Creator of All: A Homily for the National Indigenous Day of Prayer

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, on  21 June, 2026, the Fourth Sunday After Pentecost and the National Indigenous Day of Prayer.   Readings for the NDIP:  Isaiah 40:25-31, Psalm 19, Philippians 4:4-9

John 1:1-18

 Every year the plough is obliterating the last traces of our  predecessors on this soil. Every year the axe lays low some invaluable witness to the ages which have elapsed since populous villages of another race were scattered far and wide through our now lifeless forests. We are fast forgetting that the bygone ages even of the new world were filled with living men.  

Those words were spoken in 1852 by one Captain Lefroy, who was a member of a professional and learned society, The Canadian Institute,that had been newly founded by Sir Sandford Fleming.   Lefroy’s thoughts, given almost 175 years ago, remind us that the indigenous heritage of this part of Ontario has long been known, at least through the efforts of a few, mostly amateur researchers.

Dedicated amateur researchers continue to remind us of our links with our indigenous past.  Last Sunday Joy and I were at St Luke’s for their late morning service, following which we heard a fascinating presentation by their parish historian, Dorothy Shropshire.  Dorothy and her late husband Jim have spent years studying the Petun people, who lived in the area known today as Bluewater and Clearwater Township.   Dorothy spoke knowledgeably about the various Petun sites on the hills and and riverbanks around Creemore.

You won’t find any Petun peoples nearby today.   In the 1600s the Petun nation was ravaged by disease and by proxy wars among the local tribes competing for the lucrative fur trade with the Europeans.    The surviving Petun peoples fled this area.  Today they are called the Wyandot, and they live as far away as Montreal and Kansas.

Today, which we observe in the Anglican Church of Canada as the National Indigenous Day of Prayer, is about remembering the past, but more importantly its about reconciliation in the present and new relationships in the future.   The Petun may be gone from this area, but indigenous people in their many cultures, languages, and places, are a vital part of our country and of church.

We may not have an indigenous community close by, but today gives us many opportunities to think about the First Nations people we do occasionally see on our streets and in our church.   The readings we’ve heard today from the First Nations Version of the Bible remind us of the story of Pentecost and how the Holy Spirit desires to communicate the good news of our faith to all peoples in their own languages.   Our first two readings, from isaiah and Psalm 19, help us to see with fresh eyes how the natural world is a gift from God the Creator, an insight which is a great gift of indigenous spirituality to our church.   

There are many rich themes to explore here today, but the one I think I can do best in the space of a summer sermon is found in the First Nations translation I read from just now, where we hear how John the Baptist came “Into the wilderness of the Land of Promise (Judea)”.  Promised by whom?   Now we can see what the translators and editors of the First Nations Bible were trying to do.   Renaming Judea as “Land of Promise” takes us back to the story of Genesis and the coveanant promise that God makes with Abraham.

Several Sundays ago we heard in the first reading how God says to Abraham “To your offspring I will give this land”, and Genesis mentions in passing that “At that time the Canaanites were in the land” (Gen 1.6).   One of the more unpalatable aspects of Genesis is that the Canaanites are basically an indigenous people, pagans and heathens, who have no right to their and deserve to be dispossessed by God’s people.

Fast forward to the 1500s and 1600s, the so-called Age of Exploration, and the same story of dispossession played out and became part of early Canadian history.   Those 19th century amateur scholars like Captain Godfrey were uneasily aware of “our predecessors” who were being erased.   Today we are, with the help of indigenous Canadians, rethinking this history and trying on new names, so we now think of “Indians” as “The First Nations” or “indigenous”, and we sometimes, think of ourselves as “settlers”.  And, today, we’ve heard new names for the divine, such as “Creator Sets Free” for Jesus, “Great Spirit” for the Holy Spirit, and “Creator” for God the Father.

THis week in our bible study, we asked whether it might change our spirituality as Christians if we were to think of God more often as “Creator”.  We agreed that if the term “Creator” becamse habitual, then we might think about one another differently because we are all created by the same God and created in the image of that God, and we enjoy earth, creation, as a gift given to all of us.   And if we are all created, and all given the same gifts of this earth to share, then surely that commonality as children of the Creator is greater than any of our differences?

This wonderful and mysterious relationship between difference and unity is at the heart of our Trinitarian faith, as the American monk Curtis Almquist beautifully explains:

We are distinct persons, all of us, and yet our essence is the same. We are all children of God. We all need water and food, shelter and rest, love and safety, education and encouragement, health and hope to be alive and thrive. … We must be in relationship with one another. We have been created by a God in relationship – a Trinity of Persons – who invites us all to be in personal relationship – relationship with one another and in relationship with all that God has created – because this is the essence of God, to be in a circle of  relationship with all whom God has created

