Today's reflection was given by my friend, Cathy, for her United Church Community. The United Church and many other churches mark today as Truth and Reconciliation Sunday because it is the day closest to National Truth and Reconciliation Day, a day that was declared in Canada in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's 94 Calls to Action.
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| Truth and Reconciliation Sunday at the Community of Emmanuel |
Then at the Catholic Mass I attended afterward with my parents and Lee, there was not one word about Truth and Reconciliation. Not one word.
So this afternoon, I walked to my nearest Anglican Church to enjoy their commemoration of the day with sharings by people who are survivors of residential schools and intergenerational trauma, honour songs, and a round dance. At the end there was a wonderful spirit of community and bannock to share.
Today I feel the poverty of my own church's neglect of a day that should be important to all Canadians, no matter their faith. It's not even mentioned in the Canadian Catholic Liturgical Calendar in my monthly missalette, though other churches have been commemorating it since it was declared in 2021, and have been acknowledging the need for truth and reconciliation efforts since long before that!
In the spirit of reconciliation, I share my friend Cathy's reflection. May a willingness to hear the Truth and to work for Reconciliation be the basis for all our interactions with Indigenous People who have suffered so much because of past abuse and neglect and the forcing of foreign world views that were not in keeping with their respect for all people and Creator's creation.
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When I was mulling over ideas for a sermon for our challenging reading today, I was doing a crossword and I read this clue: Face Facts, 6 letters. Answer? Be real. And I thought, that's what Jesus is doing in this passage from Mark as he teaches his disciples and us. Face facts. Sin and evil are real. There's no sugar coating it.
Tomorrow is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The truth and reconciliation process and the day marking it is a time to face the facts of the tragic legacy of residential schools and a long history of injustice towards Indigenous people. Over the last few decades many of us in this country were waking up to facing the facts of these harms. I know I was, having never been exposed to history from an indigenous point of view. It has been an uncomfortable wake up call as we think about our history as a country.
Last year I also led the service for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and I spoke about my own journey of reconciliation. My journey and my reactions were painful at times, and beautiful at times. I experienced growth and change. We do grow. We increase our awareness, our understanding, our compassion. This is good. And as time marches on we will continue to grow and get better and better. The world will get better and better. Kinder, safer, better for all. More equality. More caring and sharing.
At least that's how I used to think the world worked. Progress. Maybe a few setbacks. Dr. Martin Luther King said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”. In popular movies and books that I like, the good guys ultimately win over evil. The Psalms and other scripture often talk about the goodness of God prevailing. Psalm 27 says, “I am sure I shall see the goodness of our God in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13).
And I believe that with all my heart. But at the same time, as I age, as I see what's happening in the world, I think I've been naïve to believe that things will always get better. I remember the moment I lost my naïve optimism. It was the 2016 US election. Then there was the pandemic and more and more polarization on social media and wars and political discord and environmental destruction with no evidence that humanity will turn it around. Increasing homelessness. Increasing addiction. Increasing anger and random acts of violence. A young generation awash in anxiety. Backlashes to issues I thought were progressing. The complication of doing what we think is the right thing and the confusion when the ripple effects turn out to be the wrong thing. The dangers of black and white thinking.
Does anyone else feel this way? I know they do because I've heard lots of people talk about not looking forward to the future in this current time. It's easy to feel despair when we think things are getting worse. But difficult times present an opportunity; an opportunity to face facts. To be real. To look at some hard truths. Jesus was not one to shy away from talking hard truths. Talking about sin and evil, like in our reading today. It sure can be uncomfortable. So bear with the discomfort while I explore it, but know that I'll get around to some good news as well, because Jesus is also all about good news.
Sin is a word I sort of rejected many years ago. The sin and redemption model of Christianity was very harsh and hard to relate to, frankly. I tried to be a good person. I didn't think I'd racked up a lot of big sins. The thought of people I loved, or even anyone, going to hell because they were so called sinners or they didn't believe in Christ didn't make sense to me. The word sin can be very triggering for people who associate it with fire and brimstone preachers who judge everyone who doesn't fit into their very narrow view of what is acceptable. I remember a mentor talking about how the prayer of confession in church would be more helpful if it became a prayer of affirmation for all those people who had trouble feeling worthy. That made sense to me. The image of God as a harsh judge who punished sin was gradually replaced in my imagination by a more loving God who loves us in all that we are. I began to see that getting better and better in an effort to become perfect is not a requirement to earn God's love.
This was all very important for me to address my own feelings of unworthiness. But gradually, as I became more grounded, I began to consider the concept of sin again with more nuance. What was it in me that didn't do the good I wanted to do, but the harmful things that I do not want to do, as Paul says in Romans? Why did I feel stuck so much of the time and not the person I wanted to be? Why did I feel close to God one day, and completely distant the next? Why couldn't I understand myself?
Answering all that required me to look within, at all the faults and compulsions and shadows that hide there. Doing that with the security that God loves me no matter what, allowed me to admit I'm a flawed human being and not try to pretend otherwise. And while I do my best to correct what is hampering me or harming others, I'm never going to reach perfection. Can I learn to accept myself as God does, even as the loser that I am?
