(This is the reflection I delivered on Jun 15, 2025, as part of a service led by our Living In Right Relations Committee.)
Gestalt is a great word. It is a German term that expresses the idea that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
It is more than math; I can tell you with confidence that the numbers one, four, nine and two total up to 16 without surprising you, and the order doesn’t even matter, but if I were to day “Do Do So So La La So,” very few of us would be likely to pick up on the fact that these are the notes that make up “Twinkle Twinkle.” A list of tones is not the same thing as a melody.
I mention gestalt because I initially agreed to preach today knowing it was Father’s Day. Afterwards I learned that it is also Indigenous Day of Prayer, which I thought was a week later. And then I learned that my daughter Fenya and my friend Troy were going to be
singing a Gregorian chant associated with Epiphany.
As I reflected on all these things, along with the three scriptural readings we heard, I thought to myself, “surely there must be some sort of through-line here, some unifying element.”
Looking back over my notes this morning, I am no longer so sure, but I will let you be the judge!
Let me begin by admitting that reconciliation has not been a lifelong ambition or goal of mine, and I am eternally grateful to this church, and its leadership, past and present, who have made such efforts to educate me on the need for reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous peoples.
Prior to this education I would never have thought of myself as racist, and in fairness I probably wasn’t, but I certainly hadn’t recognized or come to terms with my own privilege as a white, Christian, settler person. I had never thought about how much advantage I, personally, had drawn from social structures and laws and political systems born out of colonialism, nor the stark disparity between my own experiences and someone born at the same time but on a reserve.
My Indigenous counterpart was far, far more likely to have experienced poverty, food insecurity, diminished educational opportunities and less access to clean drinking water, as well as a much higher chance of incarceration. Indigenous people make up about 5% of Canada’s population, but 32% of Federal inmates identify as such. Since 2022, Indigenous women have accounted for half of all female Federal prisoners.
And this is before you even get to our own church’s involvement in residential schools, including here in our own community. Facing our complicity with a cultural genocide is no easy task and not for the faint-hearted.
It was with these disparities and this history in mind that I took my entire family to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission event in Edmonton in April of 2014. I wanted to learn more, but more critically, I felt it was important to have white faces there in the crowd, in acknowledgment of our involvement in those problems, whether covert or overt, explicit or implicit.
With the best of intentions, I suggested we watch a film called “Rhymes for Young Ghouls”, starring Devery Jacobs long before she appeared on Reservation Dogs. The room was packed, with well over a hundred people in attendance, and perhaps slightly more indigenous than non-indigenous viewers.
The movie depicts a teenage Mi'kmaq girl in the 1970s who uses the money she earns from her uncle’s grow-op the pay a ‘truancy tax’ to the corrupt Indian agent so she can stay out of the local residential school, St. Dymphna’s.
But eventually Aila’s stash of money is stolen and she is brought to the school she has hated her entire life, and in a scene at once both mundane and so shocking that it borders on the traumatic, her long braids are cut off by the nuns at the school.
Now, for those of you who don’t know, long hair is a powerful symbol of wisdom and maturity in many aboriginal cultures, so when those heavy shears start sawing painfully away at Aila’s braids, and you are forced to watch the tormented face of this helpless, angry young woman, the response from the audience was profound.
Gasps.
A ragged, shuddering intake of breath.
A low moan.
Sniffling.
A muffled sob.
We had been warned that there was some violence in the film and that many of the scenes could be triggering for survivors of residential schools, so they had passed around boxes of tissues beforehand. I took two or three, maybe four, but still ended up having to use my shirtsleeve, which I am sure comes as no surprise.
Most interestingly though, they asked us not to dispose of these tear-soaked clumps of paper in the garbage, but to place them into paper bags to they could be burned in the sacred fire burning outside the conference centre, as a sacrifice and offering to Creator.
After adding my own tear cloths to the collection after the movie, I reflected on the wisdom of imbuing them with such significance, the humble sincerity of being joined together by empathy and sadness, and recognizing the importance of this shared catharsis. And I felt salved by this, and realized I was encountering God - epiphany.
And I wasn’t the only one. The movie had become much too intense for 11 year-old Glory well before this scene, so Audrey had taken her out of the viewing room, which, I have to tell you, did not make me feel like a very good father at all. An Indigenous woman saw Audrey comforting Glory and asked to speak to them.
She revealed that she was a residential school survivor and had also found the movie too much for her to take. But she also looked directly at Glory and told her how proud she was that someone so young would come to the TRC to see what she could and to show support and to be seen. Out of this seemingly random connection between a family and a stranger, more tears were shed. And when I heard about it afterwards, I thought - yet another epiphany.
