Breaking the Chains of the Past

Happy New Year!  The new year is a time to both look back and look ahead.  That raises the question of how we can do both these things in ways that can help us live lives that reflect our better selves.  As with most things, looking back and looking ahead can be both positive and negative.  We can look back and see what we have done which is helpful for us and for others.  We can also look ahead and see possibilities that hold the promise of the same.

Looking back at the past year and even further can enable us to learn from our mistakes and failures.  Looking ahead, we can make those New Year’s resolutions about how we hope and even pray we can live differently and better.  If you are able to do these things, more power to you.  However, it seems to me that these are honoured more in the breach than in the observance. 

The challenge that new year can bring brought into focus for me by the sermon preached by Rev. Sherry DeJonge yesterday at my home parish of St. John the Evangelist Anglican, Strathroy.  The sermon drew on the bible passage Luke 9: 62, “Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’”  It struck me that there can be something positive in looking back to see if you are ploughing a straight furrow.  However, I believe that Jesus was making the point that we cannot dwell on the past, we have to look ahead or we won’t get where we want to go, which for Jesus and Christians’, is summed up in the Kingdom of God. 

That brought to mind a definition of sin that I heard many years ago – unfortunately, I don’t remember the source and Google didn’t help in locating it.  As I recall, sin was defined as, ’those things which chain us to the past.’  For me, that sums up the message from Luke.  If we look behind us, we won’t reach the Kingdom - whatever Kingdom you are hoping and praying for.  Those things which chain you to the past can keep you imprisoned and prevent you from living a full life that we are intended to live.  These are the things – the events in our lives that haunt us at 4:00 in the morning – the regrets and what we did and didn’t do; the anger at what was done to us; the lost opportunities and wrong decisions.  These all seem to outweigh the positive things that we have done and accomplishment in our lives and right decisions we made.  Those are the things which are the ghosts that visit me in the early hours.  I am on a first name basis with many of these old frenemies. 

These are the chains which hold us back and enslave us.  I found this quote on-line which expresses it well:

Things in the past can enslave us. Mistakes we have made, experiences we cannot forget, things that have been done to us. Bitterness and disappointment can consume our thinking, robbing us of joy and hope. Images burned into our consciousness, like pornography or sexual perversion, can cause us to relapse into patterns of sin. Anger over the harm others have done to us can overcome us in quiet moments, long after the events have passed. We can find ourselves trapped by the past, unable to find the freedom we desperately need. We become blocked from the life we want to have, the life that Jesus means for us to have: The abundant life in Him. https://www.onesteadfast.com/Blog/ScriptureStudy/Chains-of-the-Past.

Breaking those chains is not something that is easily accomplished.  It takes work to begin to saw through those chains a bit at a time.  This journey being with the first step in acknowledging that we can’t change what is past so these is no use dwelling in it.  However, we have to acknowledge that life is not perfect and neither are we.  We are going to make mistakes and mistakes are going to be made to us.  The key is in forgiveness.  This is the great gift of Jesus – he showed us by word and deed that forgiveness is possible.  If he could ask his heavenly Father to forgive those who were executing him so cruelly, then it is possible, not easy but possible, to forgive others and, yes even forgive ourselves.  That is the mystery of love which was born at Christmas.

Blessing on your journey in 2024.  May you forgive and be forgiven. 

Emancipation Without and Within

Saturday was Emancipation Day in Ontario.  I was not aware of this official day even though it was declared in 2008.   The province designated August 1 as "Emancipation Day" to commemorate the approval  in 1793 of legislation that abolished slavery in Upper Canada as Ontario was then known.  Upper Canada was the first jurisdiction in the British Empire to abolish slavery.   

The declaration of an official day and the emancipation through legislation are both things of which we in Upper Canada can be proud.  However, it is unfortunately that this official day is not generally better known and observed – but perhaps that is more evidence of my shortcoming than a general situation.  In any case, with the Black Lives Matter movement coming to prominence this year it is entering the collective consciousness of residents of Ontario. 

