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PRESBYTERIAN
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Connection
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SPRING 2019
  MESSAGE FROM THE GENERAL SECRETARY
 PRESBYTERIAN
 Living Without Fences
 By the Rev. Ian Ross-McDonald, Life and Mission Agency
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said sharing a border with the United States was like sleeping next to an elephant and no matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, we are still affected by every twitch and grunt. The elephant to the south of us is currently very restless and twitch- ing and grunting a lot about barriers and walls. And it’s not only the US that is concerned with building fenc- es along its borders. Barriers go up as xenophobia, racism and populist nationalism rise. Europe has, or will soon have, more barriers on bor- ders between countries than during the Cold War. Studies done by the political scientists Ron Hassner and Jason Wittenberg reveal that of the more than fifty fortified boundaries built since the end of the second World War II, half were constructed between 2000 and 2014. And the new walls being built are longer and more formidable.
Walls are meant to prevent tres- passing.But walls are not always merely neutral deterrents—they are sometimes built to scare, threaten and terrorize. In places like Israel- Palestine, walls divide communities, separate family members and cut farmers off from their land in acts of cruelty that break people’s spirits.
Since the ancient days of the Church, theologians have sometimes referred to Jesus as The Symbol. Symbol literally means “to the throw together.” Jesus is the one who brings together forces that have long been separated, sometimes even disparate, incompatible, irreconcilable forces.
Christ as The Symbol has an ongoing ministry of reconciliation that stands against the powers of sin and evil, which constantly work to separate and divide. At the moment of crucifix- ion, the writer of the Gospel of Mat- thew records that the temple cur tain that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple was de- stroyed, signifying that, among other things, the division between God and humanity had been overcome and were at one. Icons of the resurrection show Christ emerging from the grave, united with Adam and Eve by joined hands as he hauls them up from the dead amid the wreckage of the break- ing walls of Hell that divided God and creation, neighbour from neighbour, and life and death.
People of faith do well to question the worldly wisdom that says, “Good fences make good neighbours.” Truth be told: living without fences and walls is the hallmark and ideal of Christian community living. In the words of the old hymn: “In Christ there is no east or west” or in the words Paul wrote to the Galatians concerning baptism: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have
clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” It’s difficult to say where to draw the boundary regarding the implications of Paul’s baptismal creed but perhaps we could agree that the shadows of his words are longer rather than shorter and that perhaps that means that the barriers that separate rich and poor, wise and foolish, liberal and conserv- ative, gay and straight, young and old, Indigenous and settler, prisoner and free, traditionalist and innovator, this world and the next, the living and the dead have all been knocked down and we are all one in Christ.
In fact, it is not good fences that make good neighbours. Rather, we are more truly and authentically neighbours when we live without any fences at all. When we don’t have fences and protective buffers, we have to be more consciously careful with each other, more considerate, more respectful, more protective and loving of each other.
Paul’s words to the divided com- munity rent and severed by conflict
at Corinth are instructive: he says Christians are to live together with an attitude of love which is patient, kind, humble, and which does not keep score. We are instructed to tear down the fences constructed of resentment, insistence or irritability. All of Paul’s words in Corinthians 13 are a descrip- tion for how to live without fences. They are a prescription for how we can work and worship together.
Years ago, I participated in a fu- neral in rural Quebec for a faithful Presbyterian man whose beloved and loving wife was an equally de- vout Roman Catholic. The elderly local French priest, who had been asked to participate in the funeral by the man’s widow, and I arrived at the cemetery ahead of everyone else.While waiting for the friends and family to arrive for the burial, we two clergy—from different Christian traditions and separated in age by more than 45 years—made casual conversation across the divide of language—he in his broken Eng- lish and me with what little French I could muster. Looking around the cemetery I asked the priest about the cemetery wall that appeared to have been damaged and I asked when the reconstruction would be done. “Mais non!” said the priest. “Not reconstruction but wall destruc- tion! Yesterday, I called the workers to come to the cemetery and knock down the wall between the Catholic and Protestant cemeteries because of the burial today. A wall: so bad! There are no walls in heaven or be- tween the living and the dead or this world and the next since Christ died and rose from the grave, so now, no walls separating the church.”
                                                LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
            during which these Day Schools functioned, and it may be that one of two were eventually expanded into residential schools. Nor do I know whether this is the total of Day Schools the PCC operated, but in the interests of full disclosure, and the fur thering of reconciliation, would it not be timely for the church to acknowledge (perhaps in a sub- sequent issue of Presbyterian Con- nection) the extent of its involve- ment in Indian Day Schools as well? —Douglas Stewart
Thank you for your comments, Douglas, and you are right—the PCC operated several Day Schools. Research is currently underway on
this topic and more information will be provided in a future edition of the newspaper.
Until then, you may be interested to know that on November 30, 2018, Crown-Indigenous relations min- ister, Carolyn Bennett, announced an agreement in principle to settle a Canada-wide Indian Day Schools Class Action suit that will provide compensation for former students of day schools as well as $200 mil- lion for healing, wellness, language, culture and commemoration. Fol- lowing the announcement, CBC reported that “about 200,000 Indig- enous children attended federally operated Indian Day Schools across the country beginning in the 1920s.
A mother and her baby along with students at Swan Lake Day School in December 1914, photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Archives.
Indian Day Schools were operated separately from Indian Residential Schools and were not included in the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.” These Day
Schools include a number in which The Presbyterian Church in Canada had a role in the operations.
Stay tuned for more details on this subject, coming soon.







































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