Epiphany, sometimes called theophany, means the showing of God in the world, and it is most commonly associated with the visit of the Magi to the newborn Jesus, the first recognition of Christ’s divinity by Gentiles. The feast of Epiphany also recognizes Christ’s baptism and the wedding at Cana where he performed his first miracle by turning water into wine. In all three of these events, the presence of God is inarguable, while in my own experiences it is far more subjective, but no less definite in my mind.
God, though unknowable and undefinable in many ways, is undeniable in others.
Paul’s experience in our reading from Acts illustrates this pretty well. In the preceding verses which we didn’t hear today, it is established that Paul and the Athenians approach spirituality (and perhaps life itself) from drastically different perspectives. Paul is dismayed by the idolatry o n display in the massive Greek city, and while he debated with Epicureans and Stoics, others said, “What does this pretentious babbler want to say?”
A sentiment some of you may be experiencing at this very moment…
Paul goes to the Areopagus, a prominent hill in Athens whose name means ‘Hill of Ares’ (the Greek war god). Biblical scholars are unsure as to whether Luke is referring to the hill geographically or to either of the Athenian councils that resided there at times. Regardless, Paul gets a chance to make his case, telling the Athenians that God does not live in any shrine, and that the altar inscribed ‘to an unknown god’ might well be referring to his own deity, the creator of the world and everything in it. He reminds them that God lives within each one of us, and how even their own poets have claimed to be His offspring.
Paul underscores his argument by explaining how God has raised humanity’s ultimate judge from the dead, and if you press on to verse 32, you hear how some of the Athenians scoffed at this - but not all of them.
Some others said “We will hear you again about this,” and some even ended up joining Paul.
I don’t believe the excerpt from Acts 17 is there because of the promise of judgement or event he conversion of some Athenians, I think it fits today because of the notion that God does not exist solely among one group or tribe or race of people - God exists within every one of us.
Those of us fortunate enough to recognize this are both proud and humble and grateful for it, as we hear in Psalm 103. He is compassionate and merciful, which is reassuring when we reflect on the wrongs we have done to others, both collectively and individually, often in His name.
How good to hear, “He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever. He does not punish us for all our sins; he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve. “ But when we hear how “the Lord gives righteousness and justice to all who are treated unfairly,” it is not enough to sit back and just wait for it to happen. Furthermore, it is not enough to wallow in guilt about the sins of the past if you are unwilling to work on solutions in the present.
Which brings us to our reading from Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth, where he urges everyone to look forward and not back. “The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of he who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.”
The past wrongs must never be forgotten, but there is a chance they can be forgiven. I can’t think of a better example of this than a residential school survivor telling an 11 year old white girl that she is proud of her for coming to bear witness, to participate in reconciliation.
Reconciliation comes from the Latin, and literally means, ‘to bring back together’, to restore friendly relations. It implies that people with differences were not always, and certainly do not need to remain, separate and apart. The 2nd Corinthians passage is actually referring to the reconciliation between humanity and their Creator, but there is no reason it can’t apply to the mending of earthly relations as well.
And so, on this Indigeneous day of prayer, this is my prayer for us:
That while we acknowledge our involvement in the wrongs of the past, including residential schools, we do not remain paralyzed by it.
That our interactions, both collectively and individually, with Canada’s first peoples is guided by the knowledge that the damage done by those wrongs echoes on, and that healing will take the work of generations.
That while injustice still pervades the relations between settlers and indigenous peoples, we work to address it, starting with the 94 Calls to Action given to us by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
And that the gestures of reconciliation that we have adopted, such as the land acknowledgement that opens every service, never be allowed to devolve into rote recitations but remain an opportunity for sincere reflection.
When we do these things, I am confident of the resulting Epiphany. God will be shown to us, just as They were shown to the Magi. Just as They were revealed to those who saw Christ baptized in the Jordan, or who witnessed His miracle at Cana. Just as my family felt God’s presence while weeping in the presence of strangers.
And make no mistake: there will be tears yet to come. But by God’s grace, they will turn from tears of anger, and frustration, and shame, and sorrow into tears of gratitude and tears of joy, and those tears will heal every one of us who weeps.
Amen
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Readings
ACTS 17:22-31 God who Made the World and everything in it.
Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely spiritual you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all peoples to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps fumble about for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,‘For we, too, are his offspring.’
“Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
Psalm 103 vs 1-13 God fills life with good things
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and do not forget all his benefits—
who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the Pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good as long as you live
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
The Lord works vindication
and justice for all who are oppressed.
He made known his ways to Moses,
his acts to the people of Israel.
The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always accuse,
nor will he keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far he removes our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion for his children,
so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him.
2 Corinthians 5:16–21
From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be
sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
