Scripture: Psalm 24:1-6; 2Corinthians 7:9-10; Luke 3:7-10
I begin this morning with a dilemma. As you know I spent a good part of my sabbatical reading about, thinking about, connecting with Virginia Indians, past and present. When you do that, what I think is a vague awareness for many or most of us, that we are living on land that was essentially stolen from the people who were living here when Europeans arrived—that vague awareness becomes much less vague and much more of a central thought that you live with everyday. The end of my sabbatical has not meant that that thought has gone away. Then last Monday was Columbus Day, or as some people prefer to call it, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, suggesting that Columbus is not really the one deserving to be honored and that the stories that really need to be recalled are the stories not of Columbus and how people thought the world was flat but Columbus was a man of vision who would prove them wrong and how he went to Ferdinand and Isabella for money, none of that, but rather the stories that need to be remembered are the stories of indigenous people here, and for that matter throughout the world. It has been in my head to preach, again, about this since I returned from sabbatical and Indigenous People’s Day put it in my head even more, and then an independent and unsolicited suggestion from the worship committee this last week settled the matter.
But I mentioned a dilemma. Let me get back to that. Here is my way of stating the dilemma that I am thinking about this morning. Here we are living on land that is, when you get right down to it, not ours. How do we deal with that thought? How do we process it inside ourselves? What do we do with the fact that our ancestors, those of us who have European ancestors, what do we do with the fact that those ancestors decided that they had a right to just sail in and take over a land where people were already living?
One way of dealing with that thought is to dismiss it as being irrelevant to any present reality. It may be true what people say about the injustice of what happened four and five hundred years ago, but come on, that was then and this is now. We didn’t do it. We didn’t have anything to do with it. We can be against what happened all we want now, but that’s not going to change anything. And besides a lot has happened in the time that has passed since those unsavory beginnings. The land may not have legitimately belonged to the Europeans adventurers then, but it certainly belongs to all of us, whatever our ancestry, European or anything else, it belongs to all of us now. People of many ancestries have lived on this land, been born and given birth on this land, fought for this land, tilled its soil, harvested its crops, lie buried in its dirt. People of many ancestries have built roads and cities here, worshiped here, made music here, sat down and stood up for freedom here. Once upon a time this land may have belonged to the indigenous people of this land. But however unjustly they were deprived of their land, what has happened since then has made it everyone’s land and there’s no point wasting energy going back over a past that can’t be undone and that has no real bearing on the present.
That would be one way to deal with the potentially discomforting idea that we are living on land that is not really ours, that our history began and was made possible by an essentially criminal act. One way to deal with that thought is to dismiss it, to deny that it is really worth thinking about, to just go on about our business because there is nothing really in all this that should interfere with our current life in any way, no reason that we should feel any discomfort at all. Of course that attitude is not acceptable from the point of view of the indigenous peoples who are still here. I’ve been present on any number of occasions where Monacan representatives were present at some sort of gathering in this region of Virginia that was predominantly mainstream, non-Indian, in character and when given the opportunity to speak, the Monacans will most often begin their remarks by extending a welcome to those who continue to visit on the land of the Monacans. It is not a dead or irrelevant issue to the Monacans, who would like us to know that although they don’t run the government and however few their numbers may be, and however much has happened in between, they are really the hosts here and everyone else is a guest.
What I described is also not an acceptable attitude from where I sit, despite the fact that I understand how people could have the attitude I was describing before and despite the fact that I to some degree even share that attitude. But in the end it is not an acceptable attitude because it is not just a matter of what happened centuries ago, because to dismiss what happened four or five hundred years ago also allows us to dismiss the subsequent history of injustice, a history that continues to the present day. And the ability to be dismissive, to say that for whatever reason (and we can be pretty resourceful in coming up with reasons for our attitudes), to say that for whatever reason we can come up with the injustices done don’t really have to be paid attention to, can be just sort of waved aside, the ability to do this, to discount the presence of Indians, not to recognize them, is at the very heart of the problem. So the dilemma, one way to put it, is how do we live in the present, accommodate ourselves to present reality, without letting this other attitude creep in, the attitude that the experience of indigenous people, the injustices done, just aren’t worth paying much attention to.
