Reconciliation

Wednesday marked National Indigenous People’s Day. The relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada is complicated. The relationship between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous church is also complicated. Our history as a church is tied into colonization and residential schools.

The United Church was the first church to make an apology to Indigenous peoples. As a response to that apology, the All Native Circle Conference was formed in 1988. With the restructuring of the United Church in 2019, All Native Circle Conference was dissolved, and a National Indigenous Organization was formed. Indigenous communities of faith could choose to be part of both the national organization as well as the geographic region in which they are located. Within the Living Skies Region there are Five Indigenous Communities of Faith.

When major decisions relating to the structure of the United Church need to be made, we use a remit process which gives community of faith leadership teams (boards) an opportunity to vote on the decision. There is currently a question of whether or not to create an autonomous National Indigenous Organization within the United Church. What that organization looks like would be determined by the Indigenous church after the remit.

We hear a lot about reconciliation right now. As a theological concept reconciliation is about being changed. It doesn’t mean everything is perfect and we all get along. Reconciliation allows us to be changed so that we can make sense of differences. James Rowe Adams in his book Literal to Literary writes that reconciliation “is a willingness to give up being on complete control of the situation and to allow inward change to happen.” When I think about the remit that is being asked of us, I have lots of questions about it. What does that mean for the future of the Indigenous church within the United Church? Does it create more disconnection? What would an Indigenous church look like? How would it be funded? Does that mean the non-indigenous church is abdicating responsibility for supporting Indigenous ministries? I want to know the answers to these questions and I recognize that asking these questions is a sign of wanting to control.

One of the things pointed out at the event was that with the restructuring, regions were given permission to organize themselves, but the Indigenous church was not given the same ability. The wider church trusts communities of faith and regions to make good decisions. Why isn’t the Indigenous church beiing given the same level of trust? The non-Indigenous church is being asked to give up control. And that’s hard for many of us. Our history as a country is about non-Indigenous people having control of land, resources, decision making, and laws with Indigenous people having minimal input even when the outcomes directly effect their lives and communities.

With our history, I understand why Indigenous people often mistrust churches and government. I understand why there is hurt and pain in Indigenous communities. We often think of reconciliation as a two-way street where both parties must come together and figure out how to get along. Matthew gives us a different perspective. “If you bring your gift to the alter and remember that someone has a grudge against you, go and be reconciled to them.” What I find fascinating about this is that it isn’t the person with the grudge who is expected to make the first move. Sometimes, the person holding the grudge has good reason to be hurt. They may not trust that the person who hurt them will listen to their story or understing how they were impacted. Sometimes, we don’t realize the impact of our actions until there is a definite break in the relationship.

Once we realize we have caused harm, the scriptures expect us to go and rebuild the relationship that has been broken. This hurt and brokenness may be either personal or collective. Reconciliation with indigenous peoples is an example of collective brokenness and hurt. Our work, as people of faith, and as non-Indigenous people, is the work of reconciling. We need to allow ourselves to be changed enough to give up control. That’s our work. When we are willing to be reconciled with someone, the relationship becomes more important than maintaining control or keeping our power. We learn how to hold the tension of differences. Reconciliation is a commitment to being in relationship in ways that allow each person (or group of people) to be strong in themselves and to bring their full self to the relationship. If there is power over another, violence, or suffering, we have not achieved reconciliation.

Throughout scripture we are reminded that worship without care for the world and without justice is meaningless. In Isaiah 58:6 we hear God speaking:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

This scripture in Matthew 5:21-26 continues the theme of putting our relationships in good order so that we can truly worship. Reconciliation isn’t something we do and tick the box. It is on-going work that requires us to step out of our comfort zone. It requires us to hear the difficult and painful stories. It requires us to dig into complex histories and own our (and our ancestors’) part. It requires us to understand that non-Indigenous communities continue to benefit from colonization. This history can be uncomfortable for us. It might bring up difficult questions for us. How have we personally benefited from colonialism? What are the harms our church has done? How can we not know our shared history?

In order for us to be reconciled, we need to ask some of these difficult questions. We need to listen to and understand the history. We need to be willing to give up our control over Indigenous people and communities. When we are willing to do this work, we will find a new creation in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:17-20 reminds us that the old order has passed away and everything is new. Our personal relationship with God cannot be separated from our relationship with others. By reconciling with other people, we find our relationship with God deepens. We find ourselves changed by that work. We are a new creation. The world is a new creation.

