Good morning! I know what you’re thinking – this must be a mistake. She isn’t Ben, or Boston, or Dave, or Pastor Eli, or Pastor Lyndon. I, too, thought it was a mistake when I received an email asking if I would preach for today’s service. When I saw the email subject line, I thought for sure that Pastor Lyndon had emailed me by accident. However, I want to thank him, as well as Boston, for thinking of me and trusting me to share some words this morning.
I know most of you, but for those I do not, my name is Rebecca. I am a member here are Church of the Cross, along with my husband, Ben. He is in seminary and is usually the one up here preaching. I will admit that my initial reaction to being asked to preach today was immediate fear. My comfort place over the past years has been doing academic presentations, both for my Masters thesis and now throughout law school. But, I didn’t think you would want to go through theoretical frameworks related to very niche academic topics on a Sunday morning. So, I have tried to prepare something a little bit more interesting, but I humbly ask for your patience and openness as I preach for my first time.
I’d like to talk about something that a mentor of mine shared with me a few years ago and which has continued to resurface throughout my life, time and time again: the idea of “conflicting truths”. The human experience is complex. We experience multiple emotions, many at the same time. I’m sure many of you have experienced grief at the passing of a loved one, while also feeling some sort of relief if that person had been in pain. We often feel sadness at the closing of a chapter, but excitement at the start of a new one. We can love someone at the same time as feeling hurt, or pain from that person’s actions. We are constantly experiencing “conflicting truths”. Each conflicting emotion we feel is true, and valid. One doesn’t always triumph over the other. They just coexist, in conflict, in tension.
Today, our service honours the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which our country will observe on Tuesday this week. The day honours survivors of residential schools, their families, their communities, and most importantly, the children who never returned home. It is a day where we are asked to remember how the Canadian government drafted, legislated, and supported policies and laws that attempted to assimilate and eradicate Indigenous cultures and peoples across Turtle Island, or what we call Canada. We are asked to remember and acknowledge the pain and incredible harm that the Canadian state caused towards Indigenous children, their families, and their communities, which have had repercussions over multiple generations.
We are also living in a very unique, and potentially pivotal, historical moment. This is probably the first time in my lifetime where there is a real threat from our neighbours to the south and “he who shall not be named” to Canada’s sovereignty. We are in a new era where Canadians are only buying products that are made here, we are boycotting travel to the United States in unprecedented numbers, we are focusing on strengthening our trade relationships with other countries, trying to inch away from our historical dependence on the US. We are flying the Canadian flag with pride and as an assertion of our sovereignty.
So, how do we protect and uphold Canada’s sovereignty in an extremely volatile and fragile geo-political moment, while acknowledging that this same Canadian state has so poorly treated and actively harmed those who have cared for this land for millennia before the arrival of European settlers? These are conflicting truths. They coexist, and they make us uncomfortable because they are not easily reconcilable. It makes us feel confused, unsure of how to maybe position ourselves, or how to speak sometimes about our relationship to what is known as “Canada”. You probably won’t like me for this, and you can decide this is my last time preaching, but I encourage you to sit in that discomfort, especially this week.
As you digest that discomfort, I wanted to share some examples of conflicting truths some Indigenous communities that I’ve had the privilege of working with, face.
Some of you may know this, but I was born and raised in Algonquin territory, in Ottawa, Ontario. My parents came to Turtle Island from Malaysia. My father is Hakka, who are a minority Chinese ethnic group, and my mother is Bidayuh, who are an Indigenous people to the island of Borneo. I grew up listening to stories of my grandparents fighting against the encroachment of corporations and the Malaysian state on our native customary rights land, and I have learned so much from my aunts who fiercely protect our Bidayuh ways of life and customs. This is where my passion for Indigenous rights and self-determination comes from, and why I opted to add a minor in Indigenous Studies to my undergraduate degree, and ultimately decided to pursue a Masters degree for which my thesis discussed the relationship between Indigenous and immigrant newcomers on Turtle island. I feel a strong responsibility to learn from and about the Indigenous peoples of the place that my parents chose to build their home.
