Looking Forward to June 30, 2019

As this Sunday is the day before Canada Day and a week after National Indigenous People Day we are sort of combining the two as we are invited to reflect on what we are as a nation, what we want to be as a nation, and what our role as members of a faith community might be in that.

The Scripture readings this Sunday are:

• Psalm 69:17-36
• Psalm 72 (VU p.790)
• Revelation 21:1-8

The Sermon title is: Who Belongs?

Early Thoughts: National days are a challenge for the church.  History has shown that when the church thinks it needs to celebrate patriotism to the nation it tends to move away from the values of the Kingdom. And yet in addition to being citizens of the Kingdom of God we are also citizens of a country. Scripture calls us to live where we are placed and, in the words of Jeremiah to the exiles, "seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare" (Jeremiah 29:7).

How are we called to be a part of Canada? How are we called to work for the welfare of the many communities of which we are a part?

In some ways I think this has been a more complicated question for the United Church because in our founding mythology is this understanding that we were to be a truly national church, a "church with the soul of a nation" as Phyllis Airhart termed it in titling her look at our history. In our attempt to be that truly national church we have indeed helped shape the nation through our advocacy for the social gospel. But in our understanding of what it meant to be a national church we as a denomination have also fallen prey to the idea that we had to share the goal of turning everybody into good White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. And that led us into a questionable space, particularly in our relationship with those people who had been here long before any Methodists or Presbyterians set foot on the continent.

I think that as citizens of God's Kingdom we are called to promote the values of the Kingdom, the kingdom where, as Isaiah has told us, the wolf will lie down with the lamb and a child will play over the den of the adder and they will not hurt or destroy on all [God's] holy mountain. That is what God is at work doing, leading us to the Kingdom. I believe that as citizens of the Kingdom specifically living in a country named Canada we live out that calling by helping to shape this country, to call it out when it fails to uphold the values of the Kingdom and lament where we have failed, to offer a different perspective and approach, to face the past and present honestly and commit ourselves to a new future, and to share the word of hope in a new heaven and a new earth. We need to be both bold and humble.

I believe God is at work in the United Church, God is at work in Canada. Sometimes God is at work despite the United Church, despite the policies of the nation. What kind of a nation is God calling us to help build?
--Gord