Reflection by David for October 23, 2011

One of the first life lessons I remember learning occurred when I was 13 or 14. I've told the story before of the Residential School run by the Presbyterian Church in Canada in Kenora where I grew up. Dad had been part of a group who tried to match the students of the school with families in the town. We had taken a young lad into our home, a lad a couple of years older than me, and I had come to know him a bit and considered him a friend. However, when this young lad became of age, he refused to acknowledge me when we saw each other on the street, and he even called me names in front of his friends, other students from the school. I remember feeling hurt at the time.

I also remember thinking that all of dad's emphasis on love in his sermons and his talking didn't seem to amount to anything in terms of changing this young man's life. I had loved that young man, or at least I had tried to in ways that were meaningful to a 12-year old boy. The learning for me when I came of age was that love is difficult if there is no justice to go a long with it. I could love that young lad, but as long as the injustice of the residential school went on unchecked, as long as the dominant culture of the day was trying to destroy 1st Nations culture, and the dominant culture is still active today, the love I had in my heart wasn't enough. That was a tough lesson for a 13-year old boy!

As I have thought more fully about that experience over the years and the need for justice with love to be real in the world, I realized that the kind of love I had in my heart was only part of the love that is required. If we truly love our neighbour as ourselves, it requires of us to go beyond the mere loving into the realm of changing the world to make things right. Love invites us into a new reality, a reality of open eyes seeing the world for what it is. Love invites us to live differently in the world; love explodes our prejudices, exposes our patronizing attitudes, and makes us new. Jesus, and then Paul after him, Mary and the other leaders of the early Church, spoke and wrote about love changing us; this world-changing, justice-making kind of love is what I think they were talking about. They all embodied this love, too, just as we must do.

We sometimes hide behind the word love when something else is going on; love really does change us, the true love that is the essence of God. The book, The Help, helps us learn that love changes us; it calls us to make justice, to work with others in creating a new reality, a new life. For those of you who haven't yet read The Help, it is about a group of women in small town 1962 Mississippi, white and African-American; one of the young white women has learned a thing or two at university about the world; she is unhappy with the state of the world in her hometown and so, being an aspiring writer, decides to write about those African-American women who were domestic workers and the daily prejudice that they experienced. The point is made over and over that the families said they "loved" their "help," but it was a patronizing, "I'm superior to you"-kind of love, if that is love. It was not the kind of love of which Jesus spoke— the love of neighbour as we love ourselves. It was a love that didn't create justice, except, as we learn from the story, the dawning of what love means for the white writer and the African-American women in the story who want to publish the stories of domestic workers. It is a powerful story of how true love changes us.

Stan McKay, a former Moderator in our Church in the mid-90's, was a gentle and loving prophet. He grew up in Northern Manitoba, a 1st Nations man. I was at the Fredericton General Council that elected him Moderator back in 1993 and had the privilege of meeting him a number of times when he traveled across our church from Coast to Coast to Coast. His prophetic challenge to us all was that we must walk together, side by side. He taught us that love does change us, but it must be a love that is WITH another. One can't be out in front leading. We must walk together, arm in arm, seeking the path together that we are called to take. This is love with justice; this is loving your neighbour as you love yourself. This is loving God, this action of linking arms and being together across the potential boundaries of our differences. When you are side by side, or in a talking circle, you must listen with openness, talk with humility, and be part of the effort to create a new community.

It is hard work, this loving, this walking side by side, this creating a new community, this call to be vulnerable and open to change. And yet paradoxically, it is not so hard for it involves knowing that we ourselves are loved. The love we experience compels us to share that love. Remember the song in "Godspell" called By My Side? The lyrics have always touched me in that deep place where beauty and life meet and where hope and justice embrace:

Let me skip the road with you
        I can dare myself.
I'll put a pebble in my shoe
And watch me walk
        I can walk and walk!

I shall call the pebble Dare.
We will talk, we will talk together about walking.
        Dare shall be carried
And when we both have had enough,
        I will take him from shoe singing:
            "Meet your new road!"
Then I'll take your hand, finally glad
        That you are here by my side...

As the embodiment of God's love, Jesus created community. He reached beyond boundaries of convention and culture. He embraced the unclean, living out the Jubilee dream of God's call to be a new people, a people of love with justice. The pebble in the shoe, as I've always interpreted it, is the power of love. The pebble in our shoes is the reminder to love, to create justice, to live in hope. Every time we step with that pebble in our shoes, it is the reminder to love. But more than that, it is the reminder that we are loved. Jesus created community, crossing boundaries, because he loved people and assured them that they were loved and loveable.

How do we translate love with justice into our political life, into the economics of the world? How do we translate our love into justice in the world? Is the new 99% Movement a new beginning for a new community in our world?

When we were at presbytery last weekend in Fernie, there was no "Occupy Fernie" event there. We maybe should have had our own event, but we didn't. From reading about the 99% Movement, I've learned that it is a broad-based movement, a citizen's coalition that is conveying the message that love with justice is calling us all to live a new reality. Some of the social and economic analysis that is being done has exposed the truth that the 1% wealthiest of our world have access to those in power and put such political pressure on leaders that economic policies are always skewed toward the wealthy and away from the rest of us. Barack Obama, who created such a stir when he was campaigning for the presidency, talked of changing Washington. Well he has not done that; he has surrounded himself with advisors who seek to generate wealth for the wealthy only. Obama has not changed the culture of Washington politics. And people are fed up. People in the Middle East were fed up with the repressive regimes and have done something about it. In Canada, our Prime Minister seems to be leading us in ways that emulate the US, in deregulating institutions that have protected consumers and the average citizen; it is not a truly conserving path, for it does not conserve the interests of all citizens.

As we are loved—and we are loved—love is real in our world—we love in whatever ways we can. As we are loved, we open our hearts to love others as we ourselves seek to be loved. It may be that our energy and our ability is that we love those in our neighbourhoods, those in the communities that we seek out. It may be that we have energy to take that love onto another stage where we seek to love those who we do not know but who live in refugee camps, those who know only cardboard for walls, those who have no walls, those who have been abandoned and left alone. "Love God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all strength. And love your neighbour as yourself." With love, a deep love with justice, the world can change!

"We dare to live the Way of Jesus, embodying the Love of God."

Blessings and peace to all! Amen.