Back in September I gave a leadership seminar. You may remember the advertising around here for it. We did some theory and some practical exercises. At one point I asked them to critique my own leadership style. One gentleman pointed out, as a criticism, that I hadn't looked people in the eye when I asked them to do something. I immediately pointed out that this was a strictly cultural value. For instance, when a native Indian doesn't look you in the eye, they are showing respect. Well, everyone was quite excited about this. You see, in our white culture many people are brought up to think that you can't trust someone if they don't look you in the eye. This cultural difference can lead to conflict. For instance, when a native shows respect and doesn't look a police officer in the eye, the white cop may immediately suspect the native of trying to get away with something. Well the gentleman was very excited to hear this, because his son-in-law is native and the fact that his son-in-law wouldn't look him in the eye had been making him very angry. As everyone left the leadership seminar, most thanked me for this great piece insight into native culture. I left thinking I should have given a seminar on native Indians and not one on leadership. So this sermon is the result.

As we heard in the Bible readings, love is fairly important: OK very important. The Old Testament laws in Leviticus instruct us to love our neighbour as ourself, and to love the resident alien in our land. Jesus tells us the greatest commandment is loving God and others. Paul tells us that all we need to do is love people and we are fulfilling all the laws. This is a lot easier to say than to do. How can you love absolutely everyone, not in some hypothetical sense, but in everyday face-to-face encounters? How can we love people, not in spite of their differences to us, but truly for who they are.

A starting point is to ask who do we find it easy to love? We find it easiest to love our family. Also, it easy to love our friends. We find it hardest to love enemies as Jesus instructs us. It is also hard to love people who are different than us. When we meet a stranger we need some place to start. The easiest place to start is with understanding. Once we can understand someone's intentions, motives, their point of view is easier to love them.

It is interesting to watch how a defense lawyer defends someone who is accused of a violent crime when the whole nasty business is caught on videotape. The lawyer must defend his/her client against overwhelming evidence, and convince a jury. What the lawyer normally does is the opposite of what we may expect. He plays the tape frame by frame and attempts to explain his clients behaviour. There is no law that says that if someone's actions are understandable, then he should not go to jail. Even so, if one can convince a jury they understand the actions on the videotape, they will often acquit. The question of whether the actions were illegal or not is overlooked. An example is the beating of Rodney King by 17 police officers. The all white jury could completely relate to the white police officers, and be understanding of their actions on the videotape. They could not understand the point of view of a black man completely wasted on drugs and resisting arrest. The same principle applies when Judges sentence criminals. In Canada, statistically native Indians get longer jail than white people for similar crimes.

So understanding can overcome strangeness, ignorance, even hatred and fear. Understanding leads to love. If you understand someone, it is impossible to hate them. If you think you truely understand someone from their deepest being, it is impossible not to love them. That, in fact, is our understanding of the love of God. God knows us entirely, everything that has ever happened to us and every thought that has passed through our minds. Thus, God loves us completely no matter what we do becuase God knows our story, and completely understands our intensions and reasons. Jesus tells us not to judge others, presumably because we do not have this kind of omnipotence (this kind of all-knowingness) so our judgements can be completely wrong. There is in fact a native proverb that goes, ''Don't judge a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins.''

One time in Ontario Kelly went for a pastoral visit to a native family's home. Now, Kelly is certainly not a judgmental person by nature. But she certainly had trouble understanding what was going on, since she was in an alien culture. The first thing she noticed was that the floors throughout the house was dirty, and everyone had their shoes and boots on. However, the countertops in the kitchen and, in fact, all the surfaces in the house were spotless. I explained to Kelly that this is not surprising, because natives simply don't have the understanding on inside and outside like white people do. What you walk on is always the earth, never a floor. There is no sense of ever being separated from the land. Their floor needs to be no cleaner than we would keep our backyard perhaps. The second thing Kelly noticed was that the woman she was visiting always carried her purse. She carried in around the house with her wherever she went. You see, natives have very limited sense of personal possessions. If you carry something with you, then it is in use and shouldn't be taken away. There is concept that an object, sitting by itself, has an owner. Whoever needs use of it takes it and uses it, and then puts it down again. Property is communal. Sharing is understood and accepted without question. This is a good example of cultural differences because the native value of sharing can be considered to be closer to the values Christ taught than the white value of ownership. We cannot claim to be a Christian culture. However, the white man has made some property essential in order to get along in our world: especially money and identification. This woman has learned to guard these things by keeping them on her person, so that they are always "in use". So from these two limited examples, we can see what lack of understanding can bring. A white person who doesn't understand these things may easily conclude that natives are uncleanly and a bunch of thieves. We may try and love them anyway. But how much easier if we are freed of our cultural judgements. By the way, it works the other way around. A native may conclude that white people have no connection to the land and that white people are all incredibly greedy. But they would be just as wrong. However, because of the dominance of white culture, they have much more opportunity for seeing and understanding of us than we do of them.

I myself have many experiences with natives. For I while when I was a kid I went to school where there were 5 white kids, and 25 native kids. The teacher said on the first day of school if there were any day were everyone showed up to class, there would be no work. We would just have a party, fun and games all day long. They happened once in the entire school year. You see, native children are free to do as they wish. Natives do not order their kids around. This is one of the hardest things for us to get our heads around, for us controlling our children is one of our greatest goals. We want our children to grow up exactly the right way, with the right values and the right skills to become productive citizens. On the other hand, natives value their children as they value adults. Children's opinions and desires are important and treated as such. A parent is not considered to be responsible for a child. Although often it is the grandparents that raise the children, the entire community is responsible for all the children. An adult does not worry about where their child is, they know someone will look after them. There is no such thing as a teenager, what we would consider a child at 14 is considered an adult to natives. This clash of values around children makes for a terrible fit of cultures. This misunderstanding in fact lead to one of the tragedies committed against natives in this century: the residential schools.

I have not tried to give you a complete overview of native culture today. I have only tried to present natives in a new light. I have to tried to show you that very good intentions on the part of natives can look to us as incomprehensible, or even bad behaviour simply because our values differ. I hope that some simple understandings can lead to love. I have faith that God can help us understand all people, from whatever background, so that we can truly come to love people as Jesus commands us. Amen.

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