Strategic Memories

First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
First Sunday in Lent - February 25, 2007
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: Deuteronomy 26:1-11/Romans 10:8b-13/ Luke 4:1-13]

            What makes a memory? I'm sure that all of us here have memories, some fond and others far from fond, of persons, places, and events that have been significant in our lives. Memories are so significant that we could actually say that individuals are the sums of their memories. Maybe that's why courses on writing one's life story always seem to be popular? So one could say that even when we dredge up painful memories, the recognition and the sharing can be both therapeutic and community building. “Building memories” or “making memories” has become part of our popular culture. Six years ago MasterCard did a commercial showing two guys visiting every major league baseball park with the tagline, after listing all of the other expenses, “Memories – priceless.” Of course, the two guys who had actually done that and made a documentary film about their trip did put a price on their memories when they sued, but that’s another story.

What is true of individuals is certainly true of families. There is a continuing interest in researching genealogy, as evidenced by the various 'how-to' books, classes, and even web-sites on the internet. We have events and happenings that define us and give us direction in how we both think and act. Sometimes we may think and act in accord with the way we've been formed by our families, and sometimes precisely the opposite. Close your eyes for a moment . . . now recall a family gathering with me. Who is there? How are you involved? If you think hard enough it's almost like we're there again with those people we love, isn't it? Such is the power of memory.

The people of Israel were told by God that they were to be a people of memory. They were to remember where and what they had been and how they had been delivered from bondage by God's gracious action. This recalling of history, the Greek word for it is anamnesis, is in itself a profession of faith in God. However, it's not just something that's located in the past and not to be forgotten. Rather, this re-membering makes us contemporaries with the events that are recalled; that history is also our history, it brings the parts together again, we re-member who we are and from where we came. To remember what God has done for Israel is to be part of the action because it encompasses the past, speaks to our own liberation today, and assumes the future. Why? Because God, who is "the same yesterday, today, and forever," is the One who acts. And God "who is, who was, and who is to come" is the One who gives this gift. Thus, for the Christian, T. S. Eliot's words in his Four Quartets take on new significance, "Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future."

Every time the people of Israel remembered their history the deliverance they had experienced became real again. This is the case for us, as well. When Jesus had his encounter with evil in the desert it was to bring full-circle the experience of humanity, with a chance to make the right answers to temptation, instead of giving in. What we heard in Luke's Gospel was only one part of what would eventually be 'recapitulated' through the Cross and the Resurrection. Irenaeus of Lyons, writing in the third century, said this is why Luke laid out the generations back to Adam and the Lord did what he did. It wasn't for him, it was for us; because the whole of humanity was, is, and will be recapitulated in Jesus Christ.

Each time we recall our deliverance, recall God's gracious action toward us, we are re-membering the Body of Christ. That is, we are being brought more and more into union with the Lord. If you ever wonder why we pray that long "Great Thanksgiving" each time we celebrate the Lord's Supper, well, now you know. Our action in breaking open the Word together, and then sharing the bread broken and the cup poured out makes tangible what God has done for us in Christ. It does for us what recalling the "wandering Aramean" and the offering of first fruits did for Israel. That's why I believe that the best definition of Christian worship is, "gather the folks, tell the story, break the bread;” to which I add, go forth to serve. In those simple actions we re-member the Body of Christ and understand why or how memories can be strategic. A strategy is simply a “careful plan or method” and we see how employing our memories help us to become the people God intends for us to be and to act in accordance with that manner.

Now I think you're also, perhaps, getting why I try to bring so many people from our past, folks long-dead, into sermons: because they're not really dead. They're alive with Christ in God and they have powerful thoughts, experiences, and ideas to share with us. A.M. Allchin, a contemporary English author, describes what I mean in his book The Living Presence of the Past: The Dynamics of the Christian Tradition. Allchin recounts a visit to one of the Greek Orthodox monasteries on Mount Athos. The abbot of the community took him for a tour of the library, listen to what he experienced:

