Whoever is not against us is for us

Each week in my Church and Ministry course we look at the weekly gospel lesson from the lectionary. This week it was a passage from Mark (9:39-50). The disciples have just told Jesus that they saw someone casting out demons in his name and they tried to stop the man because he was not following Jesus. Jesus, however, tells them not to stop the man..."whoever is not against us is for us." This short story is followed by admonitions against committing wrongdoings.

Tonight we had a guest speaker - an ordained priest in the Anglican Church who is also Cree and a residential school survivor. Although he spent most of the class speaking of aboriginal history in general he also shared some of his own stories with us. He offered us a complex view of the role the residential school had played in his own life. Initially he only had positive things to say about this experience - he received a good education, he learned to play football and hockey. Later on in the class someone asked him about his own discernment process, how he had come to be an Anglican priest, and how he reconciled this with his identity as an aboriginal person. In this moment he shared with us that he had indeed suffered severe physical abuse while he was at the residential school but that he now sees these experiences as a blessing in his life. These experiences have allowed him to identify with those to whom he ministers. It was so impressive for me to see how he had been able to take such negative experiences and find goodness in them. Obviously not an easy task and many people struggle to make meaning of traumatic experiences in their own lives and to move beyond them - of course never forgetting (and nor should they be forgotten). In terms of discernment, he emphasised how it important it is to first know yourself. It's hard to imagine becoming a leader in a church that has caused you so much pain. But knowing who he is as a native person and who he is as a Christian allowed him to work through this process and to redeem his experiences. Invaluable insights.

Returning to Jesus' words: "whoever is not against us is for us." I wish this message was proclaimed more loudly these days. I think we're much more accustomed to hearing "either you're for us or you're against us." Wouldn't the world be such a better place if we adhered to the first statement. What would Canada look like today if our ancestors hadn't mistreated the aboriginal people as history has played out? We certainly can't say the reserves were created to protect us from these 'dangerous indians who were out to get us'; it simply is not true. What if we realised and truly believed that we're all in this together. Just because we have different cultures and traditions does not mean that we're in opposition. Our goals may not be 100% identical yet I would argue that most of us crave for similar ends. We want to live in peace, we want to be loved, we want the freedom to express ourselves and our beliefs without fear of judgement or reprisal. If only we were more blind to our differences and more able to recognise our similarities.

In this course our weekly assignment is to reflect upon what we have experienced in class. These are just my initial thoughts - rough indeed. It truly pains me that aboriginal rights don't seem to be a mainstream issue in Canada. We seem blind to the injustices that exist in our own backyard. Why are aboriginal rights not a more prominent social justice issue?