Sermon by Rev. Russell Daye
St. Andrew's United Church, Halifax

Our Covenant with First Nations

Nehemiah 8:1-10; I Corinthians 12:12-31
Second Sunday of ‘Rejoice, Respond!’

We begin this morning the second week of our ‘Rejoice, Respond!’ stewardship campaign, and this will be the second offering in a four part sermon series. Last week I urged us to move ‘from fear to abundance’ and told you that, while we do want a little more of your money, what this church needs most from you is your energy, your passion, and your commitment.

Commitment, when you stop to think about it, is a remarkable thing. What makes us commit to a husband or a wife? What makes us commit to a life partner even though we might end up nursing him through a decade-long slide into dementia somewhere down the line? What makes someone commit to a church over the long haul even though that means putting up with church politics, suffering the firebrand sermons of the preacher who thinks he has to pound a little righteousness or justice into you, and giving up good money that the Lord knows you could spend on a thousand other things.

From where does commitment come? Is it love? Is it need? Is it a sense of duty? Is it a drive to improve things? In the world of the Bible there is a clear answer to this question. That answer is ‘covenant.’ In the Hebrew Scriptures we find a sequence of covenants: the covenant, marked by a rainbow, made between God and all living creatures after the waters of the great flood have receded; the covenant God makes with Abraham and Sarah to create a nation of their offspring; and the covenant made at Mount Sinai which gave the Law of Moses and taught Israel how to live. In the New Testament, we see covenant renewed in the passion of Jesus the Christ: ‘Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”’

Those who are parties to a covenant are beholden to treat each other with care, peace, and justice – even when they do not like each other very much. They are beholden to live the golden rule in relation to each other. Sometimes we become selective in our honouring of covenant. I think there is a message to us in the fact that the first biblical covenant is the all-inclusive one, the rainbow covenant between God and all creatures – which also means between us and all creatures. Any covenant you make – with Christ, with your church, with your life partner – is grounded in this original covenant and compels you to exercise care, peace, and justice with all.

Of course, history is largely a testament to the breaking of this covenant. War and strife seem to have been the norm. That is why the scene is so emotionally charged when Ezra stands before Israel to read the Torah, the Law of Moses. This act of reading is heroic. It is an attempt to restore the national covenant – Israel’s constitution, Israel’s faith, Israel’s very life – in the wake a tragedy that came within a hair’s breadth of destroying the nation of Israel.

In 587 BCE the armies of Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and its temple and sent the Jews into exile. The edifice of the faith, the social infrastructure, the physical infrastructure, the very fabric of the nation were torn asunder. A half-century later, when Persia defeated Babylon, the Israelites were permitted to return home to rebuild temple and city. Forty-two thousand left Babylon for home, but the task of rebuilding was almost impossible, not only because of the physical destruction but because of fifty years of corrosion into their culture and the faith at its core. The first decades of effort met with great frustration. How do you rebuild a nation with no law, no constitution, no heart of faith to beat in its centre?

Ezra’s act of reading resuscitated that heart. He read the Torah from dawn till midday and the people wept. The people worshiped with their heads bowed and their tears refreshed the ground for new life. And then they ate fat and drank sweet wine and gave portions to the poor, and the day was made holy.

Oh what joy. But not for everyone. Not all of the tears falling to the earth were tears of joy. For what this passage leaves out is that the restoration of the national covenant meant the breaking of thousands of smaller, more intimate ones. Not all of the Israelites driven into exile in Babylon had married Jewish spouses. Not all of the Israelites born in exile had married members of their tribe. The first waves of returnees found their land inhabited by other peoples and some had married with them. And now Ezra’s interpretation of the Law was telling the men of Israel that they had to set aside their foreign wives. They had to send away their Babylonian wives. They had to cast off their Canaanite wives. They had to break up their families. They had to tear mothers from their children. They had to abandon their life partners into a life marked by insecurity, poverty, and danger.

