October 13, 2024

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare….

…For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

• This is now the third Sunday in a row that I’m sharing a personal story with you.
  • Recently, with all the swirling opinions around us, I’ve found myself grounded by reflecting on the personal stories that effect my beliefs, opinions, and actions.
  • Stories of home, the past, and the people and events that shaped me,
  • So that, when I express a belief or opinion, I know it’s coming from somewhere meaningful for me,
    • Not just parroting someone else’s opinion or something I read in my news feed
  • Today, I’m telling a story about a cultural exchange I experienced,
  • But I also want to make a little time to hear any similar stories you might have about times when you’ve been invited to cross a cultural barrier.
• So, since tomorrow is Indigenous People’s Day, and since Lyndale has worked on reparations, including with the Dakota, I found myself recalling a story from my growing up that continues to mystify me
  • (and my sister Holly, who I called to help me with this sermon)
• We grew up in a young UCC church in Southern California
  • That church had a member couple who had a connection to a Navajo boarding school in Arizona called Shonto; (see pic on bulletin)
  • And because of it, they started a Christmas exchange program for the youth group
  • every year they would collect gift requests from the children at the school
  • Church families would take a gift request from a particular child, and we would buy and wrap the gifts and load them up in a truck
  • Then the youth group and our leaders would drive 9 hours to northern Arizona one weekend in December, deliver the gifts, do a little sightseeing, and come home.
  • In the early days of the program, students from the school would also come to California and stay with host families, and my sister remembers a boy and girl stayed with us and made fry bread in our kitchen!
    • But that part of the program ended, and I don’t remember it.
  • I was the youngest of 4 children in my family, so I had to wait years for my turn to make the Arizona trip, but finally my turn came. It was a big deal.
  • I went for two years, when I was 15 and 16.
• The boarding school turned out to be a cement block complex with very few windows set in the middle of a vast, open space, far from main roads or any community.
  • I remember being given a little room to sleep in by myself; I think it was the infirmary; a small interior cell with a bed and no windows; I was separated from the other kids in my youth group, and I was terrified.
  • The first day we had a big party with the children, who shyly, happily opened their gifts, ate cake and met Santa. But other than that, we didn’t have much interaction with them.
  • Although they all spoke English, it felt like there was a huge gap between us suburban white kids and them.
  • I remember being shown a classroom and a teacher told us the students were now learning about Navajo culture and language in the school
• The second year we were taken on a field trip to Canyon de Chelly, which if you don’t know it is an incredible place with a tragic, beautiful history
  • We heard how the Navajo were massacred there, by Spanish invaders, by the neighboring Ute nation, and finally by the Americans in the 1860’s, who destroyed one village after another, contaminated wells, burned crops and made Navajo Land unlivable, starving the Navajo out until 8,000 of them surrendered and walked 300 miles to Fort Defiance (one of many long walks around the country).
  • About 5,000 of them arrived there, leaving many dead behind them.
• Learning this story as a 16 year old was a huge awakening for me; the idea that my country would do this to people on their own soil.
  • That visit to Canyon de Chelly was an opening of my social justice awareness;
  • But it was also a moment of spiritual awakening
  • The day I walked there, I felt something strong I couldn’t name.
  • I wasn’t sure if it was holy or haunted, but it was a mystical experience I always remembered.
• When I got home, I wrote a paper about Navajo history for a Social Studies class and really put my heart into it.
  • I learned that, after the Dine arrived in Fort Defiance, the fort was overwhelmed, and many more people died.
  • But four years later, the government allowed them to return to Navajo Land
  • They were given a small piece of reservation land, which they were able to  expand over time, so that they now have the largest land mass of any Tribal nation.
  • The Navajo/Dine people have grown from that original 5,000 to about 400,000 enrolled Navajo around the country, many who speak Navajo as a living language, despite the efforts of boarding schools to re-educate their culture out of them in the 19th and 20th century.
  • And you probably know how Navajo code talkers helped with communication during World War II.
• Looking back on that experience, my siblings and I always felt a little weird about that exchange program, the way we swooped in with our shiny presents and then swooped out again.
  • We understand now how deeply harmful the whole boarding school indoctrination was to generations of indigenous people and their cultures.
  • But we also realize we were allowed into a world most white people never saw
  • And entering that world expanded our awareness of the conditions indigenous children were made to live in.
• Those kind of cultural engagements can be clumsy and expose our ignorance, but without them, we can’t begin to restore right relationships in our broken communities and world.
• Take a moment to think about times in your own life when someone opened a door for you into a culture, or way of thinking, or life condition that you had never been exposed to before
  • Where did that door lead? 
  • What was clumsy or uncomfortable about passing through it? 
  • How did it change you?  
• Lyndale had an awkward cultural encounter with Pastor Joann a year ago. Joann is an indigenous person who served you as pastor; and there was confusion about how that went poorly and what everyone could have done better. But it was an experience you can  learn and grow from. What did you learn?
• The story of the Dine people, still playing out, is a story of exile, losing everything,
  • But it’s also a story of return and restoration
  • the ongoing work of restoring balance in life and the world.
  • Navajo spirituality has a focus on restoring balance and harmony and beauty in a world where inner and outer peace is constantly being disrupted.
  • The morning Corn Pollen walk, familiar to Navajo people, is about starting each day in a way that seeks to achieve balance and harmony in that day.
• The Dine story is also reminiscent of the biblical story of exile and return told by the prophet Jeremiah,
  • of how the people of Israel were forced to abandon their homeland and were exiled in Babylon for 70 years,
  • but then allowed to return and rebuild Jerusalem.
  • We also hear this story echoed in the modern history of Jewish people returning to Israel after the holocaust
  • And we hear it in the heartbreaking story of Palestinian people being forced to live as refugees quarantined on their own land
  • This drama of exile and restoration keeps being played out in human history
• But in the midst of that, we need stories of how people find a return to balance,
  • Sometimes by returning to their homelands,
  • Sometimes by making the best of life in a new land
  • We need to recognize the resilience people find along the long road back to the homeland of the heart.
  • To trust God to help lead us, and to not give up hope
• These days, one area where I see indigenous groups helping us now with restoration and repair is in addressing climate change
  • Whether its fighting a pipeline at Standing Rock
  • Or clearing invasive weeds at Wakan Tipi,
  • Indigenous communities are leading the restoration of right relationship with the one planet we were given to share.
  • And after the hurricanes of the last couple weeks, we should understand how urgent this work is.
• At Lyndale, you have studied reparations and how it applies to different cultural groups in history;
  • I’ve asked Rebecca to share a little later about some of the commitments you have made to reparations work in your community;
• This is long term work that involves advocacy, but also making those cultural connections we make, however awkward, a corn pollen path toward a better day coming.