God: Akwesasne to Zephyr

 

 

What is bothering Canadians, young Canadians, French Canadians, English Canadians, new Canadians, and all Canadians is that we don’t want Canada to be a mediocre nation.  We react against mediocrity as youngsters do, against the junior satellite status nobody wants, and for this reason most of them ask for something different that their Canadian role in the future will be a peace-making role, because we are not going to contribute very much with 1 percent nuclear power.  If you assume the Americans and the Russians have 100 percent destruction of the world in their power, I think we, if we want to make a distinct contribution in this country, should decide exactly what our interests are, and follow them independently.  We don’t want to be, and the Canada of tomorrow can’t be a mediocre country.

 

 

I think the question is important, and I would like to suggest to you that the words from our scripture this morning provide a yardstick by which we can measure our success as a nation. The words are very familiar, from the Olivet Discourse at the very end of Jesus’ ministry.  He had just entered into Jerusalem.  He told a number of parables, but now, he is delivering what is known as “The Final Judgement”.  He is speaking of course apocalyptically, talking about the future, not the present, but he knows that what he is saying has an impact on the present; that it is looking to the future; it is looking at a moment where He, at the centre, will judge and on what basis is what we need to know.  Why do we need to know it?  Well, I think today we are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Confederation of our great nation.  It is a time for us to ask ourselves serious questions.  After all, Jesus, in this incredible discourse, says that all the nations, all ethnicities are going to be judged ultimately by God.   Canada, being one of those nations, has to analyze itself and say, “As one of all the nations, where do we stand in the light of what Jesus had to say?”

 

We have to keep in mind that when Jesus spoke these words, as difficult as they might, he was doing it for the sake of grace.  He was doing it for the sake of freedom and love and health.  While his words might be judgemental, they are nevertheless words of encouragement and inspiration.  I don’t know about you, but when this passage is read, I am sitting there asking myself the salient question:  “Am I one of the sheep or am I one of the goats?”  I like what Paul Wilson said when he preached here some years ago on this very text:  “I preach to you as a goat who desperately wants to be a sheep!”  I think it is fair enough to say that we gather as goats wanting to be sheep, for it was the sheep, and this is where the story goes, who are the ones doing the will of God and who are blessed. 

 

The standard that Jesus used for the final judgement was based on the following, and the key phrase in the text if you want to pull one out, it is “whatever you do for one of the least of these my family members or my brethren or my children, you have done for me.”  Then, he enunciates clearly and precisely what this is.  There is no ambiguity.  There is no touchy-feeliness here.  Jesus is talking about real things:  “When I was hungry, you fed me.  When I was thirsty you gave me something to drink.  When I was naked, you clothed me.  When I was in prison, you visited me.  When I was a stranger, you took me in.  When I was sick, you cared for me.”  In other words, the sheep, the ones who are going to be judged affectionately are the one who cared concretely for the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the prisoner, the sick and the naked.  I love how the sheep respond in this wonderful passage: “When did we ever see you like this?  When did we see you naked or hungry or a stranger?  We didn’t.”

 

Jesus replies, “No, whenever you saw any of the least of my children like this that is when you have done it for me.  Whenever you have cared, you have done it for me.”

 

On the other hand, the goats are not doing very well.  The goats didn’t take in the hungry and feed them, did not take in the thirsty and give them something to drink, did not take in the stranger, did not heal the sick, did not visit the prisoner, and did not clothe the naked.  The goats did not do any of those things, and so Jesus says, “If it is doing for all of those for me, then if you don’t do for any of those, then you are not doing for me.”  Jesus identifies himself with those who are in need.  Just as we looked back last week – those of you who were here or listening – at The Good Samaritan, it was those who were in need that were our neighbor, and it is with those that Jesus identified, so he identifies again with humanity at the point of its need.

 

The real question then that Christians should ask themselves is this:  “How do we stand relative to the needs of the people around us?  As Christians, what do we offer in this nation, and to what extent does our nation live up to the calling of Christ’s: ‘Whatever you do for the least of these, my children, you have done for me.’”  I would like to look at this because it is the 150th anniversary of Confederation and it is not, as has been rightly said in the media in the last few days, the anniversary of peoples, because as we know there have been people on this land for thousands of years before 1867.  I have in my very hand a piece of wood.  It was part of a Metasequoia from the Northwest Territories that was given to me by a physicist from our congregation, and it is fifty-five million years old!  I love holding it up next to me because it makes me feel young! 

 

Notwithstanding a little lost hair, I feel good next to this!  Fifty-five million years old!  This puts the 150 in some perspective, don’t you think?

 

It is an important day, and I want to look at us through these 150 years from A to Z.  The place I start off with is Akwesasne, and I am not just doing this for illustrative purposes, I am doing it for real reasons.  One of the things that has always struck me about Akwesasne is that it is a place I have travelled through many times over the years, because it crosses two national borders with the United States and Canada.  Whenever I go to New England, I always go through Cornwall and head south.  I love stopping off in the Mohawk reserve, and looking across the river to Canada, and then from Canada looking back across to the United States.  It makes me realize how old our nation is, and I must say I celebrated with many Christians, even though I am not and we are not Roman Catholics, when in 2002 Kateri Tekakwitha was canonized as a saint, a woman from a Mohawk nation from which the Akwesasne place comes.  I thought that this was representative of a deep root, a deep tradition, maybe not fifty-five million years old, but hundreds of thousands of years old, and it is something to celebrate.

