Musical Prelude and Service.

Psalm 124 & Mark 10:38-0
I found myself scratching my head a few times when we reflect on this scripture and attempting to mentally connect it to the theme of Truth and Reconciliation. Perhaps some of you have already succeeded.
You see, tomorrow is national Truth and Reconciliation Day. It is a day set aside to reflect on the truth of how the settler community of Canada abused the indigenous people who reside in what we call Canada. The authorities, the systems of governance in Canada looked upon our indigenous siblings, the people who had lived and cared for this land for countless generations and decided they were a hindrance to our ambitions to expand and to exploit the land for our profit.
Furthermore, they had languages, belief structures and traditions; ways of living that we saw as wrong as opposed to what we believed was correct. So we confined the first peoples to small parcels of land. We removed their children from their communities and sent them to schools. We told these children their traditions were shameful. We cut their hair, forced them to wear clothes we approved of and punished them when they spoke the language of their parents and grandparents. These children were abused and often killed.
The last of these schools finally closed in our lifetime.
This is a painful and a difficult message to deliver and to hear, but we as a society need to come to terms with it. Truth and Reconciliation Day is not just for our Indigenous siblings. We all must be a part of the process of healing a consequence of our history.
Apologies have been made, but that is only the first step in a long journey to healing. Forgiveness is still to come. And it is not something that the settler community can insist upon.
There is a lot that is going on in the gospel reading this morning. A couple of Jesus’ disciples comes to him and explain that they have been attempting to stop a man from casting out demons in his name. “He is not one of us.”
Jesus responds to paraphrase. “Get out of the man’s way. If he is not against us, he is for us.”
If he is not against us, he is for us. Not, if he is not with us, he is against us. We hear that one a lot in our society, don’t we? That’s not Jesus’ view, and we should be clear about that. If you are not actively opposed to Jesus, you are with him, he essentially tells his followers.
So what is the disciples’ problem? We aren’t really given that information. Except, remember that a few chapters earlier, they had a squabble about who would sit next to Jesus in the coming kingdom? They were arguing over who would occupy the most favoured position. I would argue that the disciples who struggle all the way through the gospel, to truly understand what Jesus is trying to teach them, are still viewing proximity to Jesus as a finite resource that brings power and privilege with it. And so, they are actively engaging in a form of gate-keeping.
Jesus on the other hand, is trying to transform the way people see the world and the way people relate to one another and to God. Jesus is trying to expand and build community; not divide communities and marginalize people and exclude others for not being one of us.
He is urging his followers to make their work about bringing more and more people into a loving relationship with God and with one another. And that, he tells John and Peter and Andrew and James, and the rest is accomplished through service. Through feeding one another and providing a cup of water to those who thirst.
And if you somehow get in the way of someone trying to find their way to God, well, only God can help you. Becoming a barrier or a stumbling block for someone growing in their relationship to God is a form of sin in Jesus’ perspective. And if a part of you is causing you to sin, remove that part of your body.
A few notes on this section of the gospel reading. The word used in the Greek text that is translated here as sin, is actually Skandalizo. It, or a variation on it is also used for the words snare or trap, stumble, and offend. And further, I think we can be safe in assuming that Jesus is speaking in metaphor. Jesus is not actually insisting people chop off limbs or pluck out eyes, but Jesus is urging us to take a close look at our lives and ask, what in our lives is helping us to stumble? How are we ensnared in habits that lead us away from lives of justice and love? What do we need to do, or what do we need to remove from our lives to avoid the stumbling blocks that this world can set up around us?
The United Church of Canada has apologized in one form or another at least twice for our complicity in the Residential School system. In 1986 Moderator Bob Smith spoke these words:
“We did not hear you when you shared your vision. In our zeal to tell you of the good news of Jesus Christ we were closed to the value of
your spirituality.
We confused Western ways and culture with the depth and breadth and length and height of the gospel of Christ.
We imposed our civilization as a condition of accepting the gospel.
We tried to make you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were. As a result, you, and we, are poorer and the image of the Creator in us is twisted, blurred, and we are not what we are meant by God to be.”
We have apologized for our commitment to system and way of seeing the world that condemned the traditional ways of life, of the spirituality of the Indigenous people of North America. We essentially saw ourselves as closer to God due to our beliefs and our language. In some cases, because of the way we looked. We apologised for participating in and promoting policies and practises that encouraged white supremacy. That apology also acknowledges that our attitudes, which infantilized the Indigenous people contributed to discrimination, unspeakable harm to communities and families and individuals across this country and what many now call genocide.
The Indigenous church accepted the apology of the United Church but also acknowledged that people were waiting to see if that apology was merely symbolic and were also looking to see if we as a church would live into that apology.
Truth has been spoken, but we are now in the work of reconciliation. We are in the process of healing. How do we reconcile our belief that God’s forgiveness is constantly held out to us, with the need for forgiveness from those whom we have harmed? We can not demand that forgiveness or dismiss their reluctance to offer it, by saying well God has forgiven us. Jesus urges us to not cause others to stumble. Don’t get in the way of someone else coming to God.
In 1988, Moderator Bill Phipps offered an apology specifically for our Chruch’s part in the residential school system. I won’t read all of it, but among his words were these:
“We are in the midst of a long and painful journey as we reflect on the cries that we did not or would not hear, and how we have behaved as a church. As we travel this difficult road of repentance, reconciliation, and healing, we commit ourselves to work toward ensuring that we will never again use our power as a church to hurt others with attitudes of racial and spiritual superiority.”
When we as a church act as gatekeepers or actively harm communities, be they indigenous, LGBTQ or migrants, or if we simply turn a blind eye to the injustices inflicted on so many people in our world, are we causing those who are weak to stumble? When we fail to be the body of Christ, the one who came to the world in love, seeking to heal and offer justice and mercy, have we now become a stumbling block?
Jesus reminds us that we are salt. That our faith is salt. This is a reference to a passage from Leviticus that says that salt is part of our covenant with God. It is a crucial ingredient in God’s relationship with creation.
Jesus says we are salt. We are a part of this covenant. We need to take that seriously. How we relate to the world, how we love one another, how we work for a just and peaceable world, matters.
We as a church have apologized for our role in the residential school system. We have admitted to the truth of how we have seen Indigenous people and their culture as being of lesser value than our own. That we saw their communities as a barrier to our own progress. We have started the process of naming the truth about the relationship between settlers and the Indigenous people.
Now we have more work to do.
If we truly desire healing, we have work to do – walking alongside our indigenous brothers and sisters, walking along side all our relations to do the work of reconciliation.
God came among us to heal the world. To show us a better way of living in relationship with all our relations. Christ died on a cross and rose from the dead to show us that God’s love can not be stopped. We are all forgiven regardless of how far we stray. But we are also expected to work.
We are called to witness the truth of who we are and who we have been and to work to change our direction. To repent when it is necessary and to be a part of the needed healing in our world.

Music provided with permission through licensing with CCLI License number
2701258 and One License # A-731789