October 06, 2002 - Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Philippians 3:4b-14
    NRSV KJV CEV
Matthew 21:33-46
    NRSV KJV CEV

“Do This and Remember”

“Do this and remember.”

Recently I read an article on the growing problem with literacy in the United States.  It seems that our children know how to read, but they don’t know how to comprehend what they read.  They can tell you what the words are, but they can’t tell you what the words mean.  While I am appalled at the thought of this problem, it explains, at least to some degree, the situation in which we live.  If we aren’t able to comprehend meaning, how can we understand history?  If we can’t understand and comprehend history, how do we develop as people and as a nation?

Memory is something we all take for granted – at least until it starts to slip.  Rarely, however, do we consider that memory is essential to understanding who we are, to developing and maintaining our identity.  What is true of individuals is also true of societies.  History is, then, collective memory.  It is, as philosopher of history Eric Voegelin has put it, “the means by which a people give account to themselves of their past.”  We find it altogether too easy to forget history, to dismiss it.  If you want to be shocked watch one of the segments of ‘Jaywalking’ on the Leno Show sometime.  There college students, university graduates can’t relate or decipher the rudiments of American or world history, or geography for that matter.  To live only in the land of current events is to become subject to the whim of whoever happens to control the event.  There’s the reason why every dictator has destroyed national monuments, libraries, and churches at the very outset of the occupation of a conquered land.  Memory, history keeps the sense of identity alive and calls a people into being.

When we forget who we are and who others are we can easily hold them in contempt.  I like what one author has said, “Human history is littered with the debris of contempt.  Contempt happens when we see others not as people, but as dispensable commodities.  When we see other people as simply objects in the way of us getting what we want, the whole world is in trouble.”  This kind of contempt has been called ‘reification’ by moral theologians.  It’s the process of turning a person into a thing.  The vineyard workers in today’s Gospel conveniently forget who they are and who owns the vineyard.  The servants sent to collect rent, even the owner’s son, are nothing more than obstacles to what they wanted, things in the way.  One can easily get rid of a thing.  So they did.

What happened on the streets of Milwaukee last week, and not that far from quiet Church Street I would quickly add, was an act of contempt.  Charles ‘June’ Young became a thing to that mob of boys, an obstacle to their enjoyment of a Sunday evening.  So they killed him.  Now there’s an individual or individuals loose in Maryland and the District of Columbia who have also forgotten what it means to be a person and have reduced innocent folks to the level of objects to be used for their enjoyment.  Somewhere, somehow, along the line these very different events began as people, ordinary people, failed to remember who they are; failed to remember the precious value of human life, made in the image of God.

The only way that I can think of that allows us to make a difference in the face of such violence is to remember.  If we don’t forget who we are, if we don’t forget who we are called to be, we will not be deterred in trying to change a world where people conveniently forget, and conveniently treat each other as objects.  Jesus’ parable is a stern warning not to forget, not to lose sight of who we are or of what we are called to become.  It begins, however, when ask ourselves how we look at people around us.  When are we guilty of seeing others as obstacles, rather than as children of God?  How does that make us act toward people when we think in these ways?  If we can change ourselves and make this place different because of it, then it will filter out into the community around us.  We must constantly remember who we are.

For me communion is a graphic reminder of what we’re supposed to be about as a people of memory.  When we gather at this table we participate in an event that happened two thousand years ago, but we’re there now, and we’re with everyone who ever has or ever will receive these simple elements of bread and wine.  As we receive the bread and cup we are made one with God, with each other, and with all those who gather around similar tables all around the world.  If we “do this and remember” how can we see other people as obstacles, as things?  How can we not see them as a part of our very selves and treat them with love and respect?

There is a reason communion is called ‘Eucharist,’ thanksgiving.  It is called Eucharist because it reminds us to be thankful for what God has done for us.  When we celebrate the sacrament we not only remember that night long ago when Jesus fist gave us this gift, but we remember the whole story of salvation.  That’s what you will hear in the ‘Great Thanksgiving’ as we celebrate the sacrament.  To remember what God has done, and is doing, on our behalf calls us to live in God’s ‘eternal now’ through loving service and with open hearts and minds.

Jesus told his disciples, “Do this and remember.”  The command hasn’t changed.  Even when Paul tells the Philippians that he is, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,” he’s building on the memory of what God has done.  The goal of the life in union with God through Jesus Christ does, indeed, lie before us.  It is a prize for which we must strain with every part of ourselves.  So I ask you to comprehend, to realize what we’re about to do, and who we are.  Do this and remember.  Remember who you are.  Remember the life of love and growth to which you have been called.  Remember what you are called to become.  Do this and remember.