Sermons

August 1, 2004 Rev. Dr. C. DiNovo

"Step 5: Admitted to God and to Ourselves the Exact Nature of Our Wrongs" 

I want to share something kind of sweet with you all – it’s a poster from about 1957. It was done for Brotherhood Week in Canada and was put out by the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews at that time. It led to some significant media for these two little girls who among other things had lunch with the Mayor of Toronto in Nathan Philips Square where you’ll be dancing a little later this afternoon. Now let me tell you the little girl on the left hand side is Marva Jackson and Marva’s family came from Jamaica – her dad was professional, a professor and that’s probably the one reason they let them in. And I don’t really know Marva’s story after that picture was taken. Marva and her family moved away, they moved out of Toronto somewhere. She was the only little black Canadian girl then in Huron Street Public School and one of the few black Canadians in Toronto. Now the other little girl, let me tell you about her. Her mother was Irish Canadian, her dad was Italian Canadian and I know a lot about her and there’s free coffee at Coffee Hour to anyone who tells me or takes a guess as to who she is. Anybody? Let’s hear it, don’t be shy – oh yes, it’s yours truly, it’s me!

You know there was a lot going on in Canada when that photo was taken, but I want to bring to your attention the most salient detail and that is what was going through our heads, you know we were both the double Dutch skipping champions of Huron Street Public School and we were talking if I do remember correctly about a really hot little boy, his name was Pisquali and this hot little boy was hot because of the way he rolled down the tops of his rubber boots, it was really radical. And when the photographer took our picture and then all the hullabaloo of the media started, we didn’t have a clue what it was all about. We didn’t have any idea. I mean I knew that Marva looked different from me, she knew that I looked different from her. Everybody in public school looked different from everybody else.

In our public school, there were all the nations of the world, even back then and we just didn’t think in those terms. Marva was just my best buddy and I was just her best buddy and bizarrely enough, because of this campaign, we became aware as children for the very first time about race in Canada. That I think is a true moment of grace captured there before you’re aware that there’s anything that separates us.

The last few weeks in this holy place, we’ve been talking about the 12 Steps. The 12 Steps many of us know because we know them as a healing system for those who have alcohol and other addictions, but we’ve been looking at them more in terms of the healing of nation states here at Emmanuel-Howard Park because it is a great healing system. We looked at that first step, you know, "Our Lives Become Unmanageable". We looked at the next step, that "We Should Give Over those Lives to God" and that we knew that God would come and help us with those lives if we only asked her. And then, of course, last week we looked at "Making a Fearless and Searching Moral Inventory of all of the Wrongs" and today the step is that "We Confess those Wrongs before God and at least one other Person".

Now I was trying to imagine what Canada would look like if Canada was a person and Canada would be about 137 years old since Confederation and there’s no doubt in my mind that Canada would be a dreary and dusty little old white man. A little old white man, this nation of Canada. And I imagined what that little old man would say if he were to confess his sins, his wrongs to the children not in this photograph before you, but to all of our children, all of the children across this nation and I would think that he would say something like this. He would say first and foremost that "I am a country that welcomes everyone, welcomes refugees from all over the world, but despite the fact that this was the end of the underground railroad and that we welcomed here in this country some 30,000 African Americans, still slavery built this country in the early colonies, slavery built the roads, slavery built the houses and slavery was not abolished until 1793." This old man might also say and "you know in our country we have free, still free health care and we have subsidized heavily, almost free public education, but not for everyone, not always."

And he would say that "Asian Canadians for example, had a quota upon the number that were allowed into our Universities." He would say "I am sorry and I have sinned, aboriginals weren’t allowed there either and neither were women. In fact, there was a quota on women right up until the late 1960’s for all of the sciences, there was a quota. Not how many they would try to get in, but how many the maximum was that they would let in 10%." He would say, this little old man that "I have always been a democratic nation," but (he would say) not really. The two little girls in that picture, neither of their mothers and neither of their grandmothers were considered human persons when they were born.

Do you know that in 1928 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that women were not human persons. It took the British Privy Council to overturn them a year later. It was not until the 1940’s that women had universal suffrage in this country. It was not until the 1950’s that Asian Canadians had suffrage in this country." This little man that is the Canadian nation would say to us, "I’ve always been a nation that welcomed diversity, but, but even though we are one of the first countries to sanction same sex marriage. You know the major cause of suicide in high school still are queer youth. You know that until the 1980’s, it was perfectly legal to fire someone because their sexual preference was different from yours" and this little old man would say, "I have always practiced racial equality," (but he would say) that forgetting the internship camps in B.C. for Japanese Canadians where they lost everything during the Second World War where everything was taken from them and for Italian Canadians in Toronto during that same period of time, that would omit the fact that there was signs on the beaches of Toronto until the 1960’s barring Jews and Dogs and Blacks and that would omit the fact that our immigration did not welcome a whole list of people and this continued until about the 1950’s when that picture was taken. This is the list: Italians, Jews, Asians, Greeks, Black, Gypsies and that he would say "omit the fact that the worst system of racism in the world apartheid in South Africa was modelled on the Canadian system of reservations for our aboriginal people.

So that’s what this little old man would say if he were to confess all the sins and wrongdoings of the Canadian nation’s state and then you know what the children of the children of Toronto would say back to him. This is what I’d think they’d say, "hey Grandpa, Grandpa, look out on this church. Look out on this city now. Grandpa, look out on this weekend, this Caribana weekend and see how God has worked God’s wonders in this city." "See", we would say to him, "we children of this nation’s state, see how in these pews sit Asian Canadians, Eastern European Canadians, Italian Canadians, Ukrainian Canadians, Jamaican Canadians, Guyanese Canadians, and on and on and on.

And most of all you know, one little girl with an Irish mom and an Italian Canadian dad whose dad was not allowed to walk in the front door. (I grew up on these stories) of the Granite Club and all the elite clubs in the city who was a semi-pro boxer was never paid for any of it, never paid for any of it because of his nationality and I liked to think of my dad smiling down from heaven, a heaven that this city is starting to look a little bit more like and seeing his little girl, his little girl wearing these priestly garments and standing in front of this heavenly host."Do not store your treasures up where moths can get at them, no put your treasures where God stands. That’s where the true riches lie.

Amen.