Emancipation of racialized people is something which has not been fully completed as our society is becoming more aware of the extent of systemic racism that exists in different parts of our society.  Racism is an overt aspect of discrimination which exists in many forms in society which many people experience to the detriment of all of us.  It is a hope as well as a goal that true emancipation will one day be a reality in Ontario and all of Canada. 

There is another aspect of discrimination which I want to discuss.  This is the inner prison which seems to be the heritage of all humanity.  There is a definition of sin which I find particularly apt and applicable.  Sin is that part of us which chains us to the past.  I came upon this definition many years ago - unfortunately I am not able to identify the source.  However, the concept of being chained to the past, for me, sums up an important aspect of our lives that prevents us from living fully the lives that God intends us to live.  We need the emancipation of our souls and our psyches from those things which we have done to others and which have been done to us by others which do not allow us to live lives as fully as possible.   

If we are consumed by guilt because of the hurt we have caused others or consumed by anger because of what others have done to us we will not be free.  That is why we can find ourselves awake in the middle of the night with memories of past events filling our thoughts and controlling our emotions.  Fortunately, we are offered something which can come to our aid. What is offered to us is the possibility of forgiveness.  That is why the prayer that was taught to Jesus’ disciples, the Lord’s prayer, is so powerful, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” 

By asking for forgiveness we can receive manumission, a word which I was not aware of until a few years ago.  I was reminded of it when I re-watched the Book of Negros which is a marvelous miniseries-based ion the historical novel by Lawrence Hill. If you are not familiar with it, it can be described as the Canadian “Roots”.  However, to get back to where I left off, manumission is the act of the owner freeing his slave.  When we ask for forgiveness, we are offered manumission by the one who owns us – God.  This is not to say that it is easy to achieve. True forgiveness seems to be difficult to seek and to perhaps even harder to accept.  However, it is ours for the taking.

Blessings on your journey to freedom within and without.  

Father Forgive Them

One of defining moments of Christianity is when Jesus is hanging on the Cross and in his death-throws he makes a plea to his Heavenly Father to forgive those who are executing him in this most terrible way, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing”.  That is the where the rubber hits the road for Christians.

The challenge for us to forgive others has not been treated seriously enough by organized religion or society.  You can see this in the way children are told to, “say your sorry” by their parents even though they do not feel sorry in the least.  The church says that we should forgive and so we should.  But how does forgiveness actually happen?  We can decide we will forgive because after all it is the Christian thing to do.  So, we can tell the offending parry (perhaps through gritted teeth), “I forgive you”.  You might actually believe that you have forgiven the other person.   You may actually convince your self that, at that moment in any case, you do believe you have forgiven them.  However, in my experience and understanding, true forgiveness does not come that easily. 

Forgiveness is a process which can and probably will take many years and have many set backs.  You will find that you have made a conscious decision to forgive but then the memory of the experience which requires forgiveness and the associated emotions such as anger and fear and desire for justice and even vengeance will overwhelm you.  When these things occur, it is a sign that true forgiveness has not occurred. 

There was an excellent article in the Glove and Mail, appropriately on Saturday of Easter weekend, that addresses many of the issues and misconceptions around forgiveness.  The article, entitled A Radical Grief, explores the journey of two people whose daughter had been murdered.  They made a conscious decision to forgive the murderer even though they did not know the person’s identity for many years.   They made this decision, in part, because, shortly after the crime became public knowledge, they were visited by someone who had experience a similar tragedy.  He warned them that his life had been destroyed because he was not able to forgive the person who had murdered his child.  

The article is valuable because it illustrates a number of lessons that we need to learn.  The first one for me is not directly about forgiveness but it is related.  The article is an illustration about an important way of understanding sin.  Sin is those things which ‘chain us to the past’.  I do not remember the source of this idea.  However, it is an important one for me.  If we allow events and circumstances in our lives to prevent us from living the lives God intends us to lead we are in a sinful state.  If my anger and hatred of someone consumes me fully or even partially we can not be open to receiving God’s love and share that love with the world.  We are indeed chained to the past.  There are many other ways of understanding sin but this is an important one.

