Anniversary Sunday at Fifty United Church (Nov, 15, 2020)
Introduction
Anniversary Sunday at Fifty is always the third Sunday in November, to mark the purchase on Nov 20, 1820 of title to the land on which our church is built.
Even though we hold title, we acknowledge this church is built on land that was the traditional territory of the Anishinabewaki, the Attiwonderon, and the Haudenosaunee peoples. This land was ceded to the British Crown in 1792 by Treaty Three with the Mississauga Nation as part of the Between-the-Lakes Purchase.
We remember the First Nations who were here centuries before our arrival, the ways they cared for the land, and they way they used it respectfully for the good of all. We give thanks for them, confess our part in their sorrows, and feel both call and desire to learn to be as brothers and sisters with them in this land and in God’s good will.
Scripture reading: Psalm 122
This week I was imagining the gathering of Fifty Church on Nov 18, 1821 right here to worship God on the first anniversary of their purchase of title to this lot. How happy they must have been. And tired. And hopeful.
Do you think there was a luncheon after worship? All the community was probably invited.
And in worship, what text might have been read? What would the sermon that day be about? Maybe this … Psalm 122:
I was glad when they said to me,
“Let
us go to the house of the Lord!”
Our feet are standing
within
your gates, O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem—built as a city
that
is bound firmly together.
To it the tribes of the Lord go up,
…to
give thanks to the name of the Lord.
For there the thrones for judgment are set up,
the
thrones of the house of David.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
“May
they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls,
and
security within your towers.”
For the sake of all my family and companions
I
will say, “Peace be within you.”
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
I
will seek your good.
Meditation
What a day Nov 18, 1821 must have been. Almost as wonderful as Nov 20 the year before when the papers were signed and title to the land was officially handed over.
This group of settlers had arrived in the area only 25 years earlier – a band of United Empire Loyalists fleeing what seemed to them the deteriorating situation in the newly formed United States of America. They had backed the wrong side in the War of Independence, lost all they had and were no longer welcome there. So, in the 1790’s they fled north and some came to the west shore of Lake Ontario to settle on land only a few years earlier ceded to the British Crown in a treaty with the Mississauga Nation – part of the Between the Lakes Purchase.
It was good land. The families started clearing and ploughing it, sowing crops and building homes, and putting down roots. Community began to form. Methodist circuit riders made the rounds of the area, and in 1796 a group of families began meeting at the Fifty – beside Fifty Creek – for worship and Christian education. They met in homes, in the open, maybe sometimes in a barn, until 25 years later they were meeting on this land purchased for this purpose.
Why did they do it?
I can think of a few reasons.
Having a church – or any religious gathering place – as part of your community, and religion as part of your life is something people do. It’s part of being human. Being a human being means being in touch with, and in relationship with the divine that is at one and the same time beyond us and part of us.
Isn’t that one of the reasons you’re watching this service today? Even when we can’t meet in person in real time together in a building, there’s something in us that wants to connect, and be connected with a Higher Power, with the Mystery beyond us that holds all life together in love, with God.
We do it in part in a magic kind of way – like an amulet or a charm we might carry, to do what we can to ensure God’s special blessing on us, on our families and on our community – especially in times of transition and change, in times of uncertainty, anxiety and unknowing. The Loyalists who came here from the states to the south were entering a new normal as unknown and unsettling as the new normal we are facing and trying to guess at and find our way into today. In a time like this you want something bigger, stronger and wiser than you are, on your side.
But it’s also just to have a good effect on where you are, on the community you are building, and on the life of the community you share with others around you. It’s the salt of the earth and light of the world thing – to do what you can to bring God, God’s word of life and God’s Spirit of love to bear on the life of the place where you are. And buying land to build a church on in the midst of the community was one way of helping to make that mission and that dream more real and a permanent part of the community’s life.
And Fifty certainly has been that – with the tradition of compassionate and wise civic leaders that have emerged from this congregation, the community-enhancing and healing projects that have taken place inside these walls, or after having been hatched in meetings inside the building have been taken out into the community, and in the ways the message preached here has inspired all kinds of enlightened mission and outreach to the world beyond.
When the people of Fifty bought this land in 1820, they planted a light in this community and made a place for it to shine that has not been lost, and has not dimmed over the years – over the centuries. They were – and we are still – salt and light for the community around us.
The danger, of course, is that where there is light there is also shadow. And when you become overly convinced of your own light -- and just your own light, you might just not see the light that is in and that comes through o thers.
One of the bitter fruits harvested almost right away from the Between the Lakes Purchase of 1792 was the Mohawk Institute built in Brantford just 36 years later in 1828 – 8 years after the purchase of this land by Fifty Church. The school in Brantford was built by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England and the Parts Adjacent in America -- with what felt like the best of intentions at the time. It was later turned over to the Anglican Church in Canada, and by the time it was closed in June 1970 it was the oldest continually operated Anglican residential school in the country.
The shadow of that endeavour was long. It went deep into the souls of many people and communities – of the First Nations’ children and families whose lives were irrevocably touched and shaped by it, and of the settlers whose faith led them to create it and maintain it.
Which makes me glad, though, not sad that the Methodists of the Fifty bought this land, built a church here, and that it’s still here after all these years.
Because church, a church building and church worship is not just what we come to, to be blessed and to seek God’s special favour on our lives. Nor is it just a place from which we try to shine a light into a darkened world, and reach out in love and for good – at least, we pray, for good – in the lives of others.
Church, a church building and church worship is also what we come to, to face our own shadow. To find the courage to enter into it and own it. To name our demons. To confess our sins and shortcomings, both intentional and unintentional.
And through that to be led by God – by God’s Word both within and beyond us, by God’s Spirit both within and beyond us – to new life. To new understandings. To new ways of being and relating to others. To a new normal. To whatever the new normal is that we and the world need to find and help fashion together.
It’s good we’re here. It’s good you can be connected by watching this service, and however else you connect with God for the unfolding of whatever new normal we need.
A new normal is what the Loyalist settlers were living towards when they came here in the 1790’s and bought this land for their church in 1820.
A new normal is what we’re looking for again in 2020 on so many levels and in so many areas.
It seems we may be “still crazy – or crazy again, or maybe just still kickin' – after all these years.” At least we’re smart enough to be crazy together, and here together, and still kickin' together with the help of God.
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