The Sunnybrook Pulpit Rev. Ross Smillie July 2, 2017 – Canada Day long weekend Dominion From Sea to Sea May your anointed judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness. May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor. – Psalm 72 Apparently, on the sixth day of creation, God turned to the Archangel Gabriel and said: "Today I am going to create a land called Canada. It will be a land of outstanding natural beauty. It shall have tall majestic mountains full of mountain goats, and eagles, beautiful sparkling lakes bountiful with bass and trout, forests full of elk and moose, high cliffs over-looking sandy beaches with an abundance of sea life, and rivers stocked with salmon." God continued, "I shall make the land rich in resources so as to make the inhabitants prosper. I shall call these inhabitants Canadians, and they shall be known as the most polite people on the earth." "But Lord," asked Gabriel "don't you think you are being too generous to these Canadians?" "Not really," replied God "just wait and see the winters I am going to give them." Well, on this Canada weekend, I thought I would share with you not only a Canadian joke, but a few Canadian coats of arms and mottos; British Columbia’s motto celebrates its natural beauty: “Splendor undiminished” Alberta’s is drawn from the national anthem: “Strong and Free” Saskatchewan’s celebrates the diversity of its peoples: “from many peoples comes our strength” Prince Edward Island’s is the most self-deprecating: “The Small Under the Protection of the Great” Newfoundland and Labrador has the most religious motto: “Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God.” Nunuvut not only has the newest motto, but the only one not in Latin. The Inuktituk translates to “Our Land is our Strength” Last, but not least, Canada’s motto is a mari usque ad mare: “from sea unto sea.” (although the motto refers to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, we are increasingly realizing that there is another sea – the Arctic Ocean, so some people have proposed the motto should be changed to “from sea to sea to sea.” ) The Canadian motto was first proposed by one of the Fathers of Confederation, Sir Samuel Tilley of New Brunswick in 1866 and made official in 1921. It is based on a line from Psalm 72, which is a prayer for the king, and that the king’s dominion should be “from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.” That line not only supplied the motto, but also the name for the new country, which became known as the dominion of Canada. This psalm is at one level a prayer for any king, ruler or government system. So it could apply to the ancient king of Israel, or to the modern monarch and her family. Or it could easily be a prayer for the government of Canada: “May the government of Trudeau the Second defend the cause of the poor among the people, save the children of the needy, and crush the oppressor.” But there are points when the psalm seems to stretch beyond any mortal king or government leader and to envision an immortal and idea king. We certainly don’t want any Prime Minister or President to rule “as long as the sun endures, as long as the moon from age to age.” Mackenzie King ruled quite long enough, thank you very much. We want to replace our leaders when they get too corrupt or too complacent. We regularly want new leaders with new ideas. There is another way to understand this psalm, and that is as an ideal, eternal king, the Messiah, the King of Heaven. In Christian circles the king is often understood as the Messiah, the Christ, the servant king who “delivers the needy when they cry, the poor and those who have no helper… [who has] pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the poor… who redeems them from oppression and violence and counts as precious their blood.” We don’t hear Canada referred to as The Dominion of Canada, very often anymore, and it sounds pretty old fashioned, but that is still Canada’s formal name. In fact, before 1982, Canada Day was known as Dominion Day. So what was Sir Samuel Tilly thinking of when he proposed the motto from Psalm 72 and the term Dominion for the country. Was he thinking about the British monarch who remains Canada’s head of state, or about the Christ, to whom all rulers must one day answer? Probably, it was intended to mean both. The motto is a prayer that Canada will be undivided, united from sea to sea to sea, under the rule of the British monarch. But since earthly rulers are subject to a still ruler, I suspect that the Canadian motto, adopted as it was when Canada was still a nation of people who were at least nominally Christian, was also intended to evoke a greater dominion: that Jesus, the servant king who gave his life for all people because their blood is so precious in his sight, will have dominion over this nation. What does it mean for Christ to have dominion over our country? The word “dominion” sounds very similar to “dominate” and for many people the word suggests an oppressive patriarchal relationship, an imperial relationship in which one religion or ethnic group would dominate the others. And for a time, that assumption was very common in Canada. But surely it cannot mean that any more. As the Saskatchewan motto says: “from many peoples comes our strength.” Diversity is a source of strength, and the Dominion of Canada must embrace that diversity. Even more important, it is important to make the distinction between Christ having dominion, and Christians having dominion. Christians are every bit as limited and flawed as any other group of people. But to pray that Christ might have dominion is to pray for an ideal ruler, and every earthly government must be evaluated in comparison with that ideal. Christ as the ideal ruler gives us a moral standard of justice, against which we can measure the earthly rulers, calling them to a higher standard. The word “dominion” comes from the Latin word dominus, for lord. The meaning of dominion is therefore derived from the character of the lord whose dominion it is. A wise, just and compassionate lord would produce a wise, just and compassionate dominion. A foolish, unjust and self-centred lord would produce a much different kind of dominion. So what does it mean that our motto seems to have been originally intended as a prayer for Christ’s dominion from sea to sea to sea? I think the Psalm is clear: because Christ is just, compassionate and loyal, his dominion must be a place of justice, fairness, compassion. Someone wise once said that the true test of a moral nation is how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. The psalm makes the same point. To be Christ’s dominion, our country must be a place where the poor are treated with generosity and the cruel and greedy are restrained in their abuse of power. Our country must be a place of ecological well-being, where the mountains and the hills are fertile and lush, yielding their prosperity year after year. Our country must be a place where justice flourishes and peace abounds, where the suffering of the vulnerable and needy is heard in the halls of power and the government acts to defend them. Our country must be a place where the use of state power is perceived by the people like “rain falling upon the grass, like showers that water the earth.” Does that sound like Canada? For some of us it does, but not for everybody. There is still much injustice in this land, still many who suffer because of the lack of justice. We need a national strategy to reduce poverty. Indigenous children deserve clean water, good schools and economic opportunities. We need alternatives to locking up non-violent criminals. We need to move from winner-take-all political contests to a genuine commitment to seeking the common good. There is still lots of stuff to do before this country is truly “glorious and free” and so Christ’s dominion of peace and justice remains something for which we must long, dream, act, and pray. And so let us pray together, in song, for our country: (Voices United # 523) May this fair land, our Canada, your own dominion be; your people bless abundantly from seas to Arctic sea. .