Grounded Cross Bearing -Lent 2B

 

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action (#59 and 60) were directed at church leaders and church practice.  Leaders and churches are called to teach, create resources, and educate their bodies for truth and reconciliation work. At a study conference two years ago Martin Lutheran University College theologian, Dr. Allen Jorgensen, taught East Coast pastors the characteristics of leaders who work reconciliation. One of these characteristics I would like to model this morning:

the characteristic is responsibility for personal location.

 

I am who I am because of my connection to the land where I spent my formative years. This was never so clear to me as when I moved to my first parish in New Denmark, NB.  Don’t misunderstand me, the land of the Tobique and Klokkendhal hill are beautiful, but I was homesick; homesick for big bodies of water, cedar trees and jack pines, limestone rock that lies horizontally, glacier affected landscapes, lake affect snow, fresh water salmon runs, tall standing cornfields interspersed with fields of cows, swarms of noisy red ring black birds and armies of bullfrogs that sing the sun down.  

My spirit was homesick because of how I related to the land from which I came; my relationship to it affected how I connected to creation, others, and Mystery – God. I had met God in places, sensed God’s presence, knew of spaces that held Mystery and healing; the land grounded me, my interpretations, my actions, my relationships. I knew its poetry, its scenery, its smells and textures, its seasons.

I am grateful for the land which formed me – the land of the Chippewa of Nawash known as Neyaashiinigmiing; ancestral and unceded territory of the Saugeen Ojibway.

For me the spirit of the land is part of who I am. When I read scripture I generally connect it to landscapes, smells, textures, experiences from where I was born and grew up. When I hear the story of Abraham, I remember him leaving Ur of the Chaldeans, his home, and travelling to an unknown place: I can see the landscape changing from known to unknown and the grief that accompanies that; like my moving from a land of lakes to the hill country of North-Western NB. When Jesus is in a boat on the Sea of Galilee, I imagine a boat on Georgine Bay – when the boat faced a storm, I re-experience the mighty thunderstorms that roll across Lake Huron, crashing on Sauble Beach. When the disciples are out and about walking from place to place I hear their conversation over the gurgling of water from Inglis Falls, foot steps skirting crevices, trilliums and jack-in-the-pulpits; and the way being framed by large cedars, with the disciples swatting at mosquitos.

 

This morning Jesus is teaching the disciples and then invites the crowd to gather round. There is no context of place other than a mention (before the text we heard) that Jesus and the disciples are visiting the villages around Caesarea Philippi.  Lots of walking. Lots of movement. This unidentified ‘where’ – this land- is significant in not being specific. When in Jerusalem, or going up to Jerusalem, Jesus is on a specific mission related to the Hebrew understanding of land, power, covenant, and the seat of God. Here in ‘non-specific’ land in villages around a Roman named city, Jesus talks about following, being disciples, and what this journey will entail. The words are spoken in a place, or non-place, thus including all people, all creatures- outside of the rules of religion and ideas of political or ethnic nationhood.

Jesus taught:  Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up my cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life must lose it, but whoever loses their life for the sake of the gospel will save it.

What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet  forfeit their soul? What can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

Our Sunday Lenten theme, ‘Sojourners in the Land,’ has me hear the gospel in a new way.  Following and taking up the cross of Christ is understood through being rooted and connected to the land.

So often, I hear ungrounded reflections on Jesus’ words, were people interpret taking up the cross to mean bearing one’s cross; interpreted as loving the prickly people in our lives, suffering with chronic illness, bearing the burden of looking after the aging, settling in an unfulfilling job because it pays the bills, or rescuing family that can’t seem to shake bad-luck or poor decisions.

 Connected to the land, this is not what Jesus is referring to when calling listeners to take up my cross and follow me.  Taking up the cross – following Jesus is about journeying – sojourning in the land toward our own death – sojourning meaning a living out of God’s kindom in the world; bringing the kindom near, in the present, to the land where we are. It is not, however, just a ‘now’ project.  Sojourning in the land takes into consideration our relationship with creation and the land, being conscious of what we leave behind as garbage and what we grow as good news and spirit – those things that build the kindom of God.  In God’s covenant making with Abram, the father of many, the promises are not just about Abraham – a covenant is made for generation upon generation.  Psalm 22 is paired with the readings for today; it reminds us that we are called to consider ‘future generations.’ Indigenous practice connects making decisions now based on the impact for the seventh generation down the line; like the health of the environment, the welfare of the people, the spirit of the land. 

One way of taking up Jesus’ cross and following is taking responsibility for personal location. My location is the work of seven generations before me, and participation in the creation of seven generations into the future. That is a cosmic amount of time and a heavy responsibility. How I sojourn in the land – my practices of reconciliation, my relation to the earth and the environment , and the good news I choose to grow – will affect my and your great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and neighbours.

 

Christians have spent much of their history focused -not on reconciliation, relationship with the earth, good news-  but rather on sin. Today Christian communities still spend much time muddling in sin; talking in terms of movement away from sin, away from guilt; where the starting point for conversation about God and faith is sin. When we think of faith in this direction we become preoccupied with sin, we get stuck in a mire that acts like quicksand: ranking sin, judging our neighbours, deciding what is or is not sin, feeling guilt, shame, using our own works to try to get out, bondage, weight, resentment, God’s judgement. This takes considerable energy and hinders our ability to sojourn, and answer the call to take up Jesus’ cross and follow.

 As Lutherans I would hope that you have heard and have a sense of a different starting place, a different direction of movement.  As people of God we are not asked to dwell in the past, to get bogged down in sin;  we are baptised -and in that washing we die to self to rise and live resurrection; our focus becomes living faith where we start in the waters of baptism and sojourn through life moving toward grace;  and a fuller experience of grace.

Do you sense the difference in the phrases: ‘away from sin’ verses ‘moving to grace?’

Consider the cross of reconciliation. The journey of reconciliation is forward focused moving to grace, to a place of reconciled relationship. It is a journey that will take time, effort, and continued walking side by side with each other.  Today in school history lessons, children are hearing more voices, more sides of the story. Europeans are talked about as settlers. Settler language is a truth, however if we continue to think of ourselves as settlers that does not help the work of reconciliation; moving forward requires sojourners in relationship with people, land, and the spirit of both – so that generations from now are in better relationship with people and land than those relationships are presently.

 

I have been reading a book by Rodger Kamenetz reflecting on Jewish mysticism.  The book comments that for most of its history Judaism has been a landless religion.  Even though the texts talk about promised land – people experienced wandering in the desert, hundreds of years of exile, occupation by foreign powers, living in diaspora around the world.   Promised land was a concept, interpreted according to Rabbi Abraham Heschel, into a mystical idea where the sacred had to be found in time rather than space; thus the importance of keeping Sabbath, a “cathedral in time.”

We gather on Sunday mornings in a ‘cathedral in time,’ this week some of us in the church building, but our gathering is not just connected to this piece of property, this tiny piece of land in Mi’kmaki; ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaw people.  We are connected in relationship -across the land, connecting virtually and in person – we come together bearing with us the peoples and the land from which we grew; we come to explore how to be sojourners, moving to grace. Hand-in-hand we challenge and support each other to take up the responsibility of personal location, being in covenant with God, by taking up the cross of reconciliation with people and creation- working and sojourning in the land with hearts to better our relationships;  so that  grace will bloom in the seventh generation.