doubts God. He says it himself: "I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love." That is Jonah’s argument: God is too merciful and loving. And Jonah wants Ninevah punished. He wants judgement. So even when Nineveh repents, and God forgives them, Jonah throws what can only be described as a theological tantrum. He sulks outside the city. He refuses to enter and hopes for its destruction. He sulks there long enough for a plant to grow and offer shade from the hot sun. The next day, a worm eats the plant, and he rants and raves about it. God puts this question to him: Jonah, you are so angry about that little worm, which acted outside your control; yet I am thinking about the people of Ninevah who you could help? In other words, stewing in judgement had soured Jonah as well: he’d chosen to suffer in the sun and rant at a worm, rather than offer to help thousands of human beings who had asked for it. Was this worth it? Had judgement made the most of Jonah’s ability? Had it made his life better or more meaningful? Or had it been a dumb and senseless waste of time?

And are we so different? Don’t we waste the same energy and time judging people we barely know. I hear it all the time: judgement for those who vote differently, or parent differently, or make different life choices, or have a different background than us. We know so little about them – their fears and goals, their nightmares that haunt them, the hopes that inspire them. And yet in judging them, we decide we know exactly who they are. And they aren’t the only ones we judge: we also make judgements about the people who we do know, who make mistakes. We assume that what see in front of us, is the full story.

For what is judgement, but assuming the negative. The TV show Ted Lasso had this one memorable scene that still makes the rounds on social media. It endures because the lesson is so powerful that people seem to want to be reminded of it. In the scene, Ted has challenged the show’s antagonist to a game of darts and made a risky bet. That player pulls out his fancy dart set, and the game begins. It comes down to Ted needing to get a bulls eye and he pauses to tell a story: he’s noticed he says, that people forget to be curious about each other. If the antagonist had asked, he might have learned that Ted had played darts every afternoon with his father since he was a little boy, until the year his father died when he was 16. And Ted, of course, hits the bullseye. The lesson, suggests Ted, is always be curious.

That’s a good way to see judgement: as a lack of curiosity in the one we are judging. The same curiosity, it’s worth pointing out, that we would hope others would have in ourselves before leaping to judgement. But this is why judgement is a leap: we leap over the questions we should be asking, and the context we might consider. We miss the chance to become allies through understanding. When we leap to judgment we become more outraged, more hostile, less empathetic. Suddenly, we are just like Jonah: sulking in the hot sun, suffering, while the good and worthy work that makes the world and our communities better is neglected.

Our Gospel offers this lesson from a different perspective. The first workers arrived and receive what they were promised from the landowner. But when the last workers arrive, they receive the same – and of course the first workers feel as though they were cheated. Instead of enjoying their own fair payment, they were consumed with the payment of others. They stopped thinking of the generosity they’d received. They stopped planning any good things they might do with it. They stopped feeling joy. They became miserable. Because judgement robs us of purpose.

And as with Jonah, God poses the same question: why are you so consumed with what someone else gets if you have been treated fairly? Should God not be generous?

How might those servants better spend their time? With curiosity. Why were some people late? Is it because they had children or aging parents that needed care? Did they get lost? Did they not have the skills? Were they ill? It’s amazing what might have happened had those servants expressed curiosity: for starters, they might have found solutions to help the other arrive earlier the next day, and share the burden of labour with them.

Not only does judgement make us unhappy – like Jonah sitting in the sun. Not only does it prevent community, like the people of Ninevah, in our first lesson, waiting to hear the word of God. But it also distracts us from the work of the Gospel.

It may feel good and righteous in the moment, but it produces nothing but bitterness and resentment. It prevents us from taking the time to examine our own actions. And what’s more, it raises the expectation that we too will be judged. Writing from prison, uncertain whether he will live or die, Paul does not spend his time cataloguing the failures of others. Instead, he says. “Live your live in a manner worthy of the Gospel.”

Our Psalmist this morning describes a God “who is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." This is not only a description of God, it is also an invitation. Be slower to anger. Less eager to judge. More open to compassionate curiosity.

In this day and age, when loneliness is high, when the world is uncertain, when our country is under threat, when we are all just trying to do our best, are these not the qualities we should most aspire to? Are these not the qualities that will protect us, unite us, and save us?

The question God asks Jonah is as significant for us as it was for Jonah. Why are you spending so much energy worrying about everyone else's failures? Shouldn't you be concerned with the work I have given you to do? Amen.