"Reconciliation, The Leafs and God's Favour"
Walking in the spirit of God's forgiveness
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Text: 1 Kings 8:54-61
In this world, it is impossible to have a completely ideal community, city or nation. The reason is that they are made up of human beings and we are imperfect creatures. There is no utopia where all the virtues of a community can be found. But for a while in post-colonial Africa, there was a place that was close. It was known as District Six.
District Six was situated at the foot of Table Mountain in Cape Town. Right after the end of the colonial period, District Six became a community in which Muslims, Jews and Christians lived. People from Asia, Africa and Europe lived side-by-side, cheek-to-jowl. There wasn't much rivalry and certainly no sense of anger or separation. People lived in relatively nice houses and had lovely back gardens.
Then, with the stroke of a pen in the early 1960s, the government in South Africa made District Six an all-white area. Under a very innocent-sounding organization called “A Community for Development,” they removed all people of colour from District Six and made it a purely white residential area.
Knowing that they had to do something with the people of colour, they sent them off to a place called the Cape Flats, a barren land with very few gardens and almost no view. They made them live there. They built little boxes for them to live in that were hot during the summer and cold during the winter.
One of those little places on the Cape Flats was called Bonteheuwel, a place I visited on a number of occasions. Back in 1986, Desmond Tutu visited a family that he knew who lived in Bonteheuwel. He went in the door of this little house and there was a former resident from District Six. Twenty-six years after having been removed from his home, his whole house was still full of unpacked boxes. The man said, “I will not unpack my boxes, because I want to be ready at a minute's notice to go back home.” For 26 years, he lived with that sense of hope. It broke Desmond Tutu's heart!
It breaks the heart when terrible things are done. Even in this post-apartheid era, even in a time when we just celebrated Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday, we realize that you can't go back and restore District Six to what it was. Too many lives have been lost; too many boxes left unpacked; too many hearts have been broken. The road in life always goes forward. There are no u-turns; there is no going back. The road, by definition, moves forward with time and you cannot re-visit the past, nor can you often mend the wounds caused by past transgressions.
That goes for almost any country, any place or any life, for that matter. Wrongs that have been done, crimes that have been committed cannot be turned around on a whim. People live with broken hearts, scarred lives and a sense that all is not as they would like it to be.
This raises a question: What, then, is the road ahead? How does a nation, a community, a person, deal with a past wrong in order to move forward into the future? The passage from 1 Kings provides an insight into how nations and communities can proceed when a wrong has been done.
Solomon was taking over from his father, David, who was promised by God that he would have a wonderful nation and a monarchy would continue in his name. The problem was that the people had sinned and God's covenant with David was being broken, and Solomon realized that. So Solomon built a great temple and wanted it to serve two functions. First, he wanted it to be a place where the people of Israel could worship their God. This magnificent temple was the gathering place for the people of Israel to acknowledge their covenantal relationship with God. Secondly, it was a place where they could ask for forgiveness, where they could bring their sacrifices and offer them to God as atonement for what had gone wrong.
In many ways, God's promise to David was dependent on the obedience of the people, but the people were dependent on the forgiveness of God. God wanted the people to be obedient, but when they fell from grace and were not ideal, there was a gift of forgiveness. For Solomon, then, everything was based on a sense of grace. In this marvellous passage, we read that Solomon prayed for his people. He dedicated not only the temple, but also the people, that they might be able to walk in God's forgiveness.
What makes this all the more powerful is that most scholars agree that this passage was actually crafted hundreds of years later during the exile, when the people of Israel had a crisis of faith because they felt they had done something wrong and had been driven out of their land. They prayed that God would restore the monarchy and the temple and bring the people back home with all their unpacked boxes.
I understand that there is a gulf between Canada in 2008 and Israel in the time of Solomon, and you cannot just bridge the gap of 2,500 or even 3,000 years. Israel, in Solomon's time, was a theocratic state under a monarch appointed by God, whereas we are in a democratic, pluralistic state with a constitutional monarchy and a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But despite the chasm of time, there are theological and spiritual aspects to what Solomon prayed for that affect any nation at any time, and particularly our own at this time. As a nation, we have just gone through a period in which a very formal apology has been made for a wrong that was done. So what can we learn as Christians, as people of faith? What must we now do, as Christians and people of faith, in light of this and in light of Solomon's prayer?
Well, the first thing is very clear: There is a time for repentance. We have, at the beginning of our service, a Prayer of Confession. We all need to do that - to put ourselves in a right relationship with God. We also have an Assurance of Pardon that reminds us of God's abiding grace. We do this every Sunday. But it is not only as individuals that this needs to be done; as a nation, we sometimes need to have a time of confession.
Timothy Eaton Memorial Church recently sponsored and hosted a breakfast with the Frontier Foundation. This foundation, set up by a Christian minister, has built about 3,000 homes for First Nations and Métis people. The speaker, a leader in the Métis community, gave a passionate speech about the problems facing his people and the whole issue of the identity of the Métis. First Nations, Inuit and Métis people are mentioned in the constitution but so often they seem to be below the radar. He talked about the challenges of housing, food, work and integration. It was a marvellous, deeply sincere speech.
