Preaching Land Back on Harvest Thanksgiving and Columbus Day
Laurel Dykstra
Notes from a sermon preached Sunday October 13, 2024, at St. James Anglican Church, on unceded lands of Hul’q’umi’num’ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples, specifically Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh, Vancouver BC, Canada. The texts are from the thematic track of the Revised Common Lectionary (Amos 5:6-7, 10-15, Hebrews 4:12-16 and Mark 10:17-31).
Blessings to you this celebration of Harvest Thanksgiving
People invite our outdoor church Salal + Cedar, to come and animate worship at the times of year when we are reminded of our connections with the seasons and the cycles of the earth:
Earth Day, Season of Creation, St. Francis, Rogation Days and of course Harvest Thanksgiving.
Often, especially on Thanksgiving, I find that people want a sermon that reminds them of all the good things they have, tells them that they are blessed, and reminds them to be thankful.
But Harvest Thanksgiving is complicated
because of its popular associations with American thanksgiving and founding myth of Indigenous/Settler friendship that covers up genocide
because in the United States some people celebrate National Indigenous people’s day this weekend while others celebrate Christopher Columbus
And because it is about land and our church has a troubled theology of land
You can’t start a service with an acknowledgment of Indigenous stewardship of land, celebrate the goodness and bounty of the land, and not talk about Indigenous people have been systematically and deliberately displaced from their lands.
My indigenous friends and people I follow online are posting things like:
You know times are tough when no one is offering low-income families turkey and fixings.
Thanksgiving is a colonial Christian celebration. We celebrate the seasons, solstice and equinox.
I got us the cutest turkey for my little fam, a lil ham too. I'm gonna make a blueberry pie. With all the fixings of course. But we’re gonna call it "you're welcome day!"
Harvest Thanksgiving is complicated because we want to attend to the cycle of the year and celebrate abundant harvest, but food is unjustly distributed locally and globally -you who worship in the Downtown Eastside don’t need me to tell you that.
In Vancouver a local Indigenous family can’t get a turkey
In BC food banks -which were opened as an emergency measure decades ago, now feed a permanent class of food insecure people -almost 1 in 4 people is food insecure- ppl who can’t be sure where they will get their next meal, or know that their groceries will last the month
In Gaza olive trees, land and water are being used as weapons of war
Globally more and more refugees are people made homeless by extreme weather events or droughts than mean their homes can no longer produce food
So a sermon that says “look at all this goodness and bounty, we are so blessed, let us give thanks” just won’t cut it
The world life in won’t allow it and neither will scripture
As the reading from the letter to the Hebrews says:
the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword (4:12)
But I promise you, the way Jesus offers us is much, much better than platitudes and pumpkin pies as we try not to think about the wars and the storms.
Both the Prophet and the Gospel make connections between land justice and economic justice.
Amos says
because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. (5:11-12)
There is a recurring theme in the prophets that when people who work the land to produce food, who have an intimate and reciprocal relationship with the land are exploited. The land is both a witness to harm, the land experiences harm and is in some sense an instrument of the consequences of that harm for those who caused and benefit from it, those who live in stone houses and own pleasant vineyards
Amos preaches an oracle of judgement against those who exploit the land and workers and want to enjoy the spoils
This is not a capricious God throwing lightning bolts at someone who kissed the wrong person or ate too many sweets, it is what happens when the reciprocal relationships of the created order are out of balance, when the few profit from the many There are consequences, disruptions, in the land
As we think about our current situation of climate crisis -about how economic relationships are out of balance, and how the earth is responding I think there are some resonances
Mark
But it is the gospel I really want to talk to you about.
The story that we often think of as “the rich young ruler” or camel and the eye of the needle
Is for me what the letter to the Hebrews calls a “living and active word of God”
“What must I do to obtain eternal life?” When the man comes to Jesus, he wants to acquire something, and as we will see -this is a man used to getting what he wants.
After rebuffing this high-status person’s flattering greeting, Jesus gives him a Coles Notes version of the 10 commandments. But if you are old enough to have memorized your catechism before confirmation, you might notice that Jesus actually slips in an extra one: "do not defraud"--me apostereses. Do not cheat people out of their property.