Being in relationship - genuine, authentic, loving relationship - takes time, patience, and effort.  Our church has slowly learned to work on its relationship with our First Nations and Inuit fellow Anglicans as we’ve listened to their stories and made steps towards reconciliation.  Our country likewise continues to  work slowly towards better relationships with indigenous Canadians over things like land claims and resource rights.  And, when as with the 51st state talk from certain Americans, we suddenly feel a new appreciation for the First Nations and what it means to be threatened with conquest and dispossession.  Our natural reacgtion to such talk is to think "This land may be your land, this land may be my land, but it's not your land, Uncle Sam!"  But, when we we sing how this land is your land and this land is my mind, as we think about what Canada means to us today, that "us" includes French and British, First Nations and Inuit, all the various communities of newer Canadians in the sports bars and in sthe streets cheering their World Cup teams, and yes, during this Pride Month, gay and straight and trans, because my dear friends and fellow saints, this land belongs to all of us, because it was given to all of us by our Creator God.  May we learn to live together on this land.

Students of Jesus: A Homily for the Third Sunday After Pentecost (A)

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, and St Luke’s, Creemore, on June 14, 2026, the Third Sunday After Pentecost (A).  Texts:  Genesis 18:1-15 (21:1-7); Psalm 116:1, 10-17; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 9:35-10:8 (9-23)

“Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples” Matthew 10.1

You know those dreams where you’re in uncomfortable or stressful situations?  They’re often called anxiety dreams, and one of my least favourite kinds is where I find myself forced to go back to school.   Sometimes I’m back in university, with a test I haven’t studied for or a due date for an essay I haven’t written, but sometimes I’m back in elementary school, and I’m an adult sitting in one of those little kid’s desks, and I’m uncomfortable and I have no idea what I’m doing.

I wonder what it is about this deam of being a student again that makes me uncomfortable?  What is it about school that triggers adult anxieties?  I suppose it has something to do with the imposed obligations of schoolwork - the essays and projects - and no surprise that these dreams bubble up when I’ve been procrastinating about a deadline.  

It could also be that, mixed in with these anxious dreams, is the fear of the loss of adult agency, which we I think is a normal part of aging.   Life in a senior’s home can seem a lot like elementary school, where the residents are treated like children.  The British TV comedy Waiting For God treated this brilliantly.

I don’t think it’s learning that makes people feel uncomfortable.  Many of you eagerly attend the Georgian Triangle Learning Institute lectures (though I wonder how many would attend if they were given homework assignments with them).   Seniors happily participate in bookclubs (though, again, the wine might have something to do with that activity).     

So it seems that we’re good with being lifelong learners, but how many of us would want to be students, with all the obligations and expectations that go with being a student?  And yet, if we think of ourselves as disciples, that word basically means student, which means that, like the original disciples, we are students of Jesus.

In today’s gospel reading, and in the New Testament generally,  the word disciple is a translation of the Greek word mathētēs, which in Greek meant a student of pupil.   Our word disciple comes from the Latin meaning student or pupil, and is from the Latin verb discere, meaning to lean.   So in the ancient world, a disciple is a student or pupil, someone under instruction.   Today we think of disciples as having a specific religious sense, of messengers or evangelists, which is what the twelve chosen by Jesus eventually became, but in the gospels, as in today’s gospel, they are students.

Thinking of the discples as students makes sense when we remember how many times Jesus is referred to in the gospels either as a rabbi or as a teacher (didaskalos, often translated as master).   In the ancient world, a didaskalos was a spiritual leader or philosopher, someone who had mastered a body of knowledge and who would over time share that knowlege with students, in the same way that apprentices learn today.  

 Sometimes in the gospels we hear Jesus sound notes of exasperation, because he has spent so much time with the disciples and they still don’t get it.  For example, later in Matthew, after Peter asks Jesus to explain a parable, Jesus essentially says, “are you still so dense?”  On this and several other occasions, Jesus sounds very much like a frustrated teacher (Mk 8:17-21, Mt 16:9-11).  Fortunately for them and for us, Jesus is a patient and loving teacher.

So what does Jesus have to teach?  Put simply, it is to try and see the world through his eyes of compassion and to act mercifully.  Matthew tells us that Jesus had compassion on the crowds  “because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd”.  In other words, these people did not have leaders who cared for their welfare, they were exploited, overburdened, and ground down.   In a week where the world’s richest man became the world’s first trillionaire, with enough money to cancel world hunger and all the ethics of a mosquito, I think we can relate.   

Jesus empowers his disciples/students to do the things he does.   Share the good news that God loves them and values them.  Be with them.  Heal them and help them.   Give selflessly.  It’s the most ancient and most effective teaching model, to let the student go into the field and learn by doing.

Last week in my homily I quoted Martin Luther, who said that the church is “a school for saints and a hospital for sinners”.   If we can admit in our weekly prayer of confession that we are all sinners, can we agree also that we are also students, and specifically, Jesus’ students?   

We use all sorts of terms to describe ourselves as people.  We can call ourselves Christians, and then as Anglicans, and then as parishioners at All Saints, as opposed to, say, Christians who call themselves Presbyterians who go to First Pres.    I wonder if we would be any different, if our faith would be more intense, if we just called ourselves Jesus’ students?  

