Today’s scripture reading involves a tense discussion between Jesus and the priests who run the temple in Jerusalem. Officially, all Jews are waiting for the arrival of the Messiah. In theory, since these priests are religious authorities, they should recognize the Messiah when he comes. Yet, as we heard today, they doubt that this Jesus of Nazareth is the one. So, they question him. By what authority is he doing these healings, and teaching the crowds? What office does he hold? Who gave him this authority, since he didn’t get it from them?
The fact that they are even asking this question is a problem. You may recall that when Jesus first started out, he walked along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and he beckoned to the fishermen to come follow him. He said he would make them fishers of men, in the famous words of the King James Bible. And they did - they left their nets and their families to follow this stranger. This happens often in the New Testament - regular Jews and even some pagans meet Jesus and can sense right away that he is special. They sense the God power in him.
So, when the temple officials ask Jesus who gave him his authority, it shows that they cannot sense the God in him. Jesus can see this right away. He sees no reason to cowtow to them by answering their questions. So, instead, he tests them. Answer my question, and then I’ll answer yours.
He asks about John the Baptist - where did he get his authority? Jesus knows that John was filled with God’s spirit. But the priests can see this question is a trap. They doubt John’s authority, but they don’t want to offend the crowds who thought he was a prophet. So, they say they don’t know where John’s authority came from. It’s a political answer, which shows they lack spiritual insight. They know the rules of their job, but lack the intuition to recognize spiritual people.
Jesus responds, well, if you can’t answer my question, I won’t answer yours.
This encounter raises a bigger question: how do you cultivate spiritual insight? It’s not a question of book learning. A person can understand the Bible, and not have it. The temple priests probably knew much of it by heart. That didn’t give the insight to sense who Jesus was.
Being spiritually aware is less about book learning, and more about the heart and intuition. It’s not an opinion, it is an orientation to the world, a way of being.
One of the reasons people are encouraged to come to church is to cultivate spiritual insight and compassion. We talk about loving kindness and compassion pretty much every week. We sing about it. We are given opportunities to practice it. During the church service we pass the peace, which is an opportunity to wish another person well, even if we have never met them before. Even if we don’t like them. But, we still do it. During prayers, we pray for people we know and who we don’t know. And after the service, we mingle with friends and strangers alike. All of this is a kind of spiritual training, giving us a chance to practice being compassionate and open hearted.
It’s like in sports. Athletes spend most of their time training and practicing. They do all sorts of drills and work outs each week. The hope is that when they are in heat of the moment on game day, they will be able to react quickly without thinking. To catch the ball, to be in the right place for a pass, to see the right play instantly. Athletes talk about being “in the zone.”
Church is our way of training us to be in the “spiritual zone.” We gather to cultivate compassion and spiritual insight so that when we encounter a situation where someone needs help, we can act quickly without thinking about it. And we cultivate the ability to even see the spirit in someone else. This training takes time. Over the years, hearts are softened, we become more compassionate. We try to make the world a better place, individually and collectively.
And that is why it is so puzzling when religious institutions act in ways that are so obviously cruel and uncaring. One of the enduring mysteries of the residential school system is how could so many nuns, ministers and other Christians have created such a traumatic experience for so many children? How could people schooled in compassion have stayed silent as children died in such alarming numbers? And then covered it up?
It’s clear that white culture of the time saw Indigenous people as inferior. They needed retraining and correction. Canada’s first Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald, felt that as long as Indigenous children stayed on their reserves, there was no hope of making them good Canadians. He declared:
“When the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write his habits, and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write.”
The official government position was that the best thing that could happen to the First Nations was that they should assimilate. Learn white Canadian culture and forget their own. Today we call this cultural genocide.
So, inside the schools, teachers took away anything that reminded the children of home. Their clothes were burnt, their long hair was cut; they were told not to speak their own language. They were separated from their siblings. They were taught about Jesus, and told to forget their own religion. And this was imposed by religious people. Couldn’t they see the trauma they were inducing in the children? Weren’t they shocked by the suffering, the crying, the poor food? The sickness and death? The abuse?
The terrible truth about these schools is that they had much in common with the schools all Canadian kids attended. Well into the 20th century, most schools in Canada saw children as a problem that needed to be solved. Children were assumed to be little savages who needed to be civilized. To be obedient. Children needed to be quiet and to listen to their elders. In churches, at home, and at school.