I heard a story once that struck a chord in me. A spiritual teacher named James Finley has problems with being forgetful and disorganized and he went to give a talk one evening and realized he'd forgotten all his notes. So he had to quickly jot some thoughts down just before he went on and in exasperation at himself, he talked to God saying, “God, am I ever going to get over this problem of not getting it all together?” and he heard God reply, “It's not looking good, Jim. But I love you anyway.” I loved that story. I felt something relax in me when I heard it. My striving for perfection for getting better and better all the time wasn't likely going to work nor was it a necessity to my being okay.
So the word sin for me became another way of saying my human limitations. Flaws that hamper me and harm others, whether intentionally or not. And yes, I can work on these things as best I can to grow in understanding and compassion. But first and foremost I have to humbly acknowledge them.
So what is Jesus saying in our reading today about cutting off our hand or foot or taking out our eye if it causes us to lose our faith rather than be thrown into hell? Well, I'm not sure, but one thing seems clear and it's that Jesus is telling us to take sin seriously. To face facts. To be real. To practice telling the truth about our lives, as we said in the prayer of confession this morning.
But there is more to sin than just recognizing our own faults. There is sin in the rest of humanity, in society. This is where my naïve optimism that the world was getting nicer and nicer kind of crashed as I wonder if that is even possible for humanity.
I came across a book in the library whose title caught my eye. It was “I Don't Believe in Atheists ” by Chris Hedges. In it he talks about the belief in our society that we progress morally as a species. The belief that science and reason will save us. That we think humans are “the culmination...of centuries of human advancement, rather than creatures unable to escape from the irrevocable follies and blunders of human nature.” Unless we face the facts of the sinfulness in the human condition, we will ignore or minimize catastrophes, thinking eventually things will get better. I think this has been true of the climate crisis or war, with us thinking “we'll figure it out in time” or “we are better than that now” while it has become clear that we haven't figured it out in time and that we are not better than that. While I do see the amazing goodness in people and am optimistic that our better natures can prevail, I think it's important to be real that when given the opportunity and in many circumstances, people can behave very, very badly. How many people, famous and otherwise, have I admired, heroes to me even, who have been exposed in scandal? Too many to count.
Hedges writes, “We
have nothing to fear from those who do or do not believe in God; we have much
to fear from those who do not believe in sin. The concept of sin is a
stark acknowledgement that we can never be omnipotent, that we are bound and
limited by human flaws and self-interest.” By acknowledging and being alert to
sin in humanity and society, we are better prepared to address it, work to
limit it, and not sweep it under the rug. Being awake to humans' propensity to cause harm means we are more
awake to the harms humans are causing, preventing us from hiding in a
comfortable bubble while we passively wait for the world to change. It's like
the work to look at our own individual faults and flaws. We become clear-eyed
about sin and evil in the world, not in a despairing way and not in a way that
leaves us feeling nothing but guilt, but in a real way that gives us courage to
understand it and to stand up to it. Just as Jesus did.
For that we need to be rooted in
hope. As Jesus was. But before I talk about that I'll mention one more idea
from the Christ Hedges' book because it fits with our reading.
Hedges talks about the dangerous path of fundamentalist religion that needs to convert or overcome non-believers even by violent means. The Crusades of the Middle Ages, witch burnings, the Spanish Inquisition, the missionaries in the new world. And on and on into our present time. But Hedges argues that just as dangerous are the new atheists who have a utopian belief that science and reason will allow humanity to master its destiny and everyone standing in the way of that need to be cancelled or overcome, including and especially, religious people. He says these two groups, the fundamentalists and the more extreme and vocal atheists, both peddle in absolutes and call for the conversion or eradication of those who aren't on-side. I find there is more and more of that “our side vs your side” in today's world and I find it disturbing. People who feel they are on the right side of history can be very scathing about those who they feel are on the wrong side of history. Those who think they are right can be violent towards those they think are wrong, no matter what the issue. “If you're not with us, you're part of the problem and we can't associate with you,” seems to be the attitude.
Jesus warns about this in the first part of our reading when the disciples were a little peeved with those weren't in their group but were driving out demons. Jesus told them to let those demon-expellers be. It would soon be clear enough who was legitimate and who wasn't. I think this is a warning to us not to be too quick to dismiss those who aren't in the correct group or don't think the way we do. This is the lesson of small communities who have to get along with everyone, no matter what their politics or religious beliefs are, if they are to have any kind of community life. “Have the salt of friendship among yourselves, and live in peace with one another,” Jesus says at the end of our reading.
Be real about sin but live in hope that God's goodness will prevail. Be clear-eyed about human frailty but live in peace with one another. And while I didn't finish the Chris Hedges' book, I couldn't help thinking that there was something missing in what he was saying. I think he was missing love. The power of love to transform our frailties into a power for good. Yes, the world has big problems and this will never change. We progress morally, we fall back. And on and on it goes. But we don't need to despair because somehow God is present in all of it. The suffering and the goodness. The human weakness and the courage. The arc of the moral universe bending towards justice. Thanks be to God for all that we are, and all that we can be, but mostly for all that we are. May we be real with ourselves and our humanity, just as real as God is and hope is and love is. Amen.
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