“Like a Ceremony”
Luke 6:6-13
Rev. Ha Na Park, (Immanuel United Church, Winnipeg.)
Let’s play 4 Pics 1 Word. It’s a puzzle game to find the common link that binds the four pictures together. The goal is to guess that word.
(Show the pictures of)
Wedding ceremony
Tea ceremony
Olympic games ceremony
Soccer player’s goal ceremony (In the English-speaking world, people say it is a goal celebration. Koreans call it a goal ceremony)
Ceremony.
Today, I would like to talk about the wisdom I learned from an indigenous spiritual elder, Susan Beaver, about how we can embrace each moment of our lives, “like a ceremony.”
To be specific, how we can do conflict like a ceremony. For example, in our scripture this morning, Jesus says, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you…”. We can perceive that situation (being not welcome, being refused) as a conflict.
This past summer, I was elected as a Commissioner to the 43rd General Council, held in May, and was sent to Oshawa, Ontario, to participate. It was a great experience; many “Ephphatha” moments happened, with everyone’s eyes, ears, mind, and spirit being opened.
One of the highlights of each General Council meeting, which takes place every three years, is that the approximately 300 commissioners who are sent from the 13 Conferences of the United Church of Canada elect a new moderator who will serve in the next triennium. Susan Beaver was one of the 10 moderator nominees. I deeply hoped that she could be our new moderator. I supported her because of her reputation and my own knowledge of her as a deeply spiritually-gifted person, and, as her colleague said, a “revolutionary pastor”. But those were not the only reasons for my support. I thought we needed her. The United Church discerns that now is a “Kairos time” for us to walk humbly towards reconciliation and to make two paths (the indigenous church and the settler church) become one journey. I believe we would be able to move closer to reconciliation when the wisdom for ‘making two paths become one journey’ comes from indigenous knowledge, and the leadership of the indigenous church.
Susan Beaver and Richard Bott, who would be the new moderator, 2019-21, and for whom I have equal respect, were the last two waiting for the final votes to be made, before one of them would be announced as the United Church’s new moderator.
The final votes were counted.
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| At GC43, the commissioners used the clicker when they voted. Technology! |
The new moderator was announced. It had been planned for an indigenous group who were at GC43 to welcome the new moderator with a drumming ceremony right after the announcement.
After the voting was done, feeling some deep emotions, I joined the Lodge gathering where Susan was scheduled to teach Indigenous wisdom to those who gathered during the lunch break, a meeting which was scheduled no matter whether Susan was elected or not.
If I had been Susan I most likely would have felt disappointed and tired, after the long election process, but she didn’t look like it. Quite the opposite - her teaching was densely embroidered with many inspiring words of wisdom, and one of them, in particular, touched me. She said, “We can do conflict like a ceremony.”
“We can do conflict like a ceremony.”
I asked her to say more, after the others left.
“What do you mean by ceremony? How do we do that?”
Susan said to me, “We can do conflict like a ceremony, if you have peace in your hands, peace in your heart, peace in your mouth, peace in your mind, because peace is the presence of the Creator.”
I share this story with you because I believe this indigenous wisdom resonates well with Christ’s wisdom on peace, conflict and our mission as Christians.
Luke 10:5, Jesus says, “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.” Luke 6: 11, “If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” the dust off your feet means, the dust raised by walking to that person’s home.
In our lives, each of us has been a traveler, a stranger, a sojourner at some point, more than once, even if we may not have been travelling through a harsh, unfamiliar environment. We have been offered sustenance and shelter, and we have given the same to others. The hosts and homes of a community offer water, food, a place to rest, to those whom we don’t know. That’s called sacred hospitality.
The tradition of sacred hospitality, the tradition of offering sanctuary for travellers, resident aliens, strangers, sojourners is not an exclusively Christian one. Judaism has it. Buddhism has it. I believe all world religions teach the tradition of offering kindness and sacred hospitality to travellers and strangers.
Like sacred hospitality, especially before the first contact with the settlers, Indigenous people were practicing healing on a regular basis within their traditional ceremonies, offering them for themselves and others. Under the Potlatch Law & section 141 of the Indian Act those ceremonies were made illegal. People were imprisoned for practicing them. In our time, we see the immeasurable benefits of those ceremonies, because they could be useful in healing the effects of trauma that impacts Indigenous people today.
Joyce Underwood, an Indigenous elder, had a big influence on her students. “When you stop and do ceremony you literally clear your mind, your heart and your spirit; the answers come freely to you.”
These sacred traditions of hospitality and ceremonies remind us that we are called to be the “healed healers.”
We have to accept that there will be times of conflict when we do the work our faith demands. For example, when we work for social change, when we engage in hard, important conversations, when we care for others and offer hospitality without conditions or prerequisites. On the page, it’s a beautiful idea, but in practice, doing anything unconditionally is very challenging! All works of love go through conflict at some point. (When I say conflict, I am aware that conflict is not always negative. In some circumstances, it is a necessary dynamic, a sign that we are dealing with the real concern seriously, in the right way.)
In this case, Indigenous elders and Jesus seem to point to the same Moon — a thin sliver of hope, waxing on the horizon). ‘We must struggle hard, but at the same time we must be the most easy-going beings in the universe”. Susan added, “We all deserve living a good, joyful life.”
Peace is our mission. Mission means the small pieces of God’s work we can do. Our mission is to become a changed human being, in order to help others change. Jesus says, I send you two-by-two, to be healed and to be healers.
Luke 10: 5, “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.”
Luke 6: 11 “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” Don’t stay if you’re not welcome, but don’t run away at the first sign of resistance. Don’t assume that conflict is the end of the discussion – it may be the beginning. And remember peace…Do conflict like a ceremony. If you have peace in your hands, peace in your heart, peace in your mouth, peace in your heart, you’re ok.
"So the disciples went out and proclaimed the peace of the Kingdom of God. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.”
Let us do everything in our mission like a ceremony.
Amen.
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