Afterward, he asked me if he could see the sanctuary. He said, “I want to see the place where you worship.” So I brought him into this magnificent house of prayer. He was in awe, as many people are, and we began to talk. He said he was married in the United Church, but he was brought up as a Roman Catholic, and that he loves God. I knew that he had been in Ottawa for the apology for the residential schools, so I asked him if he honestly felt that what was said and done there was sincere. He said, “Absolutely!” He noted that he and other leaders from the First Nations and Aboriginal Peoples said quite openly that they were touched. He directed me to a piece in The Globe and Mail that was written just a couple of days after the apology was made. This is what Waubgeshig Rice wrote:
Now the healing begins. The government has said its part, and now it says it will listen. A commission is about to get underway, going across the country collecting the sad and the tragic stories that are finally grabbing the national spotlight, but I am confident that the love and respect that is the basis of Aboriginal culture across Canada is what will start a new fire for our people, one that will never go out.
After listening to what this gentleman said to me in this very sanctuary, I couldn't help but feel, yes, there is a sense in which a wrong has been acknowledged. Something took place. There was a transgression against a people, and it has been named.
Some people have said to me that this is a sign of our nation's weakness; this diminishes Canada. I say, “No. This is a sign of strength.” The stronger the people, the more confident the people, the more desirous they are to show justice. Those are the people who are willing to repent. No one knew that more than Solomon. He said, “We must lift our voices to God so God will hear our sins and forgive us from Heaven.”
I know that everyone these days seems to want to forgive, and forgiveness has become trivial. It seems everyone wants to apologize for everything these days - except for the people who cut you off on the 401, mind you. I love a statement made by a young girl when her parents had found that she had done something wrong. They said, “Well, don't you think that you should repent and confess your sins?” The little girl replied, “No, this isn't the Oprah show, you know!”
I don't need to wear everything on my sleeve. Maybe there is some insincerity in some apologies, agreed. But others can be deeply meaningful and when they are made, they change things. The people of Israel understood that simply repenting and receiving God's forgiveness wasn't enough; there was a need for reparation.
In a wonderful book by David Augsburger, Caring Enough to Forgive, he says that forgiveness is a journey of many steps. Once forgiveness has been asked for and given, there are still many steps along that path that one needs to walk. The people of Israel understood that. They brought their sacrifices to God in the temple. They understood that there was something wrong, and they offered these to God.
But God wasn't interested so much in their sacrifices; he was interested in their behaviour. Solomon asked clearly in his prayer that the people might walk in God's ways; that they might keep his commandments; that all nations might know, understand and appreciate the love of God. It is one thing to say, “I am forgiven;” it is another thing to walk in the spirit of that forgiveness.
Some people have said the path to renewal in our country began with an apology about the residential schools. I don't agree with that. I think things have been done for First Nations and Inuit people for many, many years that have been good. Not all is wrong and bad. But more good things need to be done. The walk with God and with our First Nations people is a walk that continues. It is a walk that has many stops.
Another key element in all of this is reconciliation. I have been reading Browning this summer, and in Pacchiarotto there is a poem called “A Forgiveness.” The forgiveness takes place, and this is fitting, in a church with a priest present. I think most people associate our faith with forgiveness. After all, what is the cross but a symbol of forgiveness? It symbolizes God putting right that which is broken. Reconciliation is more than simply reciting a prayer saying, “I repent.” It is more than saying, “I am prepared to make reparations.” It is something that happens in the heart and in the soul. True reconciliation is about a heart recognizing God.
This brings me to the Toronto Maple Leafs. I had a fascinating discussion with an executive from the Maple Leafs recently. I came right out and asked,
What are you going to do to heal the wounds of your people? How long do we live in the wilderness? How many more years before a Stanley Cup comes to Toronto? I want to tell my people they have freedom coming, freedom at last! The Leafs will win the Stanley Cup! Please tell me this is going to happen.
He said, “No, I don't think so.”
So I asked, “What is important then?”
He said, “Well, we'll probably have new coaches and we will have new players and a new general manager, but first of all, what we have to do is build a new relationship with our fans. They have to begin to trust us again.”
I said, “Brother, you have said it right!”
There are some things that are deeper, more sincere and more important than just simple acts. There is the mending of relationships, and that is where God comes in.
Many people are familiar with the famous photograph of Kim Phuc, that shows her running from a napalm attack in Trang Bang in Vietnam in 1972. She grew up, and after undergoing many surgeries in San Francisco, she moved to Toronto. But there is a part of Kim Phuc's story that many people don't know. A pilot who was responsible for the dropping of the bombs on Trang Bang later became a Christian. John Plummer was ordained as a Methodist minister in the United States in 1990. In 1996, he heard through some friends that Kim Phuc was going to give a speech in Washington at the Veterans' Memorial. So he went among a crowd of thousands to listen to her speak. In her speech, she said, “If I ever meet the pilot who dropped the bomb on my community, I will forgive him.”
Reverend Plummer, having carried around in his heart for 26 years the pain of having been responsible for that could finally go to the young girl whose image had haunted his mind and receive forgiveness.
It is far more to be reconciled than it is to simply repent, for reconciliation is the work of God. May we pray, then, for our nation - not just for all the things we are going to do, as do we must, but that in our hearts, with those who have had theirs broken, we can all be reconciled. I love the line of Teilhard de Chardin, who wrote the following words, as quoted by Desmond Tutu, when he met that man from District Six in Bonteheuwel:
May the time come when men and women, having been awakened to the close bond linking all the movements of this world in the single all-embracing work of the incarnation of God in Christ shall be unable to give themselves to any one of their tasks without illuminating it with a clear vision that their work, however elementary it may be, is received and put to good use by the Center of the Universe.
To that centre, to that Christ, we leave our nation. Amen.