November 23rd ~ Competing and judging lead us astray. Grace, hope, and Kindness lead us to the Reign of Christ

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Jeremiah 23:1-6

Psalm 46

Colossians 1:11-20

Luke 23:33-43

Sermon by Pastor Joel

From the first day we go to school and pretty much every day after, we get told by society that we need to be better than everyone else. What are grades but a way of grouping us into As, Bs, and Cs? At one of the schools my kids went to, students used to get together and write their grades on the boards at lunch to see who was best – and by extension the worst. It goes on from there: we compete to be on teams, we compete to win our partners, we compete for promotions, we compete for the biggest house, the shiniest car, and so on.

No wonder that the action that comes with all this competing is Judgement. After all, how can we know if we are better, if we don’t judge? As society has gone from being more cooperative over human history and less individualistic, we have gotten much better at judging and less skilful at empathizing – empathy being another word for making space for others to be heard and seen. Because again, if another person is seen, does that not make us invisible?

This tends to go two ways: we think everyone is better than we are, or we think we are better than everyone else. Psychologists call this “illusory superiority,” and it has been found over and over again. Ask drivers if they are better than other drivers, and something like 80 percent will say yes. Ask people if they are smarter than most people, and almost everyone will say yes. Ask even therapists if they are better than their peers, and the same things happens. Of course, to paraphrase a famous line: if everyone is above average, then nobody is average. Or is above average then average? All this is to say, how we rank ourselves – whether too high or too low – is, for a lot of reasons, simply not true. It makes you wonder why we even waste time with it, instead of just living our life to the best of our ability.

On this Reign of Christ Sunday, with Advent approaching, we get a gospel much closer to Easter, although quite clearly to Good Friday. It feels off. Why remind of us of this moment so near to Jesus’s death on a day when he is celebrated for his leadership? Why make us think of those two criminals hanging on the cross with Jesus – who we’d rather skip past even on Good Friday? This is why: this exchange on the cross is a moment worthy of a leader to admire. And the thieves are a reminder for us, delivered roughly at the halfway mark back to Good Friday: better to hold your judgement than spew it around.

Let’s take a look at those criminals for a minute. We don’t know anything about them. The first criminal apparently derides Jesus – aren’t you the Messiah? Can’t you save us? The second criminal shushes him: we are getting what we deserve; Jesus is innocent. Which one would you be? Which one do you not want to be? I think we all know.

But why do we assume anything about these two men with Jesus? We know nothing about them. We don’t even know, except for one opinion expressed by an unreliable narrator, if they are truly guilty. We don’t know the context of why they are here and others are not. We don’t know the story of their lives that led them to this place. We do, however, know that the justice system is corrupt, that the leaders of Jerusalem are weak or power-hungry and that innocent people end up on the cross – we are looking right at one. We should be careful about judging: those are very human people, angry and scared and pleading, hanging on the cross with the Son of God. So set that aside: feel sadness for the plight of these two men, who were not saved long before this, and who can bear no more judgment.

What does Jesus do? He says only one all important sentence: “Truly I tell you, you will be with me in paradise.” According to our gospel, he doesn’t say anything to the angry and frightened man begging to be saved. Or if he does, we do not hear it. Jesus has been offered that test before – in a desert – and refused.

But how has Jesus responded in the past to cries to be saved by flawed, imperfect people, even when those cries are delivered poorly? How often did Jesus coach the disciples through their own bad behaviour? It’s true that the man who asks to be remembered by Jesus is more eloquent, more deferential, and don’t we all wish to be him in that situation? He gets the answer: Truly, I tell you, today, you will be with me in paradise.”

The gospel always reads as if Jesus was speaking only to one man on the cross. But I wonder? The disciple Thomas also tested Jesus and was not abandoned. Peter denied Jesus entirely, and was still blessed with his presence. In his moment of pain and suffering, Jesus takes time to speak and offer hope to the others hanging with him – he sets his own pain aside to focus on another. This is the noble act of a loving leader. That is the behaviour to emulate.

For me it all comes back to this: nobody’s perfect. We do selfish things, careless thing, even intentionally negative things all the time, and justify them to ourselves. We make demands of people to fix our own mistakes; indeed, don’t we often make the same demand of God? At other times, awareness seeps in, and we are wise enough to see our flaws, to seek forgiveness, to make amends, and take those to God as well. We are both that flawed human on the cross demanding to be saved, and the flawed human on the cross asking politely. If Jesus was the kind of leader who responded only when people were nice to him or flattering – well that, as we can see very clearly in the world today, is a very different kind of leadership. Certainly not the kind of leadership Jesus spent his life teaching – where leaders act for the sake of others, and not for their own egos.