To call ourselves students would be to accept the authority of our master as teacher.   We haven’t been given the ability to raise the dead, heal the sick, or cast out demons, but Jesus does have expectations of us his students.   Our homework is to try and see the world through Jesus’ eyes of compassion.   Our assignment is to show Jesus’ mercy and love wherever we can.  Our school is always in session, and the syllabus is there in our baptismal covenant.  There’s no pass or fail, just the expectation that, as a church and as people, we can help people sense the nearness of the kingdom of God.   This school will never give us anxiety dreams, because Jesus our teacher is patient and loving.

So, fellow students of Jesus, what will you try to learn this week, and what will you try, with God’s help, to put that learning into action?

His Business Is Mercy: A Homily for the Second Sunday After Pentecost

 Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, and Good Shepherd, Stayner, on 7 June, 2026, the Second Sunday After Pentecost

Texts for this day: Genesis 12:1-9; Psalm 33:1-12; Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26.

‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.” (Mt 9:13)

When I was a naive university freshman, I missed an midterm exam because I’d gone home for the Thanksgiving weekend, a four hour trip, and coming back I misread the bus schedule.   So the day after my missed exam, I timidly knocked on the office door of my professor and asked for another chance.   To this day I wonder what he, a tenured and distinguished professor of philosphy, thought when he looked at me, a callow youth, who couldn’t read a bus schedule.    

He could have said “Sorry kid, at least you learned a valuable life lesson”, but instead, he said, “You’re in luck, I haven’t started marking yet”.  So he led me to a little room, gave me the exam, and told me I had an hour.   I had barely studied, and I remember writing some rubbish about Plato, and I got a middling grade.  But, more improtantly, I was shown mercy.  

I hadn’t thought of this in forty five years, but it came back to me as an example of what showing mercy looks like.   It also led me on a bit of a thought experiment .

Let’s say there was a professor, a distinguished teacher who loved to enrich peoples’ lives with the wisdom they’d accumulated over many years.   What if that teacher didn’t just show mercy to hapless freshmen who missed an exam?   What if this prof spent their time going to dive bars looking for delinquent students and teaching them over jugs of beer?  What if this prof so loved teaching that they gave their wisdom away for free rather than within a tuition course?   And what if, when the A students came to the prof and said “Hey, what about us?”, they said, “Well you don’t need me, you’re smart and you’ve got a library, go read books”.     You can imagine that  the Tenure and Review committee might start reconsidering this prof’s employment in the same way that the Pharisees regard Jesus with suspicion and hostility.

One of the lessons that scripture teaches us, over and over, is that we are here in church, not because God admire us as wonderful specimens,  but because God is merciful and knows our needs.  Or, to borrow Jesus’ language from today’s gospel, church is like a waiitng room to see the doctor.  By and large, we’re here because we need God’s help to be the people that we’d like to be, rather than the people we are.  And wanting that help can be as simple and as basic as a sick person wantig to be better.

This is a point that it is made more clearly by our gospel reading than it is by our second reading.  Paul, writing in Romans, uses Abram as a model of faith.    After all, he responds to a God he barely knows, leaves his home, and wanders off on the strength of a vague promise.    Thus, says Paul, Abram’s “faith was reckoned to him as righteousness”.  

This language makes Abram sound like a biblical superhero, and might lead us to conclude that God only wants people whose faith is deep rooted and unshakeable.  But what about the people in today’s gospel who come to Jesus for help?  What kind of faith do they have?

Well, I would say that their faith is genuine, but that it comes from a place of desperate need.   The woman with the flow of blood has been suffering for twelve years, and when she sees Jesus, she seizes her chance.   Jesus tells her that “your faith has made you well”.   The father of the dead child was probably friends with the Pharisees who condemned Jesus for hanging out with sinners, but, with his beloved child lying still at home, he’s willing to forget his friends’ criticism of Jesus and goes to him for help. Jesus follows him home, and restores life and laughter to his house.

Today’s readings teach us that  faith can take many forms,  It can be calm and heartfelt, or it can be urgent and desperate.   Faith can be a response to God’s call to begin a new and better life, as is the case with Matthew, who could have ignored Jesus and said, no, I’m quite comforable with my life, working for Rome. But Matthew said yes.    Perhaps Matthew was already sick of what he’d become, sick of working for the Romans, and followed Jesus because he wanted a new life and a new start.   

Faith can be a decision to do new things and go to new places, trusting that God is leading us and with us.  Or, faith can be in those moments of despair and anxiety when we turn to God because we don’t know where else to go.    

In such moments, it’s tempting to think that God is like the professor in my opening story, someone behind a door on which we timidly knock, wondering what the answer will be.  But the reality, as we see in today’s gospel, is much different and much more encouraging.  There’s no door to knock on.  Jesus already sees us with eyes of compassion, he is with us in our joys and in our heartaches, and he will always respond with the mercy and grace that flow from the heart of God.