How many of us are familiar with the name Jully Black?
In February 2023, in Salt Lake City Utah, Toronto singer, Jully Black performed the Canadian National anthem at the NBA All-Star game.
As a Juno-award winning, black woman of Jamaican descent, to be invited to sing at such a high profile event was not only an honour, but also a responsibility. Jully was given a stage, and from that stage, being viewed live, in person and on-screen by millions of people, Jully could have simply showcased her incredible voice and musical talent.
By that invitation, Jully was invited to represent Canada in a particular way: with the words of a song that represents our commitment to this nation.
She described the opportunity in a CBC interview as being like “the Olympics of anthems”[1]
Jully took this responsibility and exercised a certain kind of moral freedom in her singing. Rather than singing the official words we know:
O Canada, our home and native land
She sang:
O Canada, our home on native lands.
One key word has changed, and that single word change represents a movement of consciousness, acknowledgement and action that is sweeping across Canada – whether we like it or not. It is a movement of recognizing the impact of colonization on these lands we occupy, a movement of recognizing the need to acknowledge harm, and make change towards good.
We probably have a mix of feelings in any group of Canadians about the change Jully made. Some of us may feel that for an individual to change, at will, a word or words in a National Anthem is somehow impertinent – taking personal freedom to a level that is not acceptable.
To this, I want to share with you two brief stories, snapshots if you will:
First happened over a decade ago, when I was returning by train from a trip to Moose Factory, Ontario. I had travelled there with a fellow Christian leader, to offer our helping hands in the Christmas activities of the St Thomas Anglican Church community on the island. Travelling back, we happened to get into a conversation with a little girl who was traveling with a Family and Children’s Services worker. As we talked to her we learnt that, over the span of a few years, both her parents had suicided. Her parents would have been very young adults when they took their own lives – a move usually made due to mental health challenges and/or feelings of complete hopelessness and despair.
The Centre for Suicide Prevention reported in 2018: “Canada’s Indigenous population, including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people, comprises 4.3% of the general population. Despite representing a fraction of the population, the suicide rate among Indigenous youth aged 15-24 is 5 to 6 times the rate seen in the general Canadian population.”[2] Without a doubt, with the COVID-related increases in mental health challenges, addictions and suicide, these numbers would be higher now than in 2018.
The second snapshot I want to offer to you is one which prevails to this day, not only in remote Northern Indigenous communities, but in communities within 20 minutes drive of major cities like Brantford, Hamilton and London. Bottled water, being either picked up or delivered by the case, to on-reserve households across southwestern Ontario, from Six Nations to Oneida.
One news resource reported: “June 2022 marked 10,000 days that members of Neskantaga First Nation have lived under a long-term boil water advisory. Since 1995, their tap water has at times been unsafe even for bathing or laundry, known as a ‘do not use’ advisory.” [3]
How many of us, settlers here in Canada, whether first, second, third or fourth generation have these kinds of suicide rates or these kinds of water challenges in our communities in our homes and what is now OUR native land?
Think about that for a minute, and perhaps hold it in tension to your reactive feelings about Jully Black’s rendition of O Canada for a minute before we go on.
Back in February, following the NBA All-Star game, there was quite a kerfuffle in the media over this one word change – Our home ON Native Land – but Jully did not back down from the pushback that came from her exercising a certain kind of creative freedom, intentionally.
Thankfully, rather than being “kicked off the island” for disobedience, there are some very affirmative responses coming from Jully’s version of the anthem.
So, on Tuesday last week, at the inaugural graduation ceremony of the first cohort of law students at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly known as Ryerson University) – Jully again sang the national anthem with this one word change. The change was welcomed at TMU, whose name change happened in response to recognizing that the former name “Ryerson University” connected the university in an unfortunately celebratory way to Egerton Ryerson, considered to be the architect of the residential school system.
You might be wondering what all this story-telling has to do with our readings for today!
In which we hear about Abraham’s obedience to God to the point of being willing to sacrifice Isaac on the altar.
Is Abraham free in his relationship with God? What responsibilities does Abraham undertake because of his relationship with God?
Abraham is demonstrating something which is critically important to the life of faith: the effort to obey God’s instructions, and the challenge that effort can often place on social and personal preferences. Would Abraham have chosen, willingly, to just sacrifice Isaac to God had God not asked for it? Absolutely not. But does he in fact, when called upon to do the difficult thing, proceed to go about doing it? Absolutely he does.
What kind of freedom do you have in God?
What kind of responsibility comes with this freedom?
Paul in his letter to the Romans addresses freedom and responsibility through the lens of obedience: in this case, our obedience to God having been freed from sin. The freedom from sin, given to us by Jesus’ death on the cross is not a cheap freedom. It comes with responsibility. “now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification.”
We are sanctified in, with and through Jesus. And in our sanctification, we have a big responsibility: it is the responsibility to be obedient to the instructions of God – not because it earns us a pathway to heaven, but because we are thankful that we are no longer in the earning righteousness business – now we are SURE of all being set right by Jesus, we have no reason to resist exercising the most radical hospitality in ALL we do.
So, when it comes to welcome, when it comes to sharing, when it comes to acknowledging – how generous can we afford to be?
Perhaps we can afford to be so generous, so hospitable to the history that allows us to be here, that we too may consider singing: O Canada, our home ON native lands. Perhaps this may be a way to welcome reconciliation in the way that the first people of turtle island first extended their radical welcome to those who landed on these shores from other countries – people like me, and perhaps like you or your ancestors. Thanks be to God for the hospitality extended to us. Amen.
This message was delivered at St Peter’s By the Lake, Sauble Beach, on Canada Day weekend, where a recent land claim by the Saugeen First Nation was awarded, returning to them their Sovereign rights over the beach popularly known as “Sauble Beach”.
[1] https://cupe.ca/water-life-fight-clean-drinking-water-continues
[2] https://www.suicideinfo.ca/resource/mental-health-and-suicide-in-indigenous-communities-in-canada/
[3] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/jully-black-tmu-law-school-1.6889024