Run the Tape

A Sermon Shared at the Suttons Bay Congregational Church

October 28, 2018

Scripture: Exodus, 14:26-31, 15:22-24, 16:1-2; John 13:31-35

            The July 23, 2018 issue of The New Yorker magazine includes an article by Joshua Rothman called “The Big Question: Is the world getting better or worse?” Rothman cites a number of recent books and studies concluding that the clear answer is “better.” He writes:

Most historical and statistical evidence shows that life used to be shorter, sicker, poorer, more dangerous, and less free ….

Around the globe, improved health care has dramatically reduced infant and maternal mortality, and children are now better fed, better educated and less abused. Workers make more money, are injured less frequently, and retire earlier. In the United States, fewer people are poor, while elsewhere in the world billions fewer live in extreme poverty …

Just consider this compelling statistic that Rothman cites: this morning, a newspaper could have run the headline NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN EXTREME POVERTY FELL BY 137,000 SINCE YESTERDAY—and it could have run that same headline every day for the last twenty-five years.

Of course, we have not made equal progress on all fronts. The tragic events of this weekend show that the world remains a place with far too much hatred, bigotry, madness, and violence. And some statistics—for example, concerning climate change or the number of Americans who die of drug overdoses every year—point in the wrong direction.

But Rothman presents a convincing case that we continue to make substantial progress with respect to numerous important issues and that, in general, things are better now than they were in the past. The “big question” that Rothman explores in his article is why most of us nevertheless tend to think that things are worse now than before—maybe even much worse.

            To answer that question, Rothman turns to the work of a number of prominent scholars and pundits who have various theories about who or what is to blame for our pessimism. Those theorists generally “round up the usual suspects” as nominees. Some say that our post-modern culture fosters this negative state of mind. Some claim that recent technological developments have brought us to this sad state of affairs. And some blame it on a ubiquitous media that fails to report positive news.

            The most intriguing theory, however, comes from philosopher Charles Taylor who blames …. wait for it, wait for it …. the Protestant Reformation. Taylor points out that “in pre-Reformation Europe, ordinary people were held to lower spiritual standards than monks, priests and nuns, and a member of the laity might live an imperfect, worldly life and still be saved, as long as he [or she] supported [the Catholic Church.]” In other words, Taylor suggests that before the Protestant Reformation people essentially “outsourced” to the Catholic church the project of worrying after the world and everyone in it.

Taylor argues that when Protestantism came along the Catholic Church lost this role in most people’s lives. Under the new Reformation theology, individuals became responsible for themselves, for each other, and for society as a whole. Taylor maintains that this idea persists in the secular ethics of our times in the form of our personal sense of social responsibility.

The good news, which we celebrate on this Reformation Sunday, is that this dramatic theological change liberated us from the oppressive authority of the sixteenth-century Catholic Church. We became free to navigate spiritual matters based on our own reading and interpretation of the Bible, our experience, our reason, and our conscience. We no longer needed an intercessory clergy or institution to commune with God. We disposed of the middleman and got our own hotline to heaven.

The bad news, Taylor contends, is that this same change left us with a sense of responsibility over ourselves, others, and the world that we cannot possibly fulfill given our limitations as human beings. In Taylor’s view, we are like people who struggled mightily to get an important job that it turns out we lack the qualifications to perform: we have dauntingly infinite duties and a conspicuously finite capabilities. This has left us exasperated, desperate, pessimistic, and unable to see (let alone appreciate) the good things going on around us.

With all due respect to these wise people—no doubt much wiser than me—I have to disagree with them. Our inability to see the positive signs around us did not arise just recently, or in the sixteenth century, or, for that matter, in the twelfth or the tenth or the third. It has been with us for a very, very, very long time. Indeed, the Bible tells us as much—and also helps us understand what to do about it.

Let’s start with the excerpts we heard this morning from Exodus, a very old book recounting very old events—indeed, tradition places them about fifteen centuries before Christ. Here, we find the freshly liberated people of Israel complaining about their current condition and longing fondly for the “good old days” when they had water to drink and food to eat. Of course, in their nostalgic rhapsodizing they ignore the fact that in those glorious days of yore they also happened to be enslaved under the oppressive yoke of a tyrannical pharaoh.

