“How should I meet the Holy One, submit myself to The Most High? If I meet him with burnt offerings and year-old calves, will the Holy One be pleased? Or with a multitude of cattle or a torrent of oil? What if I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my womb for the sin of my soul? Hasn’t he told you, child of the dust, what is good? What does the Holy One seek from you? To act on behalf of justice, love kindness, and go forward humbly with your God” (Micah 6:6-8).
Over the summer, there have been several discoveries in Canada of human remains at the sites of some of Canada’s Indigenous Residential schools. I’d never heard about these schools before the news about the discoveries there broke. Their history is not a pleasant one.
In the late nineteenth century, the government of Canada established residential schools throughout the country that were designed to…educate young First Nations children in European language and culture in order to “civilize” them. Schools in the United States were used as a model for these institutions. In both countries, such places were run by Christians.
You can about them here. The short version is that indigenous children were separated from their families, alienated from their cultures, and taught the language and the norms of the dominant, English- and French-influenced cultures. Many of them, upon reaching adulthood, found themselves unable to be a part of either community—indigenous or dominant.
Children at these schools died in large numbers from disease, abuse, and other causes. Their remains are the ones that have been discovered over the course of this summer, buried in unmarked graves in the ground of the schools, likely without their families ever knowing where they’d been interred.
Why? What purpose did this serve? Salvation, of course.
What if I sacrifice all my young calves, my choice cattle, even my first-born child? Is that enough? Will that assure me of salvation? Which of these things will please the Holy One? What lengths do we need to go, Micah asks. What sacrifice does God desire from us in our quest to save the world?
The response is convicting and pleading. It echoes Hosea’s words where God declares that “I take delight in kindness, not sacrifice” (6.6). The blood of animals and humans aren’t what is required. It’s kindness, it’s love, it’s an understanding that you haven’t gotten it all figured out.
It certainly isn’t taking children from their families and cultures in order to make them “Christian.” It definitely isn’t in digging unmarked graves in which those children would lay hidden, forgotten.
The discoveries in Canada aren’t the first and they will not be the last atrocity in which Christ’s Church is found to have participated. Progressive or Conservative, Mainline or Evangelical, Catholic or Protestant, all have been guilty of sacrificing Creation for what they believed was the desire of God.
We cannot undo the tragedy. The ashes of the offering cannot be restored to life. The bones of the dead cannot be made to walk again. We cannot change what has happened in the name of the One who is love.
But we can take small actions for justice, live lives of kindness and compassion, and go along with the One who showed us the Way in humility. We may not prevent tragedies like those that happened at Canada’s schools. Our actions may not even appear to make the smallest ripple in time.
But we might help save the world.
Crucified One, you know the pain that human hands can cause. You know what we can do when we believe we are right and have answers to all the questions. Comfort the families and communities whose members have been buried nameless for all these years. Humble us with this reminder of what has been done in your Name. Save us from our desire to sacrifice your Creation for what we believe is salvation.