Sermon of Tuesday, 12 June 2007, John Johnson Enmegahbowh
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Readings: Isaiah 52:7-10, Psalm 129, Luke 6:17-23


Background from Lesser Feasts and Fasts:

John Johnson Enmegahbowh, an Odawa (Ottawa) Indian from Canada, was raised in the Midewiwin traditional healing way of his grandfather and the Christian religion of his mother. He came into the United States as a Methodist missionary in 1832. At one point Enmegahbowh attempted to abandon missionary work and return to Canada, but the boat was turned back by storms on Lake Superior, providing him a vision: “Here Mr. Jonah came before me and said, ‘Ah, my friend Enmegahbowh, I know you. You are a fugitive. You have sinned and disobeyed God. Instead of going to the city of Nineveh, where God sent you to spread his word to the people, you started to go, and then turned aside. You are now on your way to the city of Tarshish….’”

Enmegahbowh invited James Lloyd Breck to Gull Lake, where together they founded St. Columba’s Mission in 1852. The mission was later moved to White Earth, where Enmegahbowh served until his death in 1902. Unwelcome for a time among some Ojibway groups because he warned the community at Fort Ripley about the 1862 uprising, Enmegahbowh was consistent as a man of peace, inspiring the Waubanaquot (Chief White Cloud) mission, which obtained a lasting peace between the Ojibway and the Dakota peoples.

Enmegahbowh (“The One who Stands Before his People”) is the first recognized Native American priest in the Episcopal Church. He was ordained deacon by Bishop Kemper in 1859 and priest by Bishop Whipple in the cathedral at Faribault in 1867. Enmegahbowh helped train many others to serve as deacons throughout northern Minnesota. The powerful tradition of Ojibway hymn singing is a living testimony to their ministry. His understanding of Native tradition enabled him to enculturate Christianity in the language and traditions of the Ojibway. He tirelessly traveled throughout Minnesota and beyond, actively participating in the development of mission strategy and policy for the Episcopal Church.

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There is an uncharacteristic bitterness in our readings today that had me searching the lectionary for other readings on which to preach. From the Psalmist’s biting statements against the enemies of Zion to Christ’s bleak blessings for us when people hate us, exclude us, revile us and defame us for being Christians, there isn’t a lot of hope sewn into Enmegahbowh’s readings. But lest I be guilty of the same turning away from Nineveh that Enmegahbowh saw in his vision of Jonah, I decided to seek deeper into our readings for the glimmer of hope that ties us back to the Good News of Christ throughout scripture.

What I found as I pored over and struggled through the themes in our readings was a reminder that scripture teaches us through our own stories, through our own lives, and through the lives of others. Taken out of their contexts and pieced together today, I find that these readings each piece together around the story of Enmegahbowh’s life story from Lesser Feasts and Fasts.

There is an obvious counterbalance to the heaviness of our Psalm and Gospel reading in our Old Testament reading from the Prophet Isaiah… How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’

This opening scripture for today proclaims the joy and anticipation associated with the messenger of peace, who brings good news of God’s salvation to those most desperately needing it. It is Enmegahbowh as he not only brings the Good News of Christ to the natives of the Great Lake’s regions, but brings it through their own native language and traditions

The bitterness voiced in the cry of the oppressed in the Psalm against their enemies who they pray will be cut off and shamed such that even those who pass them on the street will not stop to greet them in the customary blessing is the bitterness between the Ojibway and the people of Fort Ripley, between the Ojibway and the Dakota peoples, and for a time even between the Ojibway and Enmegahbowh himself.

In Luke’s gospel Jesus today challenges our notions of blessing. We may be able to see how the poor might be blessed since all of Christ’s followers are called to bring the kingdom to those such as the poor who so desperately need to experience the abundance of God’s kingdom. We may even be able to see how the hungry and the sorrowful might be blessed since it is only through hunger and sorrow that we can experience the true blessings of being filled and finding deep and lasting joy.

But where is the blessing in being hated, excluded, reviled, and defamed? In Enmegahbowh’s case, it was cause enough for him to resign of his missionary efforts, seeking to return to Canada only to be turned back by the storm and told in a vision to continue in his efforts.

Perhaps Enmegahbowh’s vision provides a link for us through Jonah. It was Jonah’s fear of being hated, excluded, reviled, and defamed that kept him from going to Nineveh. Out of fear and apprehension at being called to go to a place where his reception might at best have been bitter mockery and at worst might have brought his death, Jonah set sail for Tarshish at the far end of the Mediterranean in modern day Spain – as far as he could conceive of going from where God called him to be. When he accepted his calling and went to Nineveh, facing his fears of ill treatment as a messenger of God, his mission and ministry was blessed beyond his imagination.

In Enmegahbowh’s case, his own ministry was eventually also blessed by his perseverance in the face of his unwelcoming audience.

It seems to me that the great reward for us in heaven is that same reward that is for all who come to have faith and an ever deepening relationship with God. The same gift of eternal life with God that Jesus promised to his disciples and followers throughout his ministry in different ways.

It is through Enmegahbowh’s life, that we have a marvelous example of what all of this means for us in our lives.

We too are messengers of God, bringing the Good News of peace, salvation, and the reign of God to those around us. As Christ’s hands and heart in the world, WE are the modern day apostles, saints, and followers that are in charge of bringing God’s kingdom to those around us. We are those with the beautiful feet of the messenger, giving voice to the song of praise Isaiah foretells for all who are brought to peace, redemption, comfort, and salvation.

Yet as Christ warns his disciples, so we are warned that when we challenge the order of this world and of our societies, when we challenge the way people live, when we challenge ignorance, hatred, greed, oppression, and the hoarding of the abundance of God’s kingdom, we will not be thanked for it by the world at large.

When we think of modern day prophets such as Bishop Romero and Martin Luther King Jr., we catch a glimpse of the extremes of Christ’s warning to us that proclaiming the Good News from every mountaintop, hill, and valley will be a perilous journey. Yet we also see examples of lives that have been captured by the Spirit, lifted up and enveloped in God’s grace and the blessings of peace, compassion, love, and mercy that are a foretaste of the great reward of heaven.

We are called this day, as Enmegahbowh was called two centuries ago, to bring the Good News of God boldly to those around us through our lives, through our actions, through our example of reaching out to those around us and living as ambassadors of God’s kingdom – not as enforcers or as gatekeepers of God’s grace, proclaiming damnation for those who don’t believe as we believe, but as servants seeking to know those around us well enough to bring them God’s Good News through their own language and traditions.

God give us the courage to open our hearts to this world, seeking to love and serve those around us without the fear of consequence.

Amen.