Presented to The Salvation Army Alberni Valley Ministries, 02 October 2022, by Major Michael Ramsay
Friday was Orange Shirt Day. It was the second Truth and Reconciliation Day statutory holiday. As a result, we were closed here at The Salvation Army, at the Bread of Life Centre, and at Kuu-us Crisis Line. A number of our people (congregation, staff, volunteers) were involved in the events in town yesterday. Colin’s wife, Sharie, our Mayor, gave a speech; Cherie, our supervisor at the Bread of Life and an hereditary Tseshaht Chief, danced; many of us, clad in orange shirts, walked either or both from the Friendship Centre down to the Harbour Quay where there were speeches, songs, dances and more and/or from the Harbour Quay to Maht Mahs, Tseshaht where there was a meal and much more still. We did this to acknowledge reconciliation. Our passage today, Romans 5:8-11, is about reconciliation:
8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11 Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
This passage, especially Verse 10, speaks about being enemies and this inevitably reminds me of war. Especially these days when the war rhetoric is at such a feverish pitch. War inevitably reminds me of Remembrance Day and the need to never forget and never get drawn into a global catastrophe like the world wars again. Remembrance Day is a key event in our community and in the Royal Canadian Legion’s calendar.
As many of you know I am a Legion chaplain and as such, yesterday, Heather and I were able to be at another event at the Legion: the Tour de Rock dinner. This was great. My roll was to say grace – and for that they gave us a free meal!
The evening was a lot of fun. The Tour De Rock is a cycling fundraiser to help people with cancer. Yesterday, we raised, I believe, around seven thousand dollars for the cause. We also met a few of the cyclists: Ken, the fire chief from Central Saanich, and a police officer from Victoria who had previously served in 51 Division in Toronto which was the same area we worked before we were posted here. And one of the riders was Anna McMillian; she is a news anchor and TV journalist on CTV; she came over and was chatting with Heather for a bit. Many of you know that Heather (age 12) hosts a TV Show (HTV: Heather’s Talk in the Valley) on Shaw TV. At dinner Heather was able to line up a couple guests for her show from people who were sitting at our table: Mike, the Port Alberni fire chief, and Gord, our Member of Parliament. It was good.
Verse 10 of our text today says this: “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” We were Christ’s enemies. When we were not under Christ’s leadership, we were by definition under our own and/or someone else’s leadership. We were not citizens of His kingdom and therefore by our allegiance (and flowing from that possibly even our own actions, deeds, words, and thoughts) we were His enemies.
One might say, “Don’t be silly; I wasn’t God’s enemy! When I didn’t know God, I didn’t do anything against Him. I led a good life. I didn’t hurt anybody. Just because I didn’t serve Him, that doesn’t mean that I was ever God’s enemy, does it?”
The Apostle Paul contrasts two groups of people in his letters: citizens of heaven (people who follow Jesus) whom he calls ‘saints’ and citizens of someplace else (people who don’t follow Jesus) whom he calls ‘sinners’. Paul argues that the sinner, by extension, as a citizen of a nation at war with Christ, is an enemy of God. In this context, a sinner is simply anyone who is not presently experiencing the joys of “life with Christ” because they are not with him, they are with someone else instead (cf. Romans 5:1, 12:12, 14:17, 15:13).
Another good way to understand how we were as “enemies of Christ” could be expressed with a military analogy. We know that countries at war do terrible things. Politicians, soldiers, citizens of countries at war do terrible things – the more a country is losing, the more terrible those atrocities sometimes seem to be – but not only then.