This is where competing and judging lead us astray. Even standing at the cross, we’re deciding who fits in and who doesn’t, who gets in and who’s left out, who’s better, who’s worse – certainly worse than us. And we are missing the whole point: in his more terrible moment, Jesus still thinks of someone else. It’s only a few verses later in the Good Friday story that he will do it again, begging for our forgiveness. Instead of judgement, he offers grace and hope and kindness. Imagine if we did the same.

Amen

November 16th ~ By Your Endurance You Will Gain Your Soul

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Malachi 4:1-2a

Psalm 98

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Luke 21:5-19

Sermon by Pastor Joel

This week, I learned the story of Jesse L. Brown and Tom Hudner. Jesse was the first African-American aviator to complete the United States Navy's basic flight-training program, and he flew in the Korean War. Tom was the wealthy Irish-American guy who became his wingman. While flying over North Korea, Jesse’s plane took a bullet and crashed on a mountaintop. Instead of abandoning him, Tom crash-landed his plane nearby to save Jesse. Unfortunately, by the time they could be rescued, Jesse had died from his injuries.

I learned this story because, by chance, I happened to stumble across a movie on Remembrance Day. The movie had already started, so I missed the back story. But Tom Hudner’s act seemed so selfless, I had to google to make sure this wasn’t Hollywood fiction. And sure enough, the story was true. Jesse had overcome racism to achieve something no one else had done before him. And Tom did crash his plan, and risked the chance never to get home again, to try to save him.

Now, I know Remembrance Day has passed, freeing up all the stores to haul out the Christmas decorations – so why tell this story now? When I read the second lesson, I knew why I wanted to put it in the sermon. These verses from 2 Thessalonians are about a group of people who stop working and stop trying. They believe Jesus is about to return, so they decide to sit down and wait. And yet, they are chastised for doing so, and we are reminded: “Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.”

The second lesson isn’t about laziness; it’s about complacency. And complacency, I’d argue, its much worse than laziness. People, I have found, often don’t act out of laziness, but rather because they have been told for so long that they can’t do something, that they stop trying. Perhaps anxiety paralyzes them, and they are just too afraid they will fail.

But complacency – well that’s people’s being lazy who have the skills and ability and privilege to work for what is right. When we recognize an old problem but assume it can’t be fixed with a new solution, that’s complacency. When we see someone more vulnerable and don’t work to change ourselves or our community or our country to help them, that’s complacency. And it also seems to me that if we honour Canadian soldiers – and men like Jesse and Tom – for only one Sunday service or one hour at a war memorial, well, that’s also complacency.

Tom and Jesse were the opposite of complacent. At that time, segregation still existed in much of the country, but the Civil Rights Movement was growing quickly, empowering some to fight for their rights, turning others into violent thugs and murderers to stop those rights from coming to pass. Indeed, Tom and Jesse lived in a time like that described in our gospel – a time when people were rising up against people, and neighbors against neighbors. When the foundations of a society based on discrimination and oppression were being shaken and rattled, like an earthquake created by people working and fighting for change. And just as in the gospel, people working on the side of change were thrown into prison, persecuted, and beaten. They were betrayed by relatives and friends who stood on the other side; and some of them, as the gospel also warns, were tragically murdered.

In this world, Tom wasn’t even supposed to be Jesse’s friend, let alone risk his life for him. And yet neither sat around waiting for the world to correct itself, for others to fight for change, for the gospel to magically gets things done. They didn’t know how the war would end, or what direction their communities would take, but they went to work. The consequences of their labour were significant; enough to win them both medals and to be portrayed as heroes in a movie decades later. At the end of that movie you learned that the Brown and Hudner families remained lifelong friends. And if that is all their work had accomplished – an unusual friendship in defiance of racism – that would have been enough. Because our work doesn’t need to produce medals and movies; it just has to be an example of what is right in a world once terribly wrong.

Jesus doesn’t mince words; there’s nothing gentle about the image he is painting. He’s saying that the work is hard and the risk is large. But have no fear he says, no hair on your head will be harmed. By your endurance you will gain your souls.”

“By your endurance you will gain your souls.” What a great line that is. What an important message from Jesus. Because, “the hair on your head” phrase, is really a metaphor; Jesus was not promising that the disciples would be saved every time they got into trouble, every time they faced an angry mob. No, the real promise is the next line: “by your endurance you will gain your souls.” What restores the centre of our very being? We already know. Doing what’s right by our families and the next generation. Leaving the world a little better than we found it. Being remembered by those who follow after us.

Now, let’s not forget. We don’t have to work. Our relationship with the gospel – and God – is not transactional, as Martin Luther recently reminded us. But Jesse and Tom didn’t have to enlist; they volunteered to wear the uniform. Tom didn’t have to try to save Jesse – in fact, he broke the rules to do so. And no one made the Browns and Hudners remain friends, they chose that path together.