The opposite option, chosen by way fewer people, is to just hammer away at the guilt of it, hammer away outwardly, ceaselessly pointing out the horrors of the past, beating ourselves up, our society, because of the injustices we have collectively done, or hammer away inwardly, focusing, when we think of indigenous people at all, on the guilt of the past, getting stuck in that guilt, looking for ways to make up for it. Hammering away at guilt, focusing on guilt, now there’s a good religious activity for you! And it’s why I chose the scripture from 2Corinthians for this morning. “For godly grief,” Paul says, “produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death.” He recognizes that there is a difference between living in a cloud of guilt that doesn’t help anyone, versus a kind of honest recognition and a spirit of confession that can lead to repentance and to life and wholeness. But there is a dilemma here. The guilt trip approach is not a promising one. The avoiding of guilt, the denial that there is anything here that should trouble us—also not a very promising approach. What is the alternative? The reading about John the Baptist also came to mind in this regard. Don’t just absolve yourselves of all sin, think that you have a perfect right to a clear conscience, John says. But also don’t go around beating your breast, making a show of your wormliness, your need for forgiveness. Bear fruits that befit repentance, he says, and the people are said to respond by saying, almost as though in unison, “What then shall we do?” A question we might well ask ourselves specifically in relation to Native Americans. What then shall we do? How can we avoid the guilt trip without falling into the trap of thinking there is nothing we have any reason to feel bad about? And so it is, I believe a dilemma. What are we supposed to do with the fact that we are living on land that is not ours?
Well, I said way back at the beginning of this sermon that I was going to begin with a dilemma. I didn’t say I was going to end by resolving that dilemma. In fact this is one of those situations where the “answer” is that the dilemma should not be resolved. The answer is, my answer to the dilemma is, that we need to live with the tensions that are involved in the dilemma I’ve tried to describe. Let me state this another way. It would not hurt us to remind ourselves on a regular basis, it would be a good thing for us to remind ourselves on a regular basis, that we live on land that is not ours. That simple recognition without any buts, without the justifications and rationalizations that so often go along with it, that simple recognition could be the basis for remembering our history more honestly and working our way toward some healing of this wound in our national psyche. No excuses, no rationalizations, no turning away on the one hand, no groveling on the other, just simple truth telling can often be a source of healing.
Reminding ourselves on a regular basis that we live on land that is not ours might be good in some other ways as well, besides dealing with questions relating to the indigenous people of the Americas. Maybe, it occurred to me as I was thinking about this, maybe if we all repeated every hour on the hour that we are living on land that is not ours, maybe our attitudes toward immigrants and illegal immigrants and immigration policy, things like that, maybe our attitudes would be a little less self-righteous if we reminded ourselves on a regular basis that we, most present day Americans, live on land that is not ours. I don’t know, just a thought.
Let me take the thought a little farther. Maybe if we said it slowly and often, maybe if it became a sort of mantra, “we live on land that is not ours”, it would come to mean even more than that indigenous people had their land taken by force, more than that it would become us to be more humble and more humane as we talk about immigration policy. It might also come to mean that in an even more basic sense the land we live on, any land, whether acquired legally or morally or not, any land we live on is not ours. It is God’s. It is a gift. “The earth is the Lord’s,” Psalm 24 says, “the world and all that is in it.” It is a human fiction that we own the land. It is not ours. We give that thought lip service, we let the words of Psalm 24 into our ears, but if we allowed it to penetrate our souls…well maybe we would live more lightly on the land, and maybe we would treasure it more, and maybe we would care for it better, because it is not ours to do with as we please. Not a new thought, I know. But not too worn out, I hope, because collectively we have a long way to go in learning to say that we live in a land that is not ours, because it is God’s.
Which led me still further in the progression of my thoughts as one thing led to another. Not only is the land not ours. Life itself is not ours to possess. My life is not my own. It too is a gift. And although I confess that I am not always sure what implications that has for me, I do know that that thought is a place I need to begin and always come back to. Somehow, in ways that go beyond my inadequate words to express, my life is not my own. The moments when I am closest to God are moments when I know that to be true.
So I feel like a owe a deep thank you to the Monacan people and to all indigenous people for persistently helping me to see our history more honestly and also for the thoughts that have flowed from that. I will try to be mindful of all the truths that flow from the thought that this land and this life are not ours. Amen.
Jim Bundy
October 14, 2007