That is my hope and my prayer for all of us going forward together.

Healing and Hoping–the Work of the Whole Community

The book of Isaiah was written over a period of approximately 240 years. It is divided into three parts—each dealing with different historic events. The first part of the book relates to the rise of the Assyrian empire. Isaiah was calling people to repentance with the hope that disaster could be averted. The second part of the book deals with the Babylonian exile when the wealthy, powerful, and skilled people were forcibly removed to Babylon. Finally, the third book of Isaiah deals with the return from Babylonian exile.

Today’s scripture, Isaiah 58:9b-14, comes this third part. During the exile, the hope had been to return to Jerusalem, to rebuild the temple, to rebuild the city. The reality didn’t play out this way. By the time people could return from exile, many of those who remembered Jerusalem had already died. The younger generation had already created homes and established themselves in Babylon. Why would they want to leave what they knew and return to their grandparents’ homeland? The number of people who actually returned was quite small and the rebuilding didn’t go so well. Over a hundred years later very little rebuilding of the temple and city had happened. The glorious hope that had been nurtured in second Isaiah, during the exile, didn’t come to fruition in the ways people imagined.

You might imagine the disillusionment that grew over this time. People just get on with living their lives the best way they can and nothing changes. It could be hard slogging for the small group who returned and wanted everything to go back to the way it was. They might be asking why God has abandoned them. They might be wondering what the point of any of their work is. They want to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple but God gives them seemingly unrelated work.

The yoke was a symbol in the near east for economic and political hardship caused by the elite. The instructions from God begin in the economic and political realm—not in rebuilding the city and temple. That isn’t the point of the return. Isaiah offers these instructions: “If you remove the oppression caused by the wealthy and powerful, if you stop pointing fingers if you stop saying mean things, if you care for the hungry and hurting…if the whole community embraces this call and embraces the work of dismantling oppression, then good things will happen. You will find God guiding you and strengthening you and you will be like a well-watered garden. Not only that, but your children will rebuild the city and remember where you came from.” Don’t start with the physical structures. Take a step back. Look at your community. Where are the injustice and oppression? If you want to rebuild the city and temple, you have to start by dealing with the injustices that are inherent in every society.

It isn’t God’s work to remove the yoke of oppression. The work of liberation from oppression belongs to the whole community. The work of caring for the hungry and hurting belongs to the whole community. If liberation is the work of the whole community, then healing belongs to the whole community. As long as there is oppression, everyone suffers. In order to create a healthy community, everyone needs to participate in the activity of liberation.

For example, when we talk about reconciliation, sometimes people will say…”why don’t they just get over it? It happened, move on.” Like the people in Isaiah, we are dealing with intergenerational trauma. We can’t go back to the way things were and going forward involves creating something new from what’s left. That work can’t be done by one group of people. That is work that takes a whole community. In Isaiah, we have a small number of people who do remember Jerusalem before the exile. We have children who only remember stories. We have people who have remained and lived on the land during the exile. All these groups see the past differently. They see the present differently and the future has yet to become a reality.

In our own situation, we have Indigenous people who lived the reality of residential schools and sixties scoop. We have their children and grandchildren who hear the stories of what life was like before the schools and who see the trauma the schools created. We have non-indigenous people, like myself, who live on the land that used to belong to Indigenous communities. All of these groups see the history differently and hear the stories differently. No one group can create healing or create a new future. The work of reconciliation and liberation doesn’t just lie with Indigenous people. That work belongs to all of us.

We might lament, that churches are not the way they used to be. We might want to maintain the physical building for future generations. We might remember when the church was overflowing every Sunday. We might want to go back to those days and be trying everything we can think of to hold it together and make it work. But scripture invites us to take a step back. If we deal with the injustices in our communities. If we care for the hungry and hurting, then we find God. Then we will find the strength we need. Then the next generation will understand the heritage of faith that we pass to them.

It isn’t about going back to the good old days but going forward. We can only go forward by doing the work of healing our communities by dismantling all the injustices—economic and political injustice, racism, heterosexism, hatred, and violence. When we do that work, the rebuilding of our communities of faith happens naturally and the communities will thrive because they offer the healing that so many people need in their lives. The communities won’t look like they did in the past but they will be filled with God’s spirit of love and compassion.