During the second Word War, Canadians even treated our fellow Canadians of German, Italian, and especially Japanese ancestry as our enemies. We confiscated all the assets of Canadians of Japanese origin and moved these citizens into interment camps. (The famous Canadian scientist and environmentalist, David Suzuki, spent part of his early life in a Canadian internment camp.) We treated innocent people as our enemies. As is shown through the official government apologies and tax money paid in reparations by later generations of Canadians who were not even alive during the Second World War, the repercussions and the liability for this rested with all of us.[1]
I am reading a book right now, Girl #85: A Doukhobor Childhood.[2] It tells the story of Canadians of Russian decent here in BC who the government took from their families, banned their language, their culture, their traditions, and put them in residential schools that were more like jails in the latter half of the 20th Century - during the lifetime of many people in this room. And, of course, as we just had Orange Shirt Day on Friday, we all are at least vaguely familiar with the IRS that the various First Nations children were sent to across this country. The one here, run directly by the Canadian government, I understand, was particularly bad. The actions of politicians and others whom we may never have met have caused much damage and made us enemies of people we have never met. As such there has been all kinds of hardships and abuses suffered directly and indirectly and even though some of those responsible (such as the political parties who planned and orchestrated these things and some of the individuals who perpetrated the horrors) were never held to account, all of us have suffered the rift, the division and harm from what happened. Thus the need for reconciliation in Canada.
As the author of Hebrews puts it, in the context of our relationship with God, every time we sin we are taking up arms against Christ (Hebrews 10:28-30). Therefore, as Paul argues in his letter to the Romans, before we served Him, our moral self-government warred perpetually against Christ, whether we knew it or not – and we have suffered the consequence of it (just like Canadians suffered through and still suffer the consequences of interment camps and residential schools). Now, lest we think all is lost and that we cannot possibly be reconciled with each other and God, Paul writes, Romans 5:6, “at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” Verse 8: “but God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Verse 10, “while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” and not only this but, Verse 11, “also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
So here is the thing about reconciliation. There is nothing you and I can possibly do reconcile ourselves to God. The rift is too big; humanity was the perpetrator of that rift and perpetrators are not in a position to initiate reconciliation. We can confess, we can repent, but we cannot reconcile without the full participation of the victim and without forgiveness. As Desmond Tutu says, “there is no future without forgiveness”.[3] Reconciliation is the healing of a rift. It is repairing relationships. It is making things whole again. Reconciliation is never a one-way street. Reconciliation can only occur as people walk side-by-side as brothers and sisters.
Wally Samuel, I believe, said Friday, on Orange Shirt Day that reconciliation begins when we work again, when we have jobs, when we are part of society alongside others. I think of Hereditary Chief J Cook who is a member of Rotary, on the board of Directors of the Sage Haven Society and the Bulldogs. I think of Judge Wolf. I think of Remi, Cherie, Christina, and others who work alongside us everyday as part of our team here. This is reconciliation in action in the Canadian context and the Port Alberni context and in our context here in this place. We have all been offered this great opportunity to live out reconciliation with our friends here whom we love.
It is the same with you and I and God. Jesus has made it possible for you and I to be reconciled to God. He has made it possible for you and I to come and live and work with and for Him. He has forgiven us. As such He invites us to join Him in His work, in our work, by loving our neighbour, serving others. by -for example- working on the food truck, serving in the soup kitchen, volunteering at the Thrift Store, in the Food Bank, at the seniors homes, with the kids club and Bible studies and if we have done all that we can possibly do with any of those things and we can’t possibly do anymore we can still live out our reconciled lives with Christ by tithing, read our Bibles, and just spending time cuddling up to God, sharing with Him the news and the joys of our life here. We are invited to reunite with our Heavenly Father. We are invited to live reconciled lives. As such, it is my hope that we will all live out our lives fully reconciled with God even today.
Let us pray.
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[1] Michael Ramsay, Salvogesis Guidebook to Romans Road (The Salvation Army: Vancouver Island, BC, 2022), Chapter 5
[2] Helen Chernoff freeman, Girl #85: A Doukhobor Childhood (FriesenPress, Victoria, BC, 2013)
[3] Desmond Tutu. No Future Without Forgiveness (New York, NY, USA, Double Day, 1999)
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