What happened to these women? We do not know. The text does not bother to instruct us. Some may have returned to their family of origin. Some may have banded together for survival and support in their grief. Many likely came to a bad end. Many of them must have wondered bitterly, ‘what is this law, this covenant that binds a people together by saying to us “you do not belong to the body; we have no need of you.”’

Last Sunday and Monday I went on retreat with some representatives and leaders of peoples who are very accustomed to hearing ‘you do not belong to the body; we have no need of you.’ I spent an evening and a morning listening to the stories of nations that have been told repeatedly, ‘you do not belong to the body; we have no need of you.’ These nations are called Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Wabanaki. They too are parties to the original covenant. They were the first peoples to live the covenant with the Great Father and all creatures on this land. They too have an ancient law and timeless stories and belief in a primordial covenant with the Creator.

Their wisdom tells them that this covenant includes all human beings: the yellow-skinned peoples of the east; the black-skinned peoples of the south; the white-skinned peoples of the north; the aboriginal peoples in all directions. Their memory tells them that they made specific covenants with the white-skinned newcomers to their land, called treaties. In 1725, 1749, 1752, 1760, and 1761 they made treaties of peace, friendship, justice, and commerce, as did First Nations distributed from sea to sea to sea of this vast country.

In the two and one half centuries since the making of these covenants, they have been betrayed at almost every turn. Friendship has been spurned and replaced with suspicion. Peace has been denied, and replaced with strife. Justice has been refused, and replaced with oppression. Commerce has been choked as access to land and sea have been curtailed. The two and one half centuries since the making of these treaties have been a period of great and enforced exile for Indigenous people: exile from their land; exile of their children into residential schools; exile from their traditional culture except in blessed islands of continuity; and exile from basic human fellowship with the ever growing white society around them.

But the Spirit of our First Nations is strong; its back has not been broken, and recent decades have marked the beginning of the return from exile: the return to and revitalisation of ancient spirituality; the reclaiming of rights to land, sea, and forest; the reassertion of their autonomy and power as nations; and, in small but real measure, the opening of fellowship with non-aboriginal neighbours.

As our First Nations return from exile they are faced with the same question that the Israelites faced upon their return from Babylon; ‘what will be our relationship to our neighbours?’ In ancient Israel a fierce debate about this question blazed for generations. Ezra’s answer was: ‘break ties with these foreigners.’ Others counselled instead a cherishing of ties. The whole book of Ruth can be read as a rebuttal of Ezra and Nehemiah.

I am not going to stand here today and say how our aboriginal neighbours should relate to us. I have no right or desire to do so. Instead, I’m going to suggest how we should relate to First Nations as we watch their strong and moving struggle to return from exile. In 1987 the titular heads of nine Canadian churches, including our own, produced a document called A New Covenant. They wrote: ‘In retrospect, it has become all too clear that the old covenants, including many of the treaties, have not served the demands of justice. … The treaties were … misused and broken … by the newcomers who wanted this land for their own…. A new covenant is required, one that recognizes and guarantees rights and responsibilities concerning Aboriginal peoples of Canada.’

What we need in a new covenant is a return to the original covenant, the rainbow covenant, the covenant between the Creator and all creatures. Let us listen to Paul’s teaching to the Corinthians in light of the original covenant: ‘As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you. … if one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.’

As our Children’s Story reminded us this morning, stewardship is taking good care of the precious things God has entrusted to us. There is nothing more precious that covenant; it is what makes human and humane life possible. All of our covenants are grounded in the original, all-inclusive covenant, or they are pseudo-covenants. We have violated the covenants written with our First Nations, but it is not too late to be good stewards. We have violated – but have not destroyed! – the original covenant with our treatment of our aboriginal neighbours. But it is not too late to be good stewards of that covenant. We have tried to cut off our hand and our feet, but they are still there.

It is too late to restore covenant with the Beothuk, but not too late with the Mi’kmaq, the Maliseet, or the Passamaquoddy. They are returning from exile, still oppressed but fighting for justice, still disparaged but growing in confidence. How will we receive them? Is it in us to become stewards of the covenant? Is it in us to receive them as sisters and brothers in of the covenant?