A first example I’ll discuss was in 2015, when I was hired to be a Co-Project Manager in a small Anishnabe community in northern Quebec. I lived on reserve for 4 months, with my Co-Project Manager, who was another University of Ottawa student. We were tasked with establishing a community garden on a plot of land outside of the Elder’s lodge, as the community struggled with food insecurity, being located in a fairly remote area of Quebec. In beginning our work, we quickly learned that the Elders in the lodge didn’t support the project because the soil in that area was not conducive to growing anything. They had apparently tried many years ago, but nothing was successful. The Elders suggested that we instead put the garden on a plot of land that was on their traditional territory and not within the actual reserve, but it was only accessible via canoe or boat. At the same time, the younger, generally middle-aged adults in the community who were charged with supervising us, wanted the garden on that plot outside of the Elder’s Lodge regardless of what the Elders said, because they wanted to be able to run programs for the children at the elementary school. A garden that was only accessible via water was not realistic for their programs. Both of these practical realities were true. In the end, we came up with the idea of doing a greenhouse so that there was a better ability to grow food in a somewhat more controlled environment. The greenhouse is still standing and operating apparently quite successfully today, but I’ll admit that I don’t know what the right decision should have been. We tried to come up with a creative solution that addressed all concerns, but I still feel some regret that we weren’t able to incorporate the Elder’s feedback fully.
A second example of conflicting truths comes from my first field school placement for law school. Boston and I are in the joint Indigenous legal orders and Canadian common law program at the University of Victoria. Unlike a regular law degree, ours is 4 years instead of the usual 3 years, because we have two semesters which are field schools. Last March, we spent two weeks in the Northwest Territories. While Boston and I spent time in two different communities, the one I spent time in was grappling with the effect of a proposed all-season road. The community was 220 km from the closest grocery store. Every pay day, community members drive the 440 km round trip to get their groceries for the next two weeks. In the summer, they were reliant on whatever arrived via barge, as the community is only accessible by car or truck on winter road, when the multiple rivers between them and the town with the grocery store were completely frozen. On one hand, an all-season road would provide much needed access to food and other important goods. It also allowed the community to be connected to other communities. However, there is also concern that an all-season road will bring drugs, alcohol, and other violence and danger to their members. Again, both realities are likely true.
The last example I’ll share was during our second field school placement. This September, we spent 10 days in a First Nation north of Toronto, and will return there for another week in November. This community is home to a large, and very successful casino. It was a controversial decision in the community. We heard that many were afraid of increased human trafficking, substance and alcohol use that usually accompanies casinos. Others thought that the economic benefit was worth the risk. We learned that both of these ended up being true. The community did experience increased substance and alcohol use, as well as drug trafficking. Yet, they also had more resources to establish programs that helped people detox and heal and the revenues from the casino are actually shared with First Nations across the entire province, providing much needed resources to smaller communities who are quite rural and isolated. Both realities exist, and there’s not a clear answer on which is better than the other.
My intention in sharing these small snippets of the conflicting truths that some Indigenous communities face, is to say that if they are grappling with difficult decisions regarding their own communities and also at the same time trying to heal from intergenerational scars from residential schools and other assimilationist policies in this country, so too should we be able to sit with the relatively minor discomfort on the important National Day of Truth and Reconciliation that is meant to acknowledge the messiness of our country’s history.
My last point is, what is God’s connection to conflicting truths, and the discomfort we feel when experiencing them? I see a lesson in today’s gospel. On a surface level, the gospel seems to say that if you are like Lazarus: poor, sick, but a follower of Christ, you will find yourself in heaven. If you are like the rich man, who feasts sumptuously every day, is selfish, and does not believe in Christ, you will be tormented in Hades. However, can we not see ourselves in both Lazarus and the rich man? I know that many of us have felt, at least at some point in our lives, excluded by society or a group, we’ve been sick and in need, we have felt hopeless. But we have also, at least at some point in our lives, been selfish, chosen not to share something that we have in abundance. We have doubted the existence of God. Luther would probably say that both Lazarus and the rich man are equally worthy of heaven and of God’s love. In fact, God’s love is freely given to all who want to accept it. I think the gospel is reminding us of perhaps the ultimate conflicting truth: that regardless of what you have done or not done, you are still worthy of God’s love. God is present as we grapple with conflicting truths in our life. God may not have an answer on how to reconcile conflicting emotions, but God is certainly present there with us and I hope you remember that as we honour National Day of Truth and Reconciliation this week.