So, let us not be complacent, in the lazy ways of the relatively privileged. Let us be active. Let us get to work. Incidentally, if you’d like to watch it, the movie about Jesse Brown and Tom Judner is called Devotion. Which is fitting, because isn’t devotion the opposite of complacency? What is devotion but the work of persevering, of loving what is imperfect, of standing firm and trying to help, or not getting distracted and wandering away from the place we need to be. Let this be us: persevering, loving, and steady -- disciples of devotion.  Amen

November 9th ~ Remembrance Day / Aim as High as Heaven... to Make Life Better on Earth

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Job 19:23-27a

Psalm 17:1-9

2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17

Luke 20:27-38

Sermon by Pastor Joel

The Levirate marriage that is described in the gospel this morning has a long history across religion. In this tradition, as it is laid out in the Old Testament, a widow marries her husband’s brother. In part, it was meant as protection, since women could not inherit property, and widows were often left in poverty with the death of a husband. If there were no children, the first son born in the new marriage would become the heir to the first husband – thus securing the family inheritance.

There was an out: the couple could perform the Halitza ceremony, in which the widow would remove the brother’s shoe, and spit in his face before the people of their community, as a sign that he was choosing not to marry his deceased brother’s wife. But choice was gender specific: whether the marriage went ahead was determined by the brother and not the widow. 

So that is the context for the scenario that is brought before Jesus – a riddle from skeptics to get him to clarify how the resurrection works. Jesus is presented with an unlikely scenario: a woman loses her husband, and by tradition, the dead man’s brother agrees to marry her. He dies, and his living brother does the same. It happens seven times. The question put to Jesus is this: in heaven who is the woman’s husband?

Now, when I first read this gospel, believe me, it was not lost on me how sexist this story is – that a widow would be passed from brother to brother by marriage. But we also have to add the historical framework – that in that time, without the support of a male family member, a widow would be cast off, without social and financial support. But how far have we truly come? In patriarchal parts of the world, where women have no property rights, it is still practiced. And even here in Canada, we tend to forget how recently our own laws changed. Until the late1960s – that is, about 60 years ago – women who wanted to divorce their husbands had to meet a high bar of proof – abuse or rape, for instance – and even if it was accepted, there was no guarantee that they would receive a fair share of the household assets, or future support. It wasn’t until 1968, that the reasons required for divorce were made the same for men and women. And it took at least another decade, for women – the one still most likely to be at home with the kids – to have a legal guarantee of a fair share of the household wealth, and support. Even so, relationship break-ups typically result in women’s being worse off than men. Single mothers are more likely to live in poverty than any other segment of the population. So, in the sweep of history, it’s been a fairly short period of time since the law changed - even here in a progressive country. And, for many women --  widows and mothers -- , there is still inequity.

We need to remember that. 

But look at the answer Jesus gives. On first glance he appears to dodge the question.  He says: “Those who belong to this age – that is, this life -  marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of a place in that age – that is, heaven – and in the resurrection from the dead – neither marry now nor are given in marriage.” That’s a bold statement. Jesus is saying that in God’s world, people are not caught by earthly law and tradition -- they are set free to be individuals in their own right. And isn’t that a tacit rejection of the laws as they are designed on earth? 

It is subtle, to be sure: why doesn’t Jesus just come out and challenge the law itself?   I think there is a lot of evidence that Jesus was a feminist ahead of his time – but in this case the story is a riddle, one based in law but meant to challenge the idea of the resurrection. Jesus uses the question to make a different point. His response is, inherently, a statement of value for the widow in question – that in God’s eyes, it doesn’t matter what happened on earth. Those rules don’t apply. Why, he asks indirectly, should they exist on earth? 

Perhaps one of the most seemingly backward stories also has a most modern resonance.  Because what is our position as Christians—as followers of the gospel – but to try to recreate God’s vision of our own humanity on earth? If God, as Jesus says, sees everyone as individuals, valued in their own right – then it is also our job to aim for a society that does the same. We certainly aren’t there yet. We are actually living in a time that is becoming more unequal, where the gap between rich and poor around the world, and in our own cities, is growing. 

We must also remember the past to live in the present and change the future. 

This week especially, the week we remember those who sacrificed for our freedom, is a good moment to take stock. We cannot forget what came before, how recently times were different, and the struggles of so many. The men and women who fought in uniform against tyranny so that others could work in our streets and our parliaments to change the law to grant individuals value in their own right. 

We must remember this when we consider the freedom we now enjoy, because of the sacrifices and choices of those who came before us.  This freedom is not ours to claim like some personal victory.  Freedom is something for which to be thankful.  It is ours to help others experience. Freedom is the gift we need to protect.

The gospel reminds us, even in our outrage for the widow’s plight, how recently our own world was not so very different. And it reminds us, as well, to aim as high as heaven to make life better. The gospel represents a freedom beyond our understanding, to live in community and feel supported, to believe and debate and feel safe, to be ourselves and to be loved. This is the freedom that so many people throughout history have fought for and have been willing to die for.  It the freedom that Jesus stood for.  May we remember to stand firm and fight for it.   Amen