Despite the numerous mishaps of our Christian tradition, one big gift it has given us is the witness and salvation in and through Jesus Christ, a divine reality within which we can place our own lives, and from which we draw unique strength and guidance, mercy and grace, meaning and depth and purpose. This crucial story of God in Jesus is hugely helpful in carrying the pain and hardship of life. Such a bigger story provides a sense of dignity, helping us to trust that, no matter what befalls us, we belong to a loving God who helps us draw meaning from life’s turmoil.
I think that is why Advent begins in the dark, when the days are still getting shorter. The Advent Scriptures proclaimed on the four Sundays leading up to Christmas begin with dire warnings about end-times, far from consumer frenzy and glowing greeting cards, far from cozy lights and jolly Christmas carols. We hear harsh words from the prophets, and we meet John the Baptist who announced the coming of a saviour. Curiously, John the Baptist never makes it in school Christmas pageants. Despite appearing in all four Gospels, dear John is yet to be featured on a Hallmark Christmas card. That’s because he’s weird and creepy, and doesn’t let us skip to the party before examining our hearts. Indeed, Advent brings a reality check, rubbing our noses into the fragile nature of our existence.
One of the great illusions we fall into is that we are in control. The pandemic, and now increasing occurrences of climate disasters, are doing a great job in shattering our naïve illusions of control and of agency. A tiny virus, atmospheric rivers, droughts, flooding and mudslides are evaporating all simplistic assumptions and expectations. We are shaken from complacency, discovering anew our vulnerability, at the mercy of forces far greater than we are.
There is of course a real irony in such a discovery. The irony is that most people in the world live acutely with the realization that their existence is precarious: people in war-torn countries, victims of oppression and injustice, refugees from wars, climate change or natural disasters, all are faced with forces far greater than themselves every day. Indigenous fellow-Canadians live with the same stark truth: they know their lives, their culture, their language and spirituality to be deprived of security and stability and comfort. Those of us who are well-off and privileged are often oblivious to the precarious nature of our lives.
Crazy, wild-haired John the Baptist is after one thing: God’s type of joy. And God’s type of joy requires an answer to a crucial question: What is joy if it isn’t drenched in God’s truth and justice? Sure, we can settle for the world’s cheap joy promised by consumer frenzy and saccharine parties. We can have a great Christmas without seeking truth and justice. But that type of Christmas would not honour God, and would not honour our Lord’s holy birth.
Today, in our beloved Canada, we are reckoning with deep wounds which the birth of our great nation has inflicted upon the First Peoples of this land. If we truly care for God’s type of joy to fill our hearts we have no choice but to engage this reckoning. In fact, the longer we resist opening our minds and hearts, the longer the virus of inter-generational trauma risks obstructing even the best attempts at healing our nation. Each Canadian has an important role to play in this process. If we truly care for God’s joy in our hearts and for the healing of the nation, we have no choice but to walk into the reckoning with our hearts’ eyes and ears wide-open.
John the Baptist urged his listeners to do exactly that. In preparation for the coming of the Messiah, John announced a baptism of repentance, signalling a change to a new way of living. Cut to the core, his listeners asked him right away: “What should we do now?” Bear fruits worthy of repentance, John replies. John points them to honesty, reflected in concrete acts of justice. Genuine repentance leads to acts of justice and integrity.
Summoned first by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and more recently by children in unmarked graves, what would John the Baptist ask of us in today’s world, in today’s Canada? It is mightily urgent for our personal Christian integrity and credibility, and for our own country’s future that we make every possible effort to gain a new understanding of the history of this land, especially about the social, cultural, and spiritual price paid by Indigenous Peoples, still today.
As we prepare to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace in our homes and in our churches, we are encouraged to make room at our family tables for our Indigenous relatives. Listen and learn. Become aware of racist attitudes embedded in our culture, our communities, and our way of seeing things. Pray for the grace to listen to Indigenous people, to their past and present experience.
Resolve to learn about Indigenous culture and ways; there is a richness there that can help us become more human, more in touch with creation and better able to live well in sustainable ways on this land. Read, ponder and discuss the Treaties and the TRC’s Calls to Action – its principles of reconciliation, and discern how to engage these. Learn about the need for systemic change in education, access to healthcare and to clean water, in restorative justice, in addressing inter-generational trauma, in treaty rights and responsibilities, and in addressing the needs of Indigenous youth. Explore in conversation with Indigenous people how we can walk together in a good way. Always heed the words from Indigenous people themselves, “nothing about us without us.”
Dismissing all forms of denial, polite piety, and cheap cheer, will we allow the radical honesty of Scripture to make us honest, too? It matters little that none of us were directly to blame for the abuse in Indian Residential Schools. What matters is that we together as churches, and as one nation under heaven, have inherited a historical burden of enormous proportions. Today we are called to own the sin of our ancestors, to seek repentance and reconciliation together.
So this Christmas, commit to God’s ways of justice and reconciliation. Choose the better story of Jesus, the story that can sustain us in hard times, the story that pushes us into an examination of our national history, the story of God’s love which gave birth to our very being, the story that can hold us close, giving meaning and direction and purpose, the story that grants mercy and new beginnings each day. Only reconciled hearts and a healed nation can give glory to God. Merry Christmas.
For more on how we can live reconciliation, listen to:
Church Leaders bringing Indigenous Education to Rural Churches
A written follow-up article to the radio interview can be found here.
Grace@Sixty 