In schools, children who disobeyed or disrespected their teachers were punished by being hit on the hands with leather straps or birch branches. In Toronto, the main school board gave out board-aprpoved leather straps to each school. And they were used. In 1933, a study found that only 11 percent of schools did not use the strap. Since young children were less self disciplined than older children, the strap was used primarily in elementary schools, on children 6-12 years old. Four to six strikes on the hand at a time was the norm. In the 1947 school year, six percent of children in the Toronto Board had received the strap, with the threat of its use keeping the rest of the children in line.
Canadians believed in hierarchy back then, and it was reflected in how children were disciplined. In Toronto, most of the physical punishment was applied downtown, where working class and immigrant families lived. Their children needed to learn how to be productive Canadians. However, in wealthier neighbourhoods it was different. In 1947-48, the Toronto School Board found that children who attended Blythwood, Lytton, Davisville and Deer Park elementary schools never saw the strap. The wealthy didn’t use the strap on their own children, but supported a system that used it on children who needed to be kept in line, to fit into Canada’s social hierarchy.
The justification for this mistreatment of children was cultural and religious. Most Christians had been told that the sin of disobedience that started in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve continued in each child. They were born imbued with original sin. Christian schools felt that the fate of a child’s soul was at stake. They needed help to come to Jesus. Physical punishment was one way to help them get over their unruly, disobedient tendencies. After all, in the Book of Proverbs, it said spare the rod, spoil the child. ( Proverbs 13:24)
So, when Indigenous children entered the residential schools, they were facing an educational system that already thought children were sinful savages who needed to become obedient to human authority and to God. That was normal across the country. To make matters worse, Canadian culture’s racism considered Indigenous children to be inferior to white children. In terms of spirituality, it was believed that their Indigenous religion threatened the welfare of their eternal souls. They needed to learn about Jesus for their salvation. The federal government believed this, too. This is why the job of educating Indigenous children was given to churches.
So, even if a Christian teacher had spiritual insight, they probably felt they were doing these children a favour by trying to destroy their culture and religion. Like the religious authorities in today’s scripture reading, a loyalty to rules and procedures blinded many Christian teachers and officials to the harm they were doing to Indigenous children. The rules, not the spirit or compassion, won. With tragic, long term consequences for children and Indigenous culture.
This situation was made even more difficult by the nature of Indigenous parenting practices. They valued a child’s independence. Children were expected to learn through trial and error, even if they risked minor injury. Learning to trap and hunt, gather wild foods took place mostly outside, not in classrooms where children were expected to be silent. Indigenous parents did not use physical punishment to teach their children to obey. Indeed, political scientists have argued that many of our North American ideas about individual freedom of thought were inspired by Indigenous culture, since European culture was steeped in conformism and obedience to authority.
So, the residential school system was a collision of two completely different ways of educating children. The Christian teachers expected obedience and were prepared to use physical violence to achieve it. The Indigenous children were horrified by this alien, abusive educational system which treated them with contempt in the name of religion. Coming from a culture with no physical punishment, it is little wonder Indigenous children found this experience so traumatizing.
Looking back, few of us would want to go to a Christian boarding school of the early 20th century. Our ideas about education have evolved. Our current ideas have much in common with Indigenous ideas about a child’s right to learn on their own, to explore the world at their own pace. Well to do parents pay extra to send children to Montessori schools where this is the style of teaching.
The great irony is that history has proven Indigenous parents right. Few parents today think teachers should physically strike a child to teach them how to behave. It is illegal in our schools, struck down by a 2004 Supreme Court ruling. Indigenous culture now looks like it was far ahead of Canadian culture with respect to how we should treat our children in schools and at home.
In today’s scripture reading, Jesus tells a short parable. There was a man who had two sons. He asked one of them to go work in the vineyard. He said no, but went anyway. The father asked his second son to go. He said yes, but didn’t go. Who was the better son? The Temple officials answer that it was the son who went to work to serve his father, even though he said no at first. Jesus agrees.
As a society, Canada said no to indigenous people. But we have a chance to make amends, and say yes. This is not something we will do all at once. We have a lot to learn, and we are often reluctant to change our ways. But we can do it, but only if we are willing. There’s still room for us in God’s vineyard, to do the work that needs to be done. It will require drawing on our spiritual wisdom and intuition, and then putting it into practice. To object when our governments set aside agreements with Indigenous people in the name of rapid economic development. We didn’t listen to Indigenous people during the era of residential schools. We said no first. There’s still time to say yes. Amen.
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