Maybe it’s time to take the Advent call to repentance seriously

A holiday message from the moderator of The United Church of Canada
published in Broadview’s December 2022 issue with the title
“Hope on the Horizon”

Illustration: Neil Webb

I grew up Indigenous in Canada and inherited the intergenerational trauma of that colonial experience.

Like many young Indigenous people, I spent my young adulthood struggling to discern who I was, and medicating with drugs and alcohol. While I grew up in the United Church, during the wilderness walk that I took, I lost any sense of direction or feeling of hope.

When I was newly sober, I attended a local United Church community of faith, and it happened to be the first Sunday of Advent. The minister was preaching about waiting in anticipation for a life-changing event that was on the horizon — but wasn’t here yet. It was a balm to my aching soul, the hope that I needed. It was an invitation to keep my vision focused not on the immediate challenges I faced, but just ahead of what I could anticipate.

Perhaps this experience explains, in part, why the Advent season has been my favourite time in the liturgical calendar for the past two decades. The simple promise of a new beginning that is not yet realized — but is possible — is an inspiring hope that I have held on to for a long time.

These days, over 20 years sober, and an ordained minister for 15 years, I find the intimately personal hope for individual change is less on my mind. As I raise my children in a world that still pushes Indigenous people to the margins, and that faces multiple growing crises, I am now often thinking of the broader horizons of social change.

Our Advent readings from the Gospel of Matthew this year draw heavily on prophetic imagery that resonates deeply with me. In the opening verses of Matthew 3, we hear John the Baptist’s wilderness call to “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

In a world that sometimes feels as if it’s going completely off the rails, perhaps it’s time that we take more seriously the Advent call to repentance. Just as I had to take seriously the decision to make choices that led to a better life, no matter how entrenched some of my habits were, we are faced with the challenge to change our way of life as a society. And we have much for which to repent.

Increased political divisions, geopolitical conflicts and energy crises all come to mind. Income inequality is also growing at an alarming rate in Canada, according to the Conference Board of Canada. To make matters worse, the cost of living, combined with the amount of debt under which people are living, means wages have been stagnating. Pocketbooks are strained.

So too are relationships between settlers and Indigenous Canadians, as the latter continue to fight for land and resources. And while a recent Environics survey suggests that there is more understanding of colonialism and the legacy of residential schools, and fewer Canadians attribute the struggles faced by Indigenous peoples to individual choices, it also indicates that optimism about the prospect of achieving reconciliation is fading. Certainly, with the findings of unmarked graves in June 2021, many Canadians are aware that the work of reconciliation will be hard and prolonged.

The climate crisis, of course, continues to present an existential threat that we don’t take seriously enough. We focus a lot on individual consumer actions, like air travel and recycling, because they’re easier to target and are largely affected by choices we make with disposable income. But to make the biggest impact on climate requires significant capital investments, especially in terms of how we heat and cool our homes and other buildings. These investments are harder in a world where most of us need to stretch dollars further just to survive, and the solutions aren’t always one-size-fits-all.

Inequality, ongoing colonialism and the climate crisis are all massive social problems that require a lot of education to achieve the social changes they demand. And we live in a world where information comes at us in small quantities at alarming rates, making it difficult to process and integrate. Disinformation is easier to come by, and fatigue more likely. We don’t want to think deeply about these things, and our busyness makes it easy to not think deeply about these things.

And so, we exist in a world where it becomes increasingly difficult to live up to the values we hold.

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Continue reading here.  Within the on-line article, there are also links to other articles and information.