  

It is also something to be concerned about.  Just two weeks ago, Marial and I were sitting on a bench in a park when a young man approached us.  Clearly, he was in need of some help, but as we had just gone for a walk and were only in our walking clothes and had nothing with us, we couldn’t help him.  More than anything, I think he just wanted to talk.  We found out that he was a seventeen-year-old young man who is an Ojibwa and had just come to the city. You could see the terror in his eyes.  He looked disoriented, like a stranger in a strange land.  He did not know where to go for help.  I pointed him to a place called Council Fire, which the United Church works with downtown that has for many years provided support for members of First Nations and Indigenous people.  He was so grateful to hear about this.  I gave him directions to it, but he still wanted to talk.  He seemed so pleased just to have a conversation.  I thought, “What is going to happen to this young lad?”  I felt sick to my stomach that I couldn’t help him more at that moment.  I felt like a goat!  You know, when the stranger wants you to welcome them and the naked want you to clothe them and the hungry want you to feed them!  At that moment, I felt like a goat!

 

When I hear that 4 percent of our indigenous population makes up 24 percent of our prison population, you realize it is painful sometimes to watch and be a goat and that something needs to be done.  We have made progress.  We are standing on the ground and it is symbolic, we say it of the Mississaugas of the First Credit, it is just symbolism, but they are words.  We have had an apology from the Federal government.  We’ve had a Truth and Reconciliation Report that has dealt with the terrible residential schools that as some of you know, I lectured on at Oxford last year.  Terrible things have been done, but we are getting better.  Jesus still wants more from us.  I listened to something that Perry Bellegarde, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations said just a few days ago, and it was repeated while I was in Ottawa.  Bellegarde had something positive to say.  Listen to this.  He said: 

 

 

 

The place I end with is Zephyr, and this is a place you have probably driven through or visited many times. It is part of the greater Uxbridge area, a community of 400 people, and its name means “west-wind”.  It is a gorgeous little spot!  It is like so much of our nation:  it is pretty and it is peaceful and it is beautiful.  You can’t help but go to places like Zephyr and be thankful.  Places like Zephyr remind us that we are in the most incredible nation and that there is so much for which to give thanks.  If we are truly to be sheep, we should be thankful for every single blessing we receive and that God has given us, every single grace that comes our way, for in many ways we are a great nation.  Notwithstanding problems and trials and difficulties, there is something marvellous and majestic about Canada.  You see it in the land!  In the last couple of years, I have gone from Quidi Vidi in Newfoundland to Tofino in British Columbia, and I think I have mentioned in sermons how beautiful both those places are, but everything in-between is as well!  This is an awesome country!  This is an incredible land!  When you travel other places, they are crowded and it is hard to find vistas or scenery or to have that expansive sense of freedom.  It is the expansive nature of our land that forms us as a people.  “From sea-to-sea-to-sea”, we know that this is absolutely glorious!  As those who have become the custodians of this incredible land, it would be the greatest crime if we didn’t thank God for it!  We are blessed sheep, because when we are hungry this land feeds us, and when we are thirsty we get to drink from it. 

 

It is also a place where the strangers are welcomed.  French, English, Scots, Irish, Italians, Ukrainians came and settled parts of the nation, and then the world came!  This week, I have been speaking and participating in Faith in Canada’s 150 Summit of Millennials.  Seventy-five millennials of every single religious tradition that you could think of came together for two days to talk about living their faith in the Public Square.  Without exception and crossing incredible divides still being faithful to what each one believes, in no way trying to be synchronistic or to be watering down their faith, every one of them said, “Look at the freedom we have to do this!  Look at the freedom for a Sikh leader to stand up and talk about his rich traditions to Muslims and Hindus and Jews and Christians and Baha’is who were sitting there, and then having a discussion around a table about it all!  It is magnificent!”  I got to talk about Jesus Christ.  I couldn’t think of a place in the world where we would find greater freedom than that.  We welcomed the stranger – and we have done the Lord’s work!  

 

We have also cared for one another.  Still, despite all its flaws, we have medical care and we care for the least.  We are not going to ruin anyone’s life because they are sick or because they carry a disease.  Thanks to Tommy Douglas, but also many others who had the vision, we are a nation that cares for the sick.  We make sure that they are all right.  For all the back-ups in the courts and all the problems that beset law and order, we are a land of laws and justice.  We have laws in our land that make sure that the innocent are protected and that the guilty are found such.  We have the rule of law.  Let us never take it for granted, for there are many places where the laws are strict and the judiciary not as good, and where the system is not fair.  Lord Jesus, we have much to give thanks for!  We give thanks that we have the freedom of our faith, and that we can gather, and that we are not like the people of the Coptic community in Egypt who are frightened that their church is going to be bombed, or not worried about house-churches in China that could be shut down at a minute’s notice.  We have the freedom of association, and we have the freedom to worship our God, and I congratulate you today for coming and doing this, for by your very presence here it is a statement that you recognize that this is a gift that should be cherished.

 

Finally, we are a nation that has hope.  If we do not have hope that we can be better sheep, then in fact the celebration of a memorial of 150 years is only that.  But if we believe that we can be better sheep, and that we can serve our Lord more faithfully, then this is not a memorial.  This is the anniversary from which great things can arise.  One of the greatest Governor Generals in our history was Georges Vanier.  He was a devout Christian and said:  “Tell me the character of a nation’s young people and I will tell you about the future of the nation.”  The next fifty, hundred, hundred-and-fifty years are very much in the hands of the young.  If there is anything that we can give the young, any word of wisdom that can inspire them, any yardstick from which they can assess their own progress and development, to burst out of any mediocrity, it is the words of Jesus of Nazareth, which should resonate across our country and across every country on the globe:  “Whatever you have done for the least of these, my children, you have done it for me.”  O Canada that is your calling! Amen.