Sunday Sermon...

Even in Church, our relentless push for inclusivity and diversity, though well-intentioned, has unintentionally redrawn deeper lines between us.

Every sermon I hear these days feels like a modern-day confessional booth for sins I didn’t commit, part of a broader guilt trip that I hoped religion had left behind.

What happened to the simple stuff? I seem to remember Sunday school as being about stories of the earth as a garden—a place we’re privileged to tend. Back then, virtue was its own reward, and the basic rule was: treat others the way you’d want to be treated. No one had to wrap it up in layers of sociopolitical theory. It was just basic decency, universal stuff. And I think there’s a lifetime’s worth of conversation to be had about that, mixed with maybe a little good humor, a bit of community spirit, and the idea that we should all hold each other to a higher standard of politeness and care. There’s beauty in that simplicity.

Am I the only one who misses it? Are there still people out there searching for a community-based Sabbath meeting that’s this straightforward? Or has the whole world decided we need to politicize every square inch of our lives, including Sunday mornings?

Our relentless push for inclusivity and diversity, though well-intentioned, has unintentionally drawn deeper lines between us, dividing us like seldom before in history, by making what separates us more important than what unites us.

In a time when much of public life is consumed by the politics of identity, race, and history, there’s an increasing disconnect between those who want church—perhaps their last bastion of tranquility and simplicity—to remain focused on universal human virtues and community spirit, and those who seek to remake it in the image of modern political movements.

Because it doesn’t feel like people are actually anti-religion. No one is railing against Christian values. Not really. If you look at the statistics, sure, formal religious attendance is down. But the hunger for connection and community, for meaning, for something bigger than the endless stream of divisive noise we call life today—that’s still there. David Brooks pointed this out in The New York Times: discontent with religious institutions is sky-high, but personal spirituality - one love, one people? It’s more appealing than ever. People are yearning for something, and they’re just not finding it in the same places they used to.

This longing isn’t anti-anything; it’s a pursuit of balance, where the sacred can sit alongside the everyday, where people can gather not to be reminded of their inherent guilt or division, but of their shared humanity and responsibility to care for one another. Many people, it seems, are tired of the moralism tied to modern political movements, especially in spaces that were once sources of personal spiritual renewal. The question is, how can we get it back?

I guess it starts with talking about it. That always seems to be the hard part these days. Identity politics is a formidable argument. Its rhetorical ramparts are deeply defended and almost unassailable. It leaves very little room for discussion, disagreement, or even doubt. It's hard to remember that it's just a framing tool. One of a million possible ways to look at the world. So talking openly is the hardest part.

The modern manifestation of "hyper-woke religion"—which can overemphasize guilt, shame, and the flaws of particular groups as well as any old-time Catholicism—feels alienating, especially when contrasted with the simplicity and universality of teachings like the Golden Rule, which transcends race, nationality, and era. My frustration with the hyper-focus on identity politics at church mirrors a broader discontent. For me, church, and the sabbath, are meant to be a respite, a place of reflection on enduring values: kindness, service, humility, and stewardship of the earth—not an endless sermon on the sins of ancestors or the perpetual guilt of being born into a certain background.

Maybe that’s what I’m feeling every time I walk out of a church service, disappointed. I don’t want to go there and be reminded of my supposed ancestral guilt or get lectured about the sins of an entire group of people. I get that all day from the CBC et al.

For me, it all reached its limit when my daughter Dorothy (seven at the time) one evening going to bed said she was afraid that the Scottish people might come. WTF? On review, she said the teacher told them that the Scottish people came and stole people’s land and houses and killed the children. And she was afraid that would happen to us. I got her to sleep. And we took much more care in reviewing what she was hearing from teachers. We also started carefully sharing more of our own real Scottish heritage with her, which I hadn’t up to that point because the story of the Chisholm Clearances is so awful. But, I came to the end of this identity stuff - in school, media, and certainly in church.

I want to talk about virtue. I want to talk about kindness, humility, and hope. I want to talk about the Golden Rule, about tending the earth, about laughing together and lifting each other up. About the importance of the charity of patience because the road is long and the path is wide. About encouragement. Church could be about shared values. It could be a place where you didn’t have to agree on every headline, but you could agree on how we should treat one another.

Lift Your Head, Weary Sinner

The old notion that "we're all sinners" - the fallen state of human nature inherited from the first humans as a result of their disregard for the Garden - offers a powerful antidote to the divisiveness of identity politics by reframing how we view guilt, shame, and personal responsibility. Instead of dividing us into groups of oppressors and oppressed, it universalizes the human condition. We all fall short; none of us are morally superior based on our identity. This shift in perspective pulls us out of the endless cycle of assigning collective guilt and reminds us that imperfection is a shared trait of all humanity. It levels the playing field, fostering humility rather than self-righteousness, empathy instead of resentment.

When we embrace this, it redirects the focus toward personal accountability, redemption, and the possibility of growth. If we are all flawed, then each of us also carries the potential for forgiveness and reconciliation. It moves the conversation away from blame and towards healing, reinforcing the idea that what unites us is far greater than what divides us. By stripping away the moral hierarchies that identity politics often reinforces, the concept of universal sin reminds us that we are bound together not by shared guilt but by shared humanity. That’s where real community and care begin.