The Day We Live In
This week we observed Canada’s first annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. It was a day not of protest, nor of debate. Mostly it was a day of listening. Listening to the voices of the Indigenous people of this land, taking time really to hear what they say, and letting their words percolate a bit within us before we try to say anything in response.
Like the story of how it came to be Orange Shirt Day.
The orange shirt as a symbol of
solidarity and companionship in the journey towards truth and
reconciliation. It comes from the story
of Phyllis Jack Webstad, who attended residential school in the 1970’s. She tells the story in her own words:
“I went to the Mission [St Joseph’s Residential School in Williams Lake BC] for one school year in 1973/1974,” she says. “I had just turned 6 years old. I lived with my grandmother on the Dog Creek reserve. We never had very much money, but somehow my granny managed to buy me a new outfit to go to the Mission school. I remember [her taking me] to Robinson’s store and me picking out a shiny orange shirt. It had string laced up in front, and was so bright and exciting – just like I felt to be going to school!
"When I got to the Mission, they stripped me, and took away my clothes, including the orange shirt! I never wore it [or saw it] again. I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t give it back to me, it was mine! The color orange has always reminded me of that and how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and how I felt like I was worth nothing. All of us little children were crying and no one cared.
"I went to a treatment centre for healing when I was 27 and have been on this healing journey since then. I finally get it, that the feeling of worthlessness and insignificance, ingrained in me from my first day at the mission, affected the way I lived my life for many years. Even now, when I know nothing could be further than the truth, I still sometimes feel that I don’t matter.
"I am honoured to be able to tell my story so that others may benefit and understand, and maybe other survivors will feel comfortable enough to share their stories.”
Reading: I Corinthians 11:17-28
In addition to this week marking the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, this Sunday is also World-Wide Communion Sunday – a day first observed almost a century ago to help Christians remember our unity in Christ, and to encourage us in our world-wide witness to a new way of being for the well-being of all. The reading is some instruction by Paul in the meaning of what we call communion – what the early church called The Lord’s Supper.
In the early church, members would often gather for meals together along with their worship. Each would bring their own meal, and they would sit down and eat – more or less, together. Sometimes more together; other times, less. At least in Corinth, the members started calling these meals “the Lord’s Supper.” But Paul is not happy with them doing that, given the way their “shared meals” go.
Even without sitting down to communion together, we can think about what it means and what it teaches us – especially following the first annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
The reading is in the eleventh chapter
of his first Letter to the Corinthians, verses 17-28.
In the following instructions, I do not praise you, because your meetings for worship actually do more harm than good.
In the first place, I’m told there are opposing groups in your meetings, with different groups primarily identifying themselves against one another… Which means when you meet together, it is not really the Lord’s Supper you are eating. For as you eat, each of you goes ahead with your own meal, so that some [the poorer among you] are hungry and others [the richer among you] are full to the brim – even drunk. If that’s the way you “eat together” you would be better off doing it in the privacy of your houses, and not sham yourselves or the ones who have little.
What do you expect me to say about this? Shall I praise you? Of course not!
For this is what we are taught: that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took a piece of bread, gave thanks to God, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this yourself, in memory of me.”
In the same way, after the supper he took the cup and said, “This cup is God’s new covenant, sealed with my blood. Whenever you drink it, remember me and my way.”
This means that every time you eat this
bread and drink from this cup, you are bearing witness to the Lord’s dying,
until he comes.
Reflection
A bit of bread, broken. A sip of wine – juice of crushed grapes, poured out and shared.
How do these things save our souls, create community, and heal the world? And why is it that bringing and giving someone a loaf of bread – a whole loaf of something nice and tasty, is a sign of friendship and neighbourly care, but that breaking bread together – even the most common bread, is a sign and an experience of deep community, of reconciliation and healing, of holy peace shared together, of shalom?
Years ago, in my training for ministry I spent a summer in supervised pastoral education at a residential mental health facility in Toronto. Every morning I pedalled my bike from home to the facility. I spent the day trying to grow into a chaplain and a minister of good news in a setting I did not feel at home in. At the end of the day I pedalled back home, wondering if I had learned anything at all, or been of any good use to anyone.
There was such a gap between me and the residents – a gap and a difference that they felt as well, that was a real barrier to anything life-giving or life-changing happening for them and for me.
Until one day on my way home I had an accident. Riding along Queen Street I tried to change lanes to make a left turn. The front wheel of my bike caught in a street car track, and as I tried to force it out while still riding, so I could make my left turn, the wheel jammed. As it did, the back end of the bike rose up, I flipped forward over the handle bars, and landed hard on the pavement on my left side, breaking my fall with my arm.
X-rays a few hours later showed some cracked bones in my left wrist and elbow. So, the next day at the facility, I led my usual mid-day chapel service for the residents of the ward that I was responsible to, with my left wrist in a cast and left arm in a sling. And it was the best service of the summer, because suddenly I was broken, too, and my brokenness created an opening for God to be real, near, and loving for them, and for me.
No one wants to be broken. But as long as the world is at it is, and people are as they are, it’s the broken who often are the world’s healers. They are the ones who – when we welcome them, accept them, and let them speak to us, save our souls – draw us into community, and help heal the world that we make.
This is what we remember about Jesus in communion. That Jesus is betrayed by us and made to suffer at our hands. That he is broken by us and for us. That his spirit is crushed, and his life is poured out for our salvation. And that as we remember and reflect on this, we in turn are broken open in new ways to know and to accept the love of God for all of us.
It’s a mystery – one of the most holy and healing of mysteries in our history.
The mystery is that those who are wounded and broken – either by the randomness of life or by us, are not just a problem to be solved. Rather, they are witnesses to truth whose lives and whose stories – when we welcome them, accept them, and let them speak to us, can be our salvation. Can save us from our sins. Can help us be hungry for new life. Can draw us into new community together. And can help heal the world that we make.
The residential school survivors. The poor. Those who suffer prejudice of any kind and oppression in our society. The mentally ill. The victims of poor elder care.
The mystery is that all these and more who are broken and cast aside in some way – whether by the randomness of life or by human sinfulness, are not just problems to be solved. The bodies that are broken, the spirits that are crushed, and the lives that are poured out are sacred and holy things. They are witnesses whose lives and whose stories – when they are remembered, shared, and listened to – can save our precious souls, draw us into new community, and help heal the world that we make together.
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