June 11 2023 “Stands Before His People and Prays”

The gospel text today is from Luke, and it’s known as the Sermon on the Plain.
In Matthew, it’s called the Sermon on the Mount. Some say these are two separate sermon events, others say they’re accounts of the same event.
In Luke’s version, Jesus, Creator Sets Free, is coming down from the mountain after spending time praying. He’s come down to be on level ground to be among the people, to see them eye to eye, to set eyes on their wounds, to see into their very hearts and to lay hands on them.
Jesus is proclaiming the arrival of a new kind of kingdom, a revolution, the Kingdom of God.
For Luke, the meaning of the good news in this revolution is God’s justice, promises that offer hope to all and a threat for some:
Justice for the poor, the hungry, the sorrowful, the hated and the rejected.
Luke’s version is not in the third person, as is Matthew’s—this message is directed to the people gathering that day, in all their messiness and desperation for new life.
People have come from far away to see and hear Jesus, and this points to just who his message is for, an ever widening audience—this gospel is for everyone for all time.
This message is not just to be believed, it’s meant to be lived and shared.
Saint Enmegahbowh, known by his people as Stands Before His People and Prays, embodied this in his life and ministry through his courage, leadership and witness.
Today we honor and celebrate the life of Saint Enmegahbowh, the first Native American priest in the Episcopal Church.
Enmegahbowh, born a member of the Ojibwe people in Canada, was ordained in 1859 and served as missionary to the Ojibwe people in northern Minnesota. He was integral in setting mission strategy for our fledgling diocese, alongside Bishop Henry Whipple, the first bishop of the Episcopal Church in Minnesota.
Enmegahbowh’s road to ordination was a winding one. He was raised in the native spiritual tradition of his grandfather, a healer of high rank, and the Christian religion of his mother. His parents reluctantly sent him off at the age of thirteen from his home in Canada to travel with an Anglican Clergyman who was impressed by Enmegahbowh and promised to educate him.
After three months, Enmegahbowh escaped, homesick, to make his way back home. Eventually he left home again to accept a call to be a missionary.
Later he attempted to abandon this ministry and decided to return home, once again, to Canada.
While sailing on Lake Superior on his return voyage, they encountered a violent storm. Enmegahbowh had a vision about Jonah that beckoned him to return as a follower of Jesus and a servant among the native people in Minnesota. His path had been set. He never returned home to Canada.
Enmegahbowh was a peacemaker and a gospel bearer, who was on the margins himself, like those he sought to serve. Enmegahbowh moved between a white Christian world and the world of native people and their spirituality, a spirituality he carried with him, thanks to his grandfather. He was a bridge builder between whites and native people and was often caught up in conflict and sometimes found himself on the wrong side of it. He was almost always in danger, as was his family.
Enmegahbowh was taken from his family, assimilated, and isolated. Enmegahbowh was traumatized, as was his family and those he sought to serve.
He heard a call, and in that trauma, accepted that call and the blessings Jesus talked about that day on the plain and he carried that message to the native people he was called to serve.
He suffered greatly, as did the people he served, and yet he was with them to the end of his days. He took his native spirituality and blended it with his Christian faith and this is what sustained him and what he could offer the people to sustain them through this time of internment and genocide.
Enmehgahbowh embraced the gospel message of God’s revolutionary justice, a threat to those in power who benefited from the injustice perpetrated on his people. He proclaimed it to the people he served, people of this very diocese, and to anyone in authority.
Enmegahbowh eventually died at the White Earth Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota on June 12, 1902, at the age of ninety-five, and is buried in St. Columba’s churchyard. The people of St. Columba’s Episcopal Church continue to honor him each year on his feast day during the White Earth Pow-Wow. Gathering this weekend are indigenous Episcopalian whose ancestors were served by Enmehgahbowh. Our own Deacon Rex McKee is there this weekend, to honor Enmegahbowh and give thanks for his life and witness.
St. John’s – Minneapolis was founded in 1903, a year after Enmegahbowh’ s death. By that time, all of the Indigenous people in the state of Minnesota had been sent to reservations. Once they were on reservations our government made them give up their way of life. They weren’t allowed to speak their languages, practice their religions, or keep their customs. They were considered foreigners in their own land.
Enmegahbowh preached to his people through his life and witness, reminding the people of the words of Creator Sets Free, “The spirit world above will honor you, for this is the same way your ancestors treated the prophets of their day. You’re walking in their moccasins now”.
I am left wondering about the ways in which as the Episcopal Church in Minnesota we have dishonored, degraded and traumatized Indigenous people, oftentimes in the name of Christ. While the Episcopal Church in Minnesota did not operate Indigenous boarding schools we surely had a hand in assimilating Indigenous peoples and separating their families.
I’ve witnessed first-hand the conditions on the White Earth Reservation, and it remains a place of hunger, poverty and isolation. The trauma has permeated the generations and continues today.
We still have Episcopal congregations on the reservation and these people are a light on a hill on the reservation and serve many people, inside and outside of the walls of the church buildings. These are people who still blend native spirituality with Christianity, and it’s a beautiful thing to witness.
They have not forgotten their connection with the Creator, the earth and their ancestors. These are resilient people. I wonder what we might learn from them. I also wonder how we can be part of reckoning and reconciling.
This is all messy to be sure.
But one thing remains true: we are also recipients of this message from Jesus and it’s our mission as followers of Jesus to bear witness through our own experience of God’s life-giving and liberating love, in our personal lives and as a congregation – to walk the Creator’s good way and to invite others to join us. We can look to Saint Enmegahbowh as an example and an inspiration to us.
When Jesus said ‘follow me’ we are invited to be continually curious as to the WHERE (and look to the Holy Spirit for that guidance, just as Enmehgahboh did), but the HOW is clear: in relationship, with those experiencing life’s worst conditions and circumstances, where the hurting happens. These are those who have received God’s blessing, it’s the wound and the blessing that meet in the heart of Jesus, it’s where we meet Jesus, it’s the place where we connect with one another and it’s where healing happens.
In my own life, I have suffered greatly, and God has met me in my suffering and I’ve been blessed beyond what I could have imagined. I have been healed, again and again.
When has God met you in your suffering? When have you been healed and made new again?
This is the source of transformation and regenerative life. This is how God makes all people and all things new, all the time.
I imagine there have been times in the life of this congregation that either as individuals or collectively we have stepped out in faith for the ‘other’ and met people in their suffering. Can we name these times and share these stories with one another? This is part of our foundation for the future, part of our root system.
How might we reorient ourselves around the revolutionary words of hope found in today’s gospel and how might we embody them and carry them into the world?
The Rev. Dr. Curtiss DeYoung, CEO of the Minnesota Council of Churches, challenges us as followers of Jesus in his new book, The Risk of Being Woke. He invites us to go deeper by asking, “What power do we have that can be used to challenge the injustice of our time?”
This is where the possible and seemingly impossible meet and where God meets us.
May this be an invitation for us as we embark on our journey of rediscovering and reinterpreting our mission at St. John’s.
Amen

10am Summer Service

Second Service (Program Year)