Why did the ancient Israelites fail to see that they actually had things vastly better than they did before? Well, I think we can rule out a few possibilities. The Israelites did not find themselves feeling such despair because of post-modern culture, or the Internet, or the media, or—three thousand years before Martin Luther—the Protestant Reformation. No, we need a different explanation than these scholars and pundits have offered us.

Perhaps the Israelites responded this way because, in some deep and unchanging sense, this is how we human beings are hard-wired. Given a choice between dwelling on our current problems or our current blessings, we naturally gravitate toward the former. Focusing on the positive requires work, which is why we have to keep reminding ourselves to do it and why the number of sermons on this topic will today officially pass the one billion mark.

I suppose that a psychologist, biologist, or anthropologist might offer up a theory or two about why this characteristic is so engrained within us. They might contend that it has something to do with individual survival, or the perpetuation of the species, or the preservation of the tribe, or what have you. For today, though, I want to put aside the “why?” question in favor of one that feels more practical and urgent to me: “what next?” If every last one of us has at least a little of the ancient Israelite in him or her, then what do we do about that?

Of those one billion sermons that I mentioned earlier—some of which I myself have preached on other occasions—a common answer touches on themes of memory and gratitude. That is, those sermons contend that we will have a better appreciation the overall good in our lives if we remember all that God has done for us and feel grateful for it. Now, let me be clear: I like that answer a lot and I will declare plainly and unequivocally on the record today my official approval of remembering God and feeling grateful.

I do not think, though, that simple memory and gratefulness suffice to solve our problem. I think they’re good and valuable—but I don’t think that they’re enough in and of themselves. After all, the people of Israel remembered—they remembered the food and water they had as slaves. And they experienced gratitude—they appreciated those satiated stomachs and quenched thirsts more than ever before. Despite their memories and their gratefulness, however, they still managed to think about their current experience in the wrong way.

Well, something happens next in the Exodus story that I think tells us a lot and even gives us a wonderful insight into how to live richer, fuller, happier lives. It is this: God hears the complaints of the Israelites and provides them with water and showers them with bread—or, as the wonderful old phrase has it, “manna from heaven.” Then, having nourished them, God commands the people of Israel to take some of the manna and to put it in a jar to mark the tremendous blessing that they have just received. God says that this will help them remember, and, indeed, we often cite this biblical passage as one that touches on those themes of memory and gratitude that I just mentioned.

But I want you to notice—because I think it has absolutely critical significance—that something more is going on here as well. God does not just instruct the people to remember. He also tells them exactly what and how to remember. God involves them in an activity—preserving some of the manna—that will help them remember. He does not just want them to remember—he wants them to do something that will fix the memory in place. He wants the Israelites to think of memory as something that we actively create, not as something that we passively receive when we are sitting around, rubbing our chins, and thinking backward about our life.

In essence, God says to the people of Israel: “Stop what you are doing. Pay attention. Don’t miss the amazing thing that just happened. Take it in. Make it part of who you are. Do something to set it in your minds. And then—only then--go on with your lives, remembering and grateful.”

Jesus, who understood more about human nature than anyone else who has ever walked the earth, completely got the importance of this process, which I will call “active engagement in creating memory.” Let me say that again, because it’s sort of a mouthful. “Active engagement in creating memory.” It just means that we have to do some conscious work to create the memories that matter to us—they don’t just invite themselves into our brains and settle comfortably in an obscure corner until we need them. We have to help make them.

Throughout the gospels, Jesus did not just instruct his followers to remember him and what he had said and done; he also gave them tools, devices, and rituals to help them remember, to make them active participants in the creation of memory. He said “I’m going to give you a prayer”—and we recite it every Sunday. He said: “Do this in remembrance of me”—and when we celebrate communion we take the bread and eat of it. Our sisters and brothers in Christ have been living out these created memories for more than two thousand years.