. . . . It was not a large collection of books. There were a lot of elderly well-used volumes of the Fathers. "Here" said the abbot, "is a book which you give to beginners." "This is a work which is useful for someone who is depressed." "Here is a book which will give very clear instructions about the Jesus Prayer." Any Westerner showing you round this collection of books, even someone to whom they were of practical use, would have said: "Here is an interesting sixth century text." "This writer shows influences from the Syrian tradition." "Here is a work important in the later development of Hesychasm." We look at books chronologically and classify them in terms of influences and development. To the abbot they all had a simultaneous existence and composed a simultaneous order. Their authors were fathers and teachers who had become friends, to whom one spoke in church and at other times; it was of little importance whether they had lived six hundred, twelve hundred or fifty years ago. He showed me the library rather in the way in which an expert gardener might show you his collection of books on gardening, or a cook a collection of cookery books. These help you on your way. They are not an end in themselves. [p. 28]

            Scripture, too, is not an end in itself. We need to remember that Scripture is the memory of the faith community written down, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is one the things that Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, points out so beautifully in Why Study the Past? We can’t always assume that things are going to be the same, so we write history, we organize our memories and out of that comes the Scripture, the memory of Israel and the early Church on how God dealt with them and worked among them. When Jesus had his encounter with Satan, "the accuser" tried to take Scripture and use it to justify giving in to temptation. Each time Jesus countered this abuse by putting the Scripture back into its proper context. He called upon the memory of God's activity and turned aside the arguments to do wrong.

            Here is an example for each of us. Jesus confronted temptations that are really common to all of us, like the need for sustenance and the desire for power and control. When we are tempted with these things, sometimes even backed-up with quotations from the Scripture, we can see through them when we tap into the collective memory of our faith, the Christian tradition if you will. It's not enough to appeal to the Bible if it's out of the context of God's love and our response in faithfulness. For example, we can't use the Bible to promote hate. We need to see everything weighed in the balance of the living Word in the living community of faith. As the late Russian theologian Georges Florovsky wrote: "tradition in the church is not merely the continuity of human memory or the permanence of rites and habits. Ultimately, 'tradition' is the continuity of divine assistance, the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit . . . It is primarily an appeal to persons, to holy witnesses." Our Lord gave us an example in his appeal to the "holy witnesses" of Scripture within the context of God's gracious activity.

            Thus, Paul can tell us that deliverance comes among us when we "call upon the Name of the Lord." It's not just by believing in the heart, but by the manner in which we live it out that makes the difference. After all, we're told in the Scriptures that "the demons believe and tremble." Belief is only the starting point, confessing the faith involves living out our covenant relationship with God and with one another. If you've not taken the time to review the Church covenant lately I would urge it upon you as a good Lenten discipline. Meditate for a bit on what we say we are and if the actions aren't there to match the intellectual assent, the believing, then there's a project to be worked on. The "first fruits" that we can offer to God are lives lived in accord with God's will and God's love.

Our shared Lenten discipline, the Holy Conversations on Wednesday nights, is designed to help us recall our past so that we can move forward into the future. We all need to do our best to be there, or we’ll be missing an important part of the story. The most recent issue of the Bulletin of the Congregational Library is devoted to “Defining Congregationalism.” Dr. Bendroth, the library’s director, notes, “Local churches also have much to gain from strengthening their historical roots; as a growing army of thoughtful observers have concluded, long-term renewal does not grow out of the latest scheme for a new church program, but from creative engagement with an old, rich, and tested religious tradition, with all of its ‘warts and wrinkles.’” We have the tradition, in spades, here at First Church, but now we need to enter into creative engagement with it so that strategic memories can move us in the direction God wants us to grow.            

For us, memories can sometimes fade, either through physical illness or aging, or because we've not kept the memory active and alive within us. However, God's memory is never-ending. In the Eastern Church, when someone dies the prayer is "Eternal memory grant unto them, O Lord." Once I asked an old monk why that prayer was made and he said to me, "Ah, if God should ever forget us; well, we'd never existed, had we?” God doesn't forget and calls each of us to remember who we are and whence we came.

            Re-membering the Body of Christ means that we are constantly putting ourselves back into God's active, living memory. When we gather around the Lord’s Table to "do this in remembrance of me," as we do on the first Sunday of each month, we are re-membering the Body of Christ and making it visible again in the world. When we go our separate ways, the Body of Christ goes forth into the world through you and through me. God's love, God's care reaches out to the world through you and through me. God's love, God's care reaches out to the world through our words, our actions, and our touch. For Christians, this is how memories are made: gather the folks, tell the story, break the bread. Then go to live the story and be the bread. Memories are strategic; they’re how God keeps us together and keeps us on track. Come, let’s make memories together!