Sunday Sermon - National Indigenous Day of Prayer
On National Indigenous Day of Prayer, St John’s welcomed our friends from Curve Lake Christian Assembly to join us in worship. CLCA Pastor Ben Peltz gave the homily, these are his remarks:
Good morning! My name is Ben Peltz. I’m the pastor of Curve Lake Christian Assembly, a chaplain at Trent University, and the interim Director of Kawartha Youth for Christ. It is a privilege to be here with you alongside my friends from Curve Lake today. I’ve come to realize over the years that there are many connections between our congregations, with some of our members having attended St. John’s in the past and others helping with, and benefitting from, the food bank and other ways you serve the community.
My wife and daughter are here with me today. We live in Peterborough, the place where my family happens to have settled four generations ago. We gather together today across varied backgrounds. Some, like me, are descended from settlers. Others are descended from the indigenous people they first encountered here. Others are part of families that arrived in this area more recently. All of us are shaped by the way that our families’ stories intersected in this land.
The Story of Scripture
We also come from a variety of Christian traditions. Those traditions share a common conviction that the Bible was given to us by God to guide us as we follow Him. Something I have come to realize over the years is that different people groups intersecting in a particular land is a central part of the Bible’s narrative.
Scripture begins with human beings living in harmony with their creator, the land, and all creatures that inhabit it. Because of fear and pride, these relationships are damaged. The creator responds by calling people to return to His way and experience His blessing.
One of the people God calls is Abraham, whose family is displaced from their land because of religious persecution and famine. They end up in Egypt, where they are initially received as friends, then betrayed and exploited as slaves. God frees them from slavery and sends them back to the land Abraham lived in. God makes them spend a generation in the wilderness, building up their faith and giving them instructions for how to live in the land once there. He then brings them into the promised land, supernaturally overcoming the great empires that had developed there while Israel was in captivity.
However, the process by which they enter is messy, leading to animosity with the surrounding peoples and pockets of disenfranchised people living within Israel. For stretches they experience harmony within the land, as captured by the beautiful passages we've read today, but because of the threat presented by these other peoples, Israel abandons God’s instructions and tries to become the same kind of empire that was there before they arrived. God withdraws His protection and allows them to be conquered by even greater empires. The Israelites become disenfranchised people in the midst of those other empires.
The Israelites have varying responses to this. Some respond through violent resistance. Others silo themselves off from the rest of society. Others integrate into the broader culture. But God sent others - prophets, and, ultimately, Jesus - to encourage the Israelites to win their Gentile neighbours over with love, inviting them to acknowledge and make amends for their wrongs so they could walk in a new way together. Jesus’ followers called this approach “reconciliation.”
Jews and Christians have adhered to the teachings of these messengers. Other times, they have gotten caught up in the cycles of vengeance that plagued people in the Bible. We see a lot of that in the news today; cycles of violence still plague us. Nonetheless, we hold onto the vision of the promised land, in which all people live peacefully alongside one another in the land they find themselves in. We embrace the call to work to make this a reality until the day when God restores the whole world to a good state. This is the spirit in which we gather today.
The Story of Our Land
We need to be careful not to associate any particular group too closely with the people in the Bible. History rarely repeats itself precisely, but it does rhyme. There are echoes of the Israelites’ story in Canada’s.
Our country’s narrative: First Nations and Inuit people inhabited Turtle Island since time immemorial. They had their conflicts but learned to live sustainably alongside one another in this land. The Creator taught them how to live through dreams, prophecies, and wisdom gleaned from their experiences. Some stuck closely to this path. Others strayed from it. Then, the Creator warned some that a turbulent time was coming and promised to preserve them.
Europeans began to arrive, with various aims. Some sought glory and riches. Others were fleeing war and destitution. Others wanted to spread their religion and culture because they saw it as better than others’.
Early on, the relationship between these peoples were surprisingly friendly, despite their many differences. However, along with the Europeans, new diseases came which decimated indigenous populations. Then, European wars spread to Turtle Island and indigenous people were caught up in them. The Europeans grew more numerous than the indigenous people and sought more and more land. Treaties were formed but not honoured. Indigenous people were made to integrate through boarding schools, forced adoptions, and laws banning their cultural practices.
Despite this, indigenous people persevered and did their best to preserve their language, beliefs, and practices. They had different ways of going about this. Some—a small number—resisted violently. Others siloed themselves off from the rest of society. Others integrated into the broader culture. Others sought to win their settler neighbours over with love, inviting them to acknowledge and make amends for their wrongs so they could walk in a new way together. They called this approach “reconciliation.”
Over the past 60 years or so, European Canadians have slowly heard and responded to that invitation. Some still have not heard it. Others ignore it willfully. Others resist it, because they benefit from the way things have been. But, over time, my sense is that more people are listening than not.
This story grieves me, in part because this is not just a big-picture story of our country, it is the personal story of many of my friends. But, this story also gives me hope. Hope that we can live differently together in this land. Hope that we can recover the teachings of our Creator and Lord Jesus Christ. Hope that we can, even if only temporarily, live in a way that resembles that promised land that God promised the Israelites so long ago. Hope that someday, we will inhabit that promised land with all those who have faithfully endured the trials this world brings. I am encouraged that our gathering today is one in which we get to share that hope.
Conclusion
Thank you again for inviting us to be with you today, as you take steps towards reconciliation. May we keep moving on that road together, today and moving forward. We will now transition to a moment of silent reflection in light of these stories we share today.