Another lesson from this article is that it is not necessary for someone to ask for forgiveness to be give forgiven.  In the article the parents did not even know who the murderer of their daughter was.  However, they made a conscious decision to forgive them.  There is a common belief someone should not be forgiven useless they repent of their actions and seek forgiveness.  This can help the process.  However, it is not necessary.  The act of Forgiveness is as much for the salvation of the person who forgives as it is for the one forgiven.

Finally, forgiveness is a journey which can take a long time.  It doesn’t come easily and quickly in many cases.  They couple in the article explained the difficulty of forgiving the perpetrator.  At times over the years they were overwhelmed with anger and the desire for vengeance.  However, they continued on their journey of and to forgiveness. 

Their case was particularly poignant.  For many years they did not know the identity of the perpetrator.  When the identity was discovered through DNA evidence, they had the trial of sitting through the trial of the accused.  He was found guilty.  However, a new trial was ordered on appeal and at this time the outcome of the second trial is unclear.  The mother is quoted in the article, “I want to live,” she said.  “If we had waited for justice 32 years ago, can you imagine where we’d be?  We would have just put our whole lives on the shelf.” 

Love is the only thing that can defeat hate.  Blessings on you journey. 

Chained to the Past

A few weeks ago I introduced the idea of sin as those things which chain us to the past.  I want to explore that concept further this week.  I came across this concept or definition of sin quite a few years ago.  However, the source has been lost in the recesses of my memory.  My supplication to the god Google was not answered.  So I have to accept the uncertainty of the genesis of this concept of sin. 

The concept of sin as being chained to the past resonated with me when I first heard it and I still believe that it gets at a, if not the, fundamental aspect of what sin is.  Sin is not morals or ethics; although sin can certainly involve moral and ethical behaviour.  However, if we see sin more as an approach to life and to how we respond to life in all its aspects, I believe we are getting to the heart of sin as being chained to the past.

Humans are created in the image of God.  However, that image does not mean that we are God or gods.  We are imperfect and we will not follow the course of life that God intends for us.  So what is it that chains us to the past?  We all have developed survival mechanisms which we believed, on an unconscious or conscious level, were necessary for us to be successful in life.  Indeed they may have been absolutely necessary given the cards we were dealt in life.  If someone was raised in an abusing environment they developed mechanisms that helped them survive e.g. run and hide from the abuser when certain signs were there that abuse could be about to happen.  If someone was raised in a scarcity of food or shelter, a person would develop ways of doing what was necessary to gain those necessities.  If someone was ignored as a child they may decide that they need to act out to get the attention they crave to have their existence acknowledged.  In my case I found the world I was in to be a puzzling and somewhat scary place outside my home.  So found my small corner which was safe and which I could withdraw to when the world became too much for me to deal with.

These survival mechanisms were necessary and appropriate given the circumstances people find themselves in.  However, when our circumstances change, perhaps knowing that you will have the necessities of life, or that the people in your life now are not abusive, the person may not accept that as the reality and react as if the world is still the old familiar way which is no longer necessary.  This prevents us from living the life as fully as possible.  It chains us to the past and does not enable us to become the people that God intended us to be when God created us; that for me certainly one aspect of sin.

I recently finished reading The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis.  I believe purchased the copy some years ago but had never read it.  It describes wonderfully the concept of sin as being chained to the past.  The book is an allegory along the lines of Pilgrims Progress (although not quite up to that caliber) which describes a scenario where a bus has arrived in heaven with a load of passengers who have come from the village where they have been.  This village is, in reality, hell—although they do not recognize that it is hell not having experienced hellfire and brimstone.  These souls are met by residents of heaven who they have known in their lives and who are their guides to the heaven where they now find themselves.   The souls find heaven to be too real and too substantial.  They are insubstantial so even the grass is too solid and too uncomfortable for them to walk on without some discomfort.  Different souls are presented as stereotypes that reject heaven because of their beliefs and ways of being. 

