This will be my last post on the KnoxTalks Blog. I am leaving Knox, Nepean and moving to New Brunswick. I have enjoyed having the opportunity to share my thoughts with you.
I would like to thank Shelley Rose, who has faithfully transcribed my notes into full text each week since the beginning of COVID, despite being a member of another congregation! Your work has been greatly appreciated, Shelley.
Our Best Foot Forward
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 6:1-13
As I’ve mentioned in the past, Canada Day brings mixed feelings. I remember the unbridled pride and joy from Expo 67, Centennial year, when I was too young to be aware of politics or social issues, and as proud as I am to be Canadian, we are all aware of our ongoing issues with Indigenous peoples and the things in our history we cannot ignore, which make us anything but proud.
Remember the 1997 movie Air Force 1? Harrison Ford played the US president, who was also a skilled pilot. Terrorists tried to kidnap him on the presidential airplane: it was all very exciting and unapologetically nationalistic. The director was Wolfgang Petersen, a German, who said that he couldn’t make this movie about Germany because of its troubling history but he felt he could about America, so he revelled in unrestrained patriotism.
At this point I think most of us have become very skeptical about unrestrained patriotism; we may even associate it with sinister groups.
But I also recognize that we miss it; the feeling that we can embrace something we belong to as unreservedly good, whether that be our nation or our church.
The fact remains that within the nations of the world, Canada has done some remarkable things and has set an example for other nations of how to try to build a diverse and inclusive society; while offering people space on territory we have taken, often in unscrupulous ways.
In many ways Canada is being more successful at embodying what I would identify as Christian values than most other places in the world, which is good, but we must acknowledge that there is a dark side.
Similarly, the United Church, which once operated many of those problematic Residential Schools, has tried to become a leader in reconciliation. This is interesting, because if you are directly involved in the process, it becomes easy to see how far we still have to go. But at the same time, we can see how we are ahead of the crowd and I’m hopeful that our creation of an autonomous indigenous church within the United Church will show us what real progress can look like.
Or more specifically, we can look at Knox, where we have always wanted to be warm and welcoming and where we have discovered that we have some serious work to do in order to grow into that vision. It’s not only about Indigenous issues: all our relationships need reconciliation and redemption. Our Indigenous partners are helping us realize that face, and learn what it means to make it real.
So what do we do? How do we go forward with this mix of feelings: this history where we’ve tried to live up to high ideals and yet where we have to acknowledge that we’ve fallen short?
The lesson from 2 Corinthians is helpful. Written almost 2000 years ago (so the missionaries who settled here certainly had access to it, as have all ages of the Christian church) Paul presents an attitude to others that he, as a missionary, used to inform the way he approached people: he came as a servant, respectfully, willing to endure all kinds of hardships and false accusations as people reacted negatively to his message.
His attitude exists in stark contrast to so much of our history, both for our nation and our church. Our historical attitude was sometimes so arrogant that other people simply didn’t count as real and could be consigned to slavery or organized attempts to wipe out their culture and replace it with a sad imitation our own cultural practises. The very opposite of Paul’s example to all Christians of every age.
Respect, honesty, integrity, and love are the values we are given on which to base all our relationships. I am very grateful that so many of the values taught in the scriptures are being supported in the ideals our society now promotes, although, sadly, many of these are now being challenged and trolled as being “weak” or “unfair”.
I believe that our only way forward is to address our past (and present) honestly and work for reconciliation so we can have a balance of celebrating our accomplishments and acknowledging how we still have to make progress to live up to our ideals.
This may be uncomfortable for us and it will require us to be really honest with ourselves. Another deeply important Christian teaching involves repentance and forgiveness. We haven’t always been effective with this idea: sometimes we’ve let people off the hook, saying they can confess to God and just be forgiven.
The examples we have in scripture aren’t so simple. They fit the model of reconciliation better: we are encouraged to make peace with each other; acknowledge how we have wronged each other; and seek forgiveness, not just from God, but from the other person we’ve hurt.
It’s not easy. But it is important because it is the only way to build a family, a group, even a nation that truly reflects God’s love and the other values Paul showed us.
I chose the sermon title “Our Best Foot Forward” deliberately because it tends to make us think about presenting the shiniest aspect of ourselves to others, making ourselves look most attractive. But, a better understanding would be that our “best foot” includes our willingness to deal with the less attractive parts of our existence and our refusal to buy into a society that not only divides people into armed camps of “us and them”, but also denies any criticism that might be made, no matter how legitimate it might be.
We should celebrate the good that we are doing and at the same time we should work to do better. We should put our best foot forward as we go into the future, which will include coming to terms with our misdeeds, reconciling with the people we have harmed and the people who have harmed us, as much as we are able, since reconciliation can only succeed when all parties work to make it happen.
And from the particular perspective of Christianity, I think it should involve embracing those values Paul talked about where we present ourselves honestly, respectfully, without arrogance or presumption; where we go forward in a way that truly welcomes and deals with people as they are rather than as we want to force them to be.
We can only imagine how things might have been different if we had embodied those values in each of our relationships in the distant or recent past, but it’s never too late to start. The future is stretching out ahead of us and it’s in our power to make our nation, our denomination and our home congregation even better, as we put our best foot forward into the future.
Amen.
Knox United Church Nepean 