FIRST NATIONS DAY OF PRAYER

Sunday June 26^th, 2005

One of the ways that body, mind and spirit is strengthened in the Cree Culture, is that the people often sit in a circle and tell stories. When a person is talking everyone else is very quiet and listens attentively. They learn in this way to listen for that which is amazing. When the person is finished telling their story, the people are still quiet as they consider the gift they have been given. Then they respond with a Cree word: Mamasketch which means: “isn’t it amazing”. 

This sermon is about sin, repentance, reconciliation and the vision of a day when all will dance with strength and joy at the wonder of a God who loves us beyond all expectation.

First Nations day of prayer was on Tuesday June 21^st. Today we hold our First Nations people in prayer. The United Church of Canada has always had a relationship with our first Nations People. It’s important to know our story. It holds past mistakes, but we are now firmly on a path towards reconciliation.

In today’s gospel, Jesus gives an essential teaching on reconciliation: “if you are angry with or insult or condemn a sister or brother, you will be liable to judgment. So when you are offering your gifts at the alter if you remember that your sister or brother has something against you, leave your gift at the alter and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister and then come and offer your gift.

It is a strong teaching. He doesn’t say: “reconciliation is tough, or “I understand all the reasons why you do not try” or “I know you are afraid”…” he says: “go and be reconciled”.  In his expectation that we seek reconciliation, Jesus holds up the vision that Isaiah spoke of:  a day when

“wolves and sheep will live together in peace, and leopards will lie down with young goats. Calves and lion cubs will feed together… the land will be as full of knowledge of the Lord as the seas are full of water!”

Jesus says: go and be reconciled…

Perhaps nothing in our history demands reconciliation more than our long term and brutal enculturation of our First Nations People in Canada. Like all colonists, the early settlers to Canada believed that their ways were God’s ways. They believed that their culture was superior to others and they set about establishing their dominance over the First Nations people. Suddenly a people who lived in harmony with nature: a hunting and fishing people who shared the wealth of the earth and respected its bounty, were finding themselves forced into Indian reserves (often places with little hunting, fishing or fertile ground) A government policy of enculturation began that focused on sending Native Children to Residential Schools (mostly in western Canada). Over nearly 100 years, 100,000 children were taken from home and family, often at very young ages. For 10 months (and sometimes many years), these children lived without any visits home; they had minimal adult care, were separated intentionally from siblings, they were not allowed to speak their own language or sing their songs, or beat a drumbeat. Every article of clothing, every small symbol they brought from home was taken an destroyed. Their hair was shaved off. Often (due to inadequate funding) they went without adequate food. They were subjected to corporal punishment and public humiliation. The residential schools stripped the fabric of their being from 100,000 children and stole their strength of body, mind and spirit. These children grew up believing that they were bad and that they were being punished. They grew up hearing that their culture, their beloved parents and grandparents were bad. They emerged from Residential Schools, neither Native nor White, but hurt and angry. They who had never been parented, became parents who had never learned to parent…

Clayton Stanger (a member of the Swan River United Church and former worker at Portage La Prairie Residential School) said this: “I still have nightmares about the tear stained frightened little faces that got off the buses each fall. I cannot but think of those 5 and 6 year old beautiful children being all alone, away from home, with no one at all to sing to them, no one to tell them good night stories, no one to love them or to kiss them better when they were hurt.”

This is one example of what I mean when I use the word “SIN”. In this case it is not individual sin but communal, corporate sin. It means many things: cultural blindness, greed, dominance, superiority, power over others, imposing values, and the absolute loss of relationship with the God who aches with tender heart for us.

Jesus says: go and be reconciled…

The first step to reconciliation is the willingness to accept responsibility for wrongdoing.  Repentance, can be an individual or a corporate act. The beginning of Repentance is the ability to say: “I’m sorry AND I am willing to make a commitment to a new way.”

Repentance has been difficult for non Natives. We have clung stubbornly to our self righteous justifications. Like an abusive marriage partner, our people have protested: “but it wasn’t all bad! We really didn’t MEAN to hurt you” “we thought we were doing right”… And even while we protest our innocence we see all around us the damage to the body, mind and spirit of First Nations people. Yet off in the distance we hear also the drumbeat of life…

For the United Church of Canada, this process became a formal one at General Council in 1986. Alberta Billy, reporting on behalf of the All Native Circle Conference asked the General Council for an apology for United Church involvement in the residential schools. Later that evening, the first apology was made by Moderator Bob Smith.  A cairn was built there in Sudbury, to mark the apology and so that a new stone could be placed on it each time something significant happened in the process.

Repentance is not a one time act. It is a beginning, a journey, a step in a walk towards reconciliation… After the apology the people danced. All were invited to dance with them. It was just the beginning, but even in our first faultering steps, we are invited to  dance.

Here is the apology that was made in 1986: (read)

Jesus says: “go and be reconciled…”

Reconciliation cannot be hurried. 150 years of damaged relationship cannot be reversed by a mere gesture. It requires real and lasting change. We can offer apology. We can accept responsibility and pray for the ability to understand.  We can learn new behaviours. Above all we can listen and be amazed and delighted at what we hear. But to try to demand reconciliation is to exert power over another. Reconciliation requires a building of trust and that means a changing of pattern. In her report to General council on behalf of the All Native Circle Conference in 1988 Edith Memnook said this: "We only ask of you to respect our Sacred Fire, The Creation, and to live in peaceful coexistence with us. We recognize the hurts and feelings will continue amongst our people, but through partnershiand walking hand in hand, the Indian spirit will eventually heal."

The path to reconciliation takes courage and faith to walk. Our role in this path as Christian people is to release our judgement and fear, to walk beside, to listen, to want to learn even though we don’t live near a native community, faith proclaims that healing is possible, that pain and death do not have the final word. This is what we proclaim in Jesus. In faith we approach our First Nations brothers and sisters with respect and expectation, to truly see them and to be ready and willing to cry out with delight: Mamasketch! Isn’t it amazing!!

Jesus holds up a vision of a new day when he says: “go and be reconciled”…  We do not have to wait until reconciliation is complete. We only need to step into the process. By doing so we proclaim a reality that is beyond what we can see in front of us. We proclaim the unlikely but transforming truth of our faith: that God in Christ is reconciling the world to God, not counting our sins against us but trusting the ministry of reconciliation to us. This is the day we long for, this is the truth we live.  This is the day God sets before us: Isaiah’s vision of peace “the cow and the bear shall graze and the calf and the lion will lie down together and a little child will lead them. This is a the time when the earth will be full of the knowledge of God… as surely as the waters cover the sea… It is the vision of a day when all people will dance for joy at the boundless love of God!

A New Creed:

As those who proclaim God’s presence and love we affirm God’s power to transform and make new as we sing…

691 Walls that divide

Intro to Offering:

All chains that enslave are thrown away in Christ and we are freed to a ministry of reconciliation. As God’s reconciled and reconciling people, we offer our gifts: that all may know of God’s great love for them. Let us worship by offering ourselves generously to the world.

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