RCL Proper 26C [i]
28 September 2025
Holy Trinity Anglican Church
White Rock BC
From McKinley to Denali
When our oldest child, David, was in Grad 3 or 4, I was summoned to meet with his teacher. She was concerned by what she called his ‘oppositional’ behaviour. When I asked her for an example of this behaviour, she told me that David kept correcting her about the name of the highest mountain in North America. Every time she said, “Mount McKinley”, David would correct her and say that it was “Denali”.
What she didn’t know was that David spent most summers in the company of the many indigenous children who came with their parents to the Native Ministries Summer School at Vancouver School of Theology. Within those circles ‘Mount McKinley’ was known by its original Alaskan indigenous name, ‘Denali’. David’s perspective had been shaped by his friends and their communities ancient knowledge of the mountain rather than the U. S. Geological Survey’s desire to honour an assassinated U. S. president.
To this day David has remained an active ally of indigenous people. He now works as a library technician at Nicola Valley Institute of Technology in Merritt, a post-secondary educational institution created by a consortium of First Nations in and around Merritt.
How do you look at the world?
How we look at the world is thoroughly integrated into our very hearts, minds, souls and bodies. Our perspective on the world is shaped by many factors – language, social and family history, our personal experiences – to name but a few. My late colleague at VST, Dr Sallie McFague, frequently reminded the faculty and her students to be very careful how they looked at the world, because ‘that’ the way it is!’ – at least to one who is looking.
We create our worlds and then we expect them to work as we conceive them to be. But sometimes the worlds we construct collide with the worlds constructed by others. Some of those collisions result in the destruction of one or both worlds. But there are also collisions that result in a re-shaping of perspectives and a new, perhaps even a shared, world emerges that is life-giving and eye-opening. The collision of worlds may result in a vision of the future that holds promise for everyone rather than a select few.
Prophetic symbol
Two thousand six hundred years ago, the people of Jerusalem were besieged for two and a half years by a Babylonian army. Their kin in the norther kingdom of Israel had already been absorbed into the Babylonian empire, and now it was the turn of the southern kingdom of Judea after the failure of its second revolt against their imperial foes from the east.
In that moment the Judeans must have looked at their world in fear and confusion as it collided with the imperial world of the Babylonians. But, in the midst of this approaching catastrophe, the prophet Jeremiah offered them a glimpse into the world that God was still bringing into being despite the devastation surrounding them. When his kinsman offers to sell some family property, perhaps in hope of getting some ready cash in case he needed to make a dash for safety in Egypt, Jeremiah defies all reasonable expectations. Jeremiah’s symbolic act of buying a piece of property he has no reason to believe he will ever occupy points to the world as it will be after the dust settles on the current collision, a world where land will be seeded and reaped by the descendants of those who currently live in terror.
Jeremiah’s neighbours looked at a Mount McKinley. And Jeremiah offered them Denali.
Look more carefully at the world.
In a society where wealth and comfort were often understood to be signs of God’s favour and where poverty and disease signs of God’s disfavour, Jesus tells a story. It’s a story that invites his audience – and us – to look more carefully at the Torah and its many exhortations to care for the poor, the immigrant, the hungry, the homeless, the widowed and the orphaned, because they are our neighbours not strangers.
It’s a story that invites his audience – and us – to hear again the voices of the Prophets who time and time again remind us of what God considers to be the world as it should be. It is a world where we act justly – even if it costs us. It is a world where we embrace faithful love – even if it is difficult. It is a world where we walk modestly with our Creator – even if the dominant society is self-centred and self-promoting.
The rich man has been living on Mount McKinley rather than on Denali. And the realization is shattering and his failure to look more deeply eternal consequences.
The writer of 1 Timothy also pleads with his audience to look more carefully at the world. These verses are a set of warnings for wealthy disciples, so that they might realize that richness in generosity is true wealth, that imitating Christ’s way of life is true life. [ii] Right actions in the present set the future in motion. [iii]
From Denali to McKinley and Back
I find today’s Scriptures serendipitous. Tomorrow is the feast of Michael and All Angels, a celebration of those heavenly beings who are God’s agents and who are responsible for gathering us into God’s kingdom, that is to say, the world as God sees it and intends it to be, not the world that has been distorted by the delusions, illusions and counterfeits that we have created through our short-sightedness and unenlightened self-interest.
These holy words and holy wisdom ask us to look at the world with new eyes – even when worlds collide – as we draw near to the day when our country pauses for a day of truth and reconciliation, a day of reflection and honesty that has the potential to lead us into right actions today to set a better future into action. To acknowledge that we gather on unceded land is not about shame, political correctness or imposing a guilt trip on any of us. It is an invitation to see with new eyes. No matter who we are or when we came to this country, we have all benefitted from the wrongs that were done when settlers came and saw Denali and called it McKinley.
In every baptism and confirmation, at every Easter Vigil, we have promised – and will promise again – to persevere in resisting evil and when we fall into sin, to repent and return to the Lord. This is a promise to seek in the collision of worlds the promise of a new world.
We have promised – and will promise again – to strive for justice and to respect the dignity of every human being. This is a promise to seek in the worlds of others a glimpse of a world where collaboration and respect replace competition and contempt.
To follow the way of Christ is to seek each and every day to see the world with new eyes, to look at the world where God is at work shaping a place where we and all God’s children shall be free to live in the shelter of Denali rather than McKinley.
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