For example, one resident (angel) of heaven greets a “Fat, Clean-Shaven Man” who he knew in life.  The angel tells him that he is now indeed in heaven and the place he left was indeed hell.  The soul refuses to believe him and engages the angel using semantics to defend his view of reality.  The angel tries to make him understand that his view of reality is wrong.  The soul rejects the angel’s “crude salvationism” and unwilling to abandon his intellectual construct of life smugly goes off to catch the bus for the return trip to what for him is an acceptable existence in the village. 

I do not agree with Lewis’s theology on some points, however, I enjoy his writing immensely and there is much about his faith and belief that I admire.  In The Great Divorce I believe he has caught the essence of the concept of sin as those things that chain us to the past.  One of the callings and challenges we have as Christians is to try and discover and break those chains that keep us from living the life God intends us to live. 

Blessings on you journey.

Of Mazes and Labyrinths

During Lent I am introducing the congregations to various spiritual practices in my sermons.  Two weeks ago I introduced Lectio Divina—Holy Reading and last Sunday I introduced a form of walking prayer—the Labyrinth.  My sermon, which is attached, noted the difference between a labyrinth and a maze.  The labyrinth has a path that, if followed, will lead to the centre albeit by a rather circuitous route.  However the maze has options, some of which are dead ends.  You have to turn around and go back. 

The labyrinth is now a well-established method of spiritual practice in our modern western culture.  It is a good representation of the non-linear nature of the spiritual journey.  Sometimes it seems that you are getting near the centre and making progress on your spiritual journey but you will be guided away from you destination.  However, if you continue to follow the path that God has prepared for you, you will reach the ultimate goal. 

Unlike the labyrinth the maze is not a spiritual practice. However, I believe that the maze is also a good representation of the spiritual journey.  In some ways it is more realistic of the journey that many, if not most people follow in the spiritual, religious and psychological lives.  We often take the wrong path when given a choice and find ourselves in what seems to be a dead end.  We make choices that separate us from God and have to turn around and go another way which will hopefully be on the path that God intends for us.  This is the best definition I know of sin and repentance—to turn around and go another way when we miss the mark.

As I note in my sermon I hope that if you have a chance to walk a labyrinth or a maze you will take the opportunity.  I have attached a diagram of a classic 11 course labyrinth for those who are not familiar with the labyrinths.  Blessings  

I Have to Talk to God About This

Yesterday I attended the induction service for the new rector, Matt Martin, in the neighbouring parish of St. James Clandeboy and Holy Trinity Lucan.  It was a wonderful celebration of new ministry with a large combined choir and a full to overflowing in the church.  One of the many things which resonated with me was a story that the preacher, Rev. Ken Anderson, related as part of his sermon.  He and his family including his five year old grandson were visiting Savannah Georgia.  They came upon a statue which represents a modern black family that has risen from the shackles of slavery. The base of the monument bears an inscription by poet Maya Angelou:

We were stolen, sold and bought together from the African continent. We got on the slave ships together. We lay back to belly in the holds of the slave ships in each other’s excrement and urine together, sometimes died together, and our lifeless bodies thrown overboard together. Today, we are standing up together, with faith and even some joy.

The grandson was quite captivated by the statue and asked his grandfather about it.  When he heard the explanation he was rather quiet and moved away from the area.  Asked about what he was doing he answered, “I need to talk to God about it.”   The wisdom in that statement is as profound as anything I have read by spiritual guides and wise men and women.  That, for me, sums up what we all need in our spiritual journey in life when we seek a deeper relationship with God.  We need to remember to talk with God about it.  Talking to God of course is a two way conversation.  We need to listen as well as speak.  So often in my experience I forget to talk to God about what is happening in my life and my response to those events.  I reserve my conversation with God to formal and sometimes less formal periods of prayer and meditation.  Talking to God at any and all times in our lives will help us in many ways as especially more aware of the Moments of Grace which occur and which we often can overlook and be inattentive to what are all around us and that we often in the midst of. 

As Ken noted the chains that bind the feet of that family in the statue are broken and they have been set free.  This is a powerful representation of one way of looking at sin – it is those things that chain us to the past.  Let us keep talking to God about our lives and looking for those Moments of Grace.