We Are Here
Rosedale United Church, 22 September 2024
Sara Stratton
May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts, be pleasing to you, O God, our rock and our redeemer.
Good morning. It is good to be with you as you launch your new theme, “We Are Here,” and also to acknowledge that we are entering Truth and Reconciliation week, which culminates on September 30 with Orange Shirt Day.
You’ve already heard Phyllis Webstad’s Orange Shirt Story, which really is the story of a child trying to assert her presence, to say “I am here,” and “I am an individual” in a system which denied and tried to destroy both those things. And it is also the story of a woman reasserting that presence so strongly that every September 30 we share her story and we wear an orange shirt to acknowledge that yes, you are here. Residential school survivors are here. Indigenous peoples are here.
Indigenous peoples in the United Church have been saying “We are here” to the rest of the church for decades. They have been a part of who we are since before Union. As we acknowledge this, it’s also important to remember that Indigenous peoples did not simply go to church of their own volition. They were indoctrinated through residential and day schools, and forced to attend church by the federal agents posted on reserves to oversee everything
they did.
It would also be wrong to assume that Indigenous people did not resist this. Children resisted at residential schools. We know that older children tried to protect younger children; we know that siblings who had been separated fought to keep connection with each other. We know that children tried to escape and go home, and we know that some died in these attempts.
Indigenous people who have chosen to remain within the church, despite their treatment, resisted the church’s efforts to make them conform with White Christianity. They asserted the importance of their own spirituality. They pushed the church to take responsibility for its actions.
Beginning in 1980, a series of Indigenous consultations were held, which led to several important milestones in the Indigenous Church. These included dedicated Indigenous theological training centres; an Indigenous Ministries desk within the General Council; the demand that the United Church apologize to Indigenous peoples for its role in colonization and destruction of language and culture; and the creation of the All Native Circle Conference and other regional Indigenous structures in 1988.
In later years the “desk” at the General Council Office became a staff unit and a National Council. The church was made to apologize for its role in residential schools. It was made to compensate victims, not just financially but also with the establishment and continuation of Healing programs. There have also been symbolic changes, which like the Apologies, still have to be lived into. Revisions to the church’s crest in 2012 reflected the ongoing involvement of Indigenous peoples in the church, and a covenant that same year committed to an ongoing relationship rejecting historical attitudes and affirming Right Relations.
Then in 2015, the 42nd General Council adopted a new three-court model. Indigenous people stood up and stated that this had been done without their full and proper participation. They said they needed to take time to determine a vision for their own future, rooted in their own history, spirituality, stories, and ways of doing things.
In 2016, the Caretakers of Our Indigenous Circle were asked to create this vision of what the Indigenous church would look like. That vision, the Calls to the Church, was adopted by the church in 2018, and a new National Indigenous Council was elected to start enacting it in 2019.
The Calls to Church is a call to relationship, and was written in a consultation process that involved Indigenous Nations from across Canada. It envisions a healing church, rooted in an Indigenous understanding of the Christ story, grounded in connection to the land, culture, and community recognition, and built on relationship with Creation and with each other.
The National Indigenous Council has been working on what this would look like in practice, and in 2022 sent a proposal to General Council 44 proposing a relationship rooted in partnership, not “mission,” in which the Indigenous church would have self-determination in matters related to its own structure.
Because this is a significant structural change, it required a vote of the whole church – a Category 3 Remit to remove the structural barriers that are in the way of self-determination. This included, for example, the fact that any change to Indigenous peoples’ own governance structure (such as the Calls to the Church themselves) had to be approved by the non-Indigenous church.
The yearlong remit process was not always easy. It revealed a lack of understanding of our shared story, and it revealed a level of racism that was not really acknowledged. Yet it passed overwhelmingly.
The remit will be enacted by General Council next month. Once that happens, Indigenous peoples will no longer have to come to the non-Indigenous church for approval of their own decisions. The National Indigenous Council is still discerning its way forward, and much conversation across the church is needed, at both congregational and leadership levels.
So, Indigenous peoples in the church have been saying to us, for many years, “We are here.” And it has now been said with a new clarity and purpose. How will we, as non-Indigenous people, respond? How will we be “here” in our new relationship?
