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 friendly 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 et dominabitur a mari usque ad mare: "and he shall have dominion from sea unto sea."

That 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, the anointed. Today, kings are crowned, but in ancient Israel, kings were anointed with oil. And so the word anointed or Messiah at one level just means king or ruler.

There are two ways of understanding that Psalm. One is that it is a prayer for any king, ruler or government ruler. So it could apply to the ancient king of Israel, or to the modern monarch and her family, even to the future king currently visiting Canada. Or it could easily be a prayer for the government of Canada: "May Mr. Harper 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 complacent.

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."

So who is the Canadian motto talking about when it says that "he shall have dominion from sea unto sea": Is it talking about the British monarch who is 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 kings are subject to a still greater king, I suspect that the Canadian motto 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.

The Dominion of Canada: this biblical concept of dominion is embedded in our very name as a country. In fact, before 1982, Canada Day was known as Dominion Day. What does it mean for Christ to have dominion over our country? Surely it can't mean any longer that all the people of Canada will have to be Christian, or people of one racial, religious or ethnic group. 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.

Dominion comes from the Latin word dominus, for Lord, and dominion is defined by the character of the lord. What does it mean that our motto prays 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. 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."

On Thursday afternoon I participated in a ceremony to honour the transfer of four wooden grave markers to the Red Deer Museum. These grave markers are over a century old and are the last visible remnants of a cemetery on the grounds of the Red Deer Industrial School, which is operated by the Methodist Church from 1893 through 1919. The Red Deer Industrial School had students from Saddle Lake, Goodfish Lake, Hobbema, Morley, and Nelson House in Manitoba. The children from these communities were forced to leave their communities to go to school. Although the intentions of those who ran the schools were no doubt mostly good, the consequences for native family life and culture have been devastating. And some of the children did not make it home. We know of eleven people who buried for sure in the school cemetery, as many as twelve others who may also be buried in the school cemetery, and four more who were buried in the Red Deer municipal cemetery during the influenza epidemic of 1919. Most of those who died were students, but others appear to be either teachers or in one case, the wife of the vice-principal. The causes of death are varied: consumption or tuberculosis, meningitis, accident, child birth, and influenza.

Native people take graves and cemeteries very seriously. For Cree people at least, a feast is held on the anniversary of the death every year for five years. This was the second ceremony and feast associated with the children buried at this cemetery. The ceremony involved a number of speakers, some of whom where better informed than others. A couple of the native speakers seem to have heard a rumour that over half the children at these schools died and were typically buried without any service. They spoke of how emotionally painful it was for them to contemplate that these children died without recognition. In fact there is no evidence that the numbers of children who died were as high as these rumours are reporting, and I find it hard to believe that the children would have been buried at a Methodist school without a funeral service, but the fact that these speakers believed those rumours reveals the depth of pain and hurt that native people often live with in this country.

Perhaps the most moving time in the service was when the national United Church staff person invited the United Church members and ministers in attendance to come forward and stand with her as she shared the work that the United Church is doing to deal with this historical legacy and to right an historic wrong. She then read the names of those who are known to have died at the school, and those who may have been buried there: Emma Stanley, aged 11; Ellen Hart, aged 16; Louisa Mitchell, wife of the school's vice principal; David Laroque, aged 13; Josaphine Larocque; Elizabeth Laroque, died in childbirth; John Baxter, died in infancy; Irene Stoney, died at 16; Louise Johnson died in infancy; and the list goes on. It was helpful to hear the names, and to recognize that it was not just children who died, but that there were also teachers and spouses who succumbed in a time of much less adequate health care.

I found myself thinking during the ceremony about what it would mean for Christ to have dominion over this land. Because, at least for the time being, there is still much injustice in this land, and native peoples experience it much more clearly than the rest of us. Native schools receive lower funding than other schools in this country, according to the Auditor General; native communities have substandard water treatment; and native people represent a much larger percentage of the prison population. I don't have the answers to the problems facing native people and other people facing injustice in this country, but clearly something is wrong, and so Christ's dominion remains something for which we must pray.

And so let us pray together, in song, for our country:

May this fair land, our Canada, your own dominion be; your people bless abundantly from seas to Arctic sea. (Voices United # 523)