Easter 7

God be with you all. It is good to acknowledge that this, the seventh Sunday in Easter, is also the first day of National Indigenous History Month and the first day of Pride month. The reading from Acts today picks up from last week. Paul and Silas are in Philippi, the city that Lydia lives in, and they are accosted by a slave woman who has what the text calls a spirit of divination. For days she follows them through the city until Paul has enough and exercises the spirit from her. Her owners see this, and knowing her fortune-telling powers are gone, go to the authorities and falsely accuse Paul and Silas which ends in them being imprisoned and tortured. While in prison, they continue to pray, sing, and teach the other prisoners about God. Suddenly, the earth shakes, and all the chains fall off and all the prison doors open. They end up preventing the jailor from committing suicide and he and his whole family are baptized. This story has a lot of different facets. We hear about the power of Paul to exercise, the impacts of Roman colonialism, and God’s liberating power in a very literal sense. As I went through the readings for today, I couldn’t stop coming back to this one. Imagining how each person felt in the story. Paul and Silas had already seen many wonders, and they seem pretty unphased about this one. We hear about the fear of the jailor. A huge earthquake and then the whole prison that he is supposed to be responsible for opens at once. It would have been a terrifying experience. It probably would have been a bit jarring for the other prisoners too. A sense of relief at being freed, but a sense of awe and fear, wondering how it could possibly happen. I also think that this story is particularly relevant for today. In Canada, Indigenous people are severely over-represented in the criminal justice system. A Department of Justice report from 2018 stated that, while only making up 4 per cent of the population, Indigenous people made up 28 per cent of the population of federal institutions. It is worse when you home in on certain groups. For example, Indigenous women make up 42 per cent of the population in provincial institutions and 40 per cent of the population in federal institutions. Over half of all girls in custody in the youth justice system are Indigenous. This isn’t a new phenomenon, either. Since the beginning of colonialism on Turtle Island, criminalization of Indigenous people has been the norm. When the border was set up, Indigenous people were imprisoned and fined for trading across the prairies as they had always done. Only a few years after the confederation, Canada sent in a huge force to kill and arrest the Métis for standing up for their rights. That conflict eventually led to 1885 with the arrest and subsequent execution of leaders like Louis Riel of the Métis and Wandering Spirit of the Nehiyaw Pwat or Iron Confederacy. Similar things happened in 1990 with the Oka Crisis, when the Canadian military was sent in to arrest and scatter the Mohawk because a private investor wanted to build a golf course on a traditional burial ground. In the summer of 1995, a group of Secwepemc people gathered on a plot of traditional land near Gustafsen Lake to participate in a Sun Dance. The RCMP were sent in to arrest them when they refused to leave, and the police went as far as planting explosive devices along the road to stop anyone from coming and going before they could be arrested. A vehicle was bombed, and the two Indigenous people survived but the RCMP shot and killed a dog that was just trying to run away. In Ipperwash 1995, a group of Stony Point First Nation citizens occupied a small area of park land. The land was originally taken by the military in 1942, and despite promises to give it back, they never did and turned it into a park instead. During the occupation, Dudley George was walking with a flashlight and was gunned down by an Ontario Provincial Police officer. It took until 2016 for the government to return that area to the First Nation. The same stories are true for 2SLGBTQ+ people in Canada. Everett George Clipper was a mechanic from the Northwest Territories who, in 1960, was arrested simply based on the fact that he was a gay man. He was eventually released, but in 1965 while being questioned about a crime he didn’t commit, he mentioned that he had slept with another man. He was subsequently arrested and labelled a ‘dangerous sexual offender’ and imprisoned again. In Toronto in 1981, 300 men were arrested in police raids. And for decades, 2SLGBTQ+ rights advocates were imprisoned and harassed by police. Today, 2SLGBTQ+ people face persecution, particularly in legislation around gender identity, book banning, curriculum changes, and conversion therapy. Justice is, and should be, deeply important to us as Christians. In the Psalm today, we hear that justice and righteousness are the foundation of God’s throne. In the story of Paul and Silas, we see how God responds to injustice. It is not through slow, incremental change of the Roman justice system. It is not quiet either. God shakes the very earth, and all at once the chains fall and the doors open. God does not smite the jailor, but instead Paul and Silas stay with him, meet his family, and ultimately baptize them. The relationship between Paul, Silas, and the jailor shows us that liberation is possible, and it does not mean unnecessary violence or hatred. There is a way that people on opposite sides of issues can come together and can develop relationships. This call to be one is also echoed in the Jesus’s prayer in the Gospel reading for today. Jesus petitions for all of us to be one, just as Him and the Parent are one. What do these examples and lessons mean for us today? They can mean collaboration, dialogue with those we may not agree with, and trying to find a way forward. Often in conversations with ‘the other side’, Indigenous and 2SLGBTQ+ people face a lot of abuse. Hate is irrational and can lead to absolutely no willingness to even speak or see Indigenous and 2SLGBTQ+ people as equal. As a church, we can help to mitigate that. We can stand with Indigenous and 2SLGBTQ+ people when they speak out for themselves. We can be sites of community gathering and learning. We can be advocates for those who are over criminalized and oppressed through legislation and rhetoric. All we need to do is look to the examples of our ancestors in faith, and the words of our Teacher, our Saviour and Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.