There may be some inspiration or direction in this morning’s texts. I would even say that our opening hymn, “Let Us Build A House” is a beginning. I love this hymn. One of my most powerful experiences of it was when as staff of KAIROS I travelled to Port Alberni in 2002. Port Alberni, as you may know, is the site of one of the United Church’s residential institutions. It was survivors of the abuse at that school who were responsible for the church and federal government taking responsibility for what we did there, which ultimately led to the residential schools settlement agreement.
The church community in Port Alberni was (and continues to be) engaged in the work of right relations that has been an important part of our reconciliation journey. At the time I visited, they were in a very difficult time related to the church’s response to the lawsuits. Yet every Sunday morning, they sang this hymn as a commitment to the kind of community they wanted to be – repenting, forgiving, visioning, welcoming.
Our texts today ask us a related question: how do we want to be in relationship with each other?
Some of the commentary I read on these passages was from the perspective of process theology, which I understand to include the belief that God’s presence is always with us, and is always directed at the well-being of creation. It is up to us to discern what we will do in that context of that presence. I’m not a theologian, but I find this a helpful approach.
The text from James initially reads like an admonition, pitting “wisdom from above” against “envy and selfish ambition,” or the wisdom of the world. Too often, perhaps, we choose the wisdom of the world, as when we participate in relationships of dominance. This is certainly what the church did when it chose to actively participate in the residential schools system. It is what we continue to do as society when, despite our orange shirts, we look away from the discriminatory treatment of Indigenous children in education, healthcare, and child welfare systems. Or when those children grow older, how they are over represented in the criminal justice system, and how they are disproportionately subject to violence.
In his commentary on James, David Grant Smith characterizes the text as an invitation to be in “mindful discernment with God” that will lead to a “harvest of righteousness sown in peace by those who make peace.” In her commentary, Jeanyne Slettom notes that “every moment of our lives we are confronted with our own past, our historical era, and a novel suggestion from God. All of these offer us a possible way forward. We can repeat the past, succumb to our era’s dominant ethos, or act on a creative suggestion from God. To trust that God is always present is to open ourselves to that presence and to invite God’s wisdom.”
Of Mark, Smith says very directly: “Our primal instincts want us to put ourselves into positions of power. However, Jesus is inviting us to evolve beyond our primal instincts …”
Activist theologian Ched Myers’ work on Mark suggests that what Jesus is talking about in this oft-cited passage is a dismantling or re-setting of systems of domination. Jesus uses the image of a child not because a child is sweet and innocent, but because in his time, in Roman-occupied Palestine, the child had no status, no worth. Putting himself, an adult male, in the same category as such a “worthless” individual was a radical act, an upending of social norms.
That he does this in the context of his disciples’ bickering over which of them is the greater is an interesting lesson for us today in light of the church’s historic and society’s ongoing treatment of Indigenous children.
It’s tempting to say, when we look back on the decisions that led to the churches supporting the colonial project and operating residential schools, that I wish I knew what they were thinking. I wish I knew how and why they discerned this to be the proper response to the presence of God in their lives.
I wish I knew why they were so slow to move towards justice, why the church and society continued to assert control over Indigenous peoples long after we closed the doors on those institutions. We closed the doors but we did not really change the relationship that played out behind them.
The answer, I think, lies in Smith’s observation that “our primal instincts want us to put ourselves into positions of power.”
I think that the relationship we have with each other, with Creation, and with the Creator is far more important than any exercise of power we may have. And I have to say, I was particularly thinking about this in light of the death of Lois Wilson. I met her only once or twice but among the many church and political leaders I have met over the last 35 years, she stands out as one of the few who genuinely seemed to care more about the work, more about the relationships fostered and nurtured, more about improvement in the human and ecological condition than she did about her own status or standing. I’m sure she did have an ego, but in my experience, she didn’t lead with it. Her life and work is a lesson to us all.
This is our moment of discernment. The Indigenous church has said, once again, “We are here.”
Non-Indigenous people in the church are are in one of those “moments of our lives [where] we are confronted with our own past, our historical era, and a novel suggestion from God.”
Are we here, too?