90% of Galileans -and likely an even higher percent of those listening to Jesus, lived at a subsistence level, even in good times. The Roman conquest concentrated the power of the local aristocracy, even what little people had was being taken away. Often in taxes (as in the Amos passage) which could run up to half of one's income or land loss through the forclosure of predatory loans. Now, lest you think this is an artefact of the ancient world I know people in this city who are paying predatory lenders interest that starts at 38%. To the peasants witnessing this exchange, people like the man seeking to acquire eternal life, had already acquired their possessions, their land through trickery and fraud.
When the man hears that the cost of eternal life is giving up -or better giving back what he has, “he went away grieving for he had many possessions” ktemata, the Greek word refers not only to material objects, but also property “great estates” would be a reasonable translation. The man is a major landowner, a member of the local aristocracy. And Markan scholar Ched Myers says “As far as Mark is concerned, the man's wealth has been gained by "defrauding" the poor--and he must make restitution.
So in a rigged system in the ancient and in the modern world you can’t get super rich without exploitation
I don’t think that any of us here are rich in that global sense, we are not part of the 1%, but what we do have in common with the young man is that some of us, and certainly our church have title to and use of land indigenous land that came into the hands of ancestors, institutions and sellers in unjust ways. We are heirs and beneficiaries of fraudulent systems.
Now by this time you might be thinking, “Well, this word of God is certainly giving us the sharp sword, even if it is living and active, Where is the goodness, the good news that they promised?”
I have two answers: love and God’s transforming kingdom.
Jesus looked at the man with many possessions and he loved him. (Mark 10:21)
This is the only place in the whole of the synoptic gospels -Matthew, Mark, and Luke, where it says Jesus loves someone -Not Mary of Magdala, not his mother, nor Peter or that Beloved Disciple that John is always on about, but this one percent guy.
Jesus looks at us and loves us, all of us, each of us as we are, invites us into his upside-down kingdom that is not in heaven after we are dead, not pie in the sky by and by when you die, but
“now in this age” (10:30) and won’t be easy but it will be 100 times better than what we have!
In this transformed world that Jesus invites us promises all kinds of things but I want to highlight two, one thing that isn’t there and one that is:
When Jesus lists what will be restored, his vision is very gender inclusive, gender expansive even: brothers, sisters, mothers, children -but what is missing is fathers, the male head of household -not that men or fathers won’t be there but that Patriarchy, that dominance system ruled by a male head of household does not have a place in this commonwealth
And the thing that is restored? In addition to family members, did you notice? is is fields, the people who are defrauded get their land back. And this is a controversial thing for a priest to say on Thanksgiving Sunday but I believe this Gospel calls us to be in solidarity with Indigenous Land Back movements and to consider our part in restitution.
Yes we are deeply and incredibly blessed and gifted, yes we should be thankful, but much more than that, Jesus sees us as we are, loves us and invites us into transformation.
At Salal + Cedar it is our spiritual practice to listen for the word of God in scripture and in nature, to attend to the voice of the land -so urgent in Amos and in Mark
So I want to take a moment at this time of the turning of the seasons to pay attention to the world around us.
It is a bit of a cliché but I see on posters and on the internet a saying “The trees are about to show us how beautiful it is to let things go”
Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer says, of our planet in a time of climate crisis:
“Even a wounded world is feeding us.”
“Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.” (Braiding Sweetgrass)
May we be thankful, may we let go of what does not belong to us (whether land, possessions, or judgements of others),
And may we be transformed. Amen.
Contributor Bio
Laurel Dykstra is the founding priest of Salal + Cedar Watershed Discipleship Community, a church that worships outdoors and seeks to help Christians in the lower Fraser watershed grow their skills for Climate Justice. Laurel’s latest book on interspecies loneliness, Wildlife Congregations is newly out from Hancock House.
Image
Land Back, a mural in Gastown, Vancouver. Photo by Jean-François Chénier 2022 licensed under Creative Commons. A cyclist rides by a heavily graffitied wall, the in the center of the wall the words Land Back are large and legible in red, a raven is perched on the letter K.