One of the most dramatic examples of this sort of teaching comes in chapter 13 of the gospel of John. Recall the context: Jesus and his disciples have gathered to celebrate Passover. In the midst of that sacred activity—itself an act of created memory within the Jewish faith—Jesus gives them two alarming pieces of news: he will be betrayed, and he is going away to somewhere they cannot follow. Many of the great Renaissance artists painted works that tried to capture the precise moment of shock and dismay that must have followed.

Jesus calms his disciples by an appeal to active engagement in the creation of memory. He says: “Remember how much I have loved you and all the love that I have shown to you,” And I think we can imagine each of them taking a deep breath and thinking about all the amazing things that they have seen, heard, felt, and experienced. Then he adds, “You must go and do the same. When you do, people will remember me, and they will know that you are my followers by your love.”

This was Jesus’s new law, his mandate—in Latin, his “mandatum”—that we love each other as he has loved us. Twenty centuries later, we still gather every year on the Thursday before Easter—“Maundy Thursday” as we call it, a corruption of “mandatum”—to hear those words, to be reminded of the command that lies at the very center of our faith, and to be grateful for the light and grace that comes into our lives when we follow it.

*

 I want to conclude by telling you a story that touches on this idea of active engagement in the creation of memory and that you may find useful in implementing it in your own life. It is a story I tell often. Indeed, I tell it at every wedding at which I preside, and perhaps at the end you will understand why. It is a story about my mother, and about a lesson she taught me when it might have appeared that she was beyond being able to teach anyone anything at all.

My mother had, by any reckoning, a hard life. Her first husband was killed in England while serving in the Army in the Second World War. Her second husband—my father—died of a heart attack in his sixties. A later-in-life romance, John, and her third husband, Ed, both predeceased her.

Financial turmoil rocked her early life. Her father struggled with bouts of depression that caused problems in his business. My father had problems of his own—legal ones—and as a result our family lost everything—our income, our house, our car, all of it. We had to move in with my grandparents and my mother took on a job as a visiting nurse, working grueling hours that often extended late into the evenings.

Although she exercised often and ate well, health problems bedeviled her. She survived breast cancer, skin cancer, heart disease, the loss of a kidney, and blindness in one eye. In the end, Alzheimer’s overtook her and she finally passed from this world to the next at age ninety-three.

Now, here’s the thing. Despite all of these tribulations, my mother had a great deal of happiness in her life. As you may have gathered, and as my mother would have cheerfully confessed, she loved men and loved falling in love with them. She met her last husband, Ed, when they both resided at a senior residence. They decided to elope, a romantic impulse that required some conspiring with the caretakers at the residence because neither of them could still drive a car.

My mother had a rich and meaningful professional life. After things settled down a bit, she found her way to a position as a psychiatric nurse at a prominent school for adolescents who had emotional and mental health challenges. She derived tremendous personal fulfillment from working with those young people, who adored and respected her. Her colleagues grieved when she retired.

She was an avid reader. She loved music. She had a keen sense of humor. She kept up on current events. She enjoyed trying new things. I recall, as a teenager, coming home one afternoon with a couple of my friends to discover—to my horror—that my mother had taken up belly dancing and was practicing in the living room to a recording of sitar music. She was blessed with children, and grand-children, and great-grandchildren.

As my mother aged and as the Alzheimer’s crept in, though, I noticed something about her: she seemed capable of remembering only the hard and sad things that she had experienced. All of the good in her life seemed gradually to surrender the territory of her consciousness to all of the bad. I recall meeting her at the senior residence on one brilliant, beautiful, sunny day. When I commented on the weather, she said that it reminded her of the death of her first husband, who loved to golf on such warm and bright afternoons.

Coming home from one of these visits, I said to Lisa: “I don’t know much about how human memory works. But my time with my mother has convinced me that we must from time to time ‘run the tape’ in our life. We must throw a mental switch that makes us record some things more strongly and permanently than others. I think that my mother has unconsciously ‘run the tape’ during the worst parts of her life—so that now, when she goes back to see what she can locate in her memory, that’s all she can find. If we want to have good memories that we can draw on, then we have to be actively engaged in creating them.”

Then and there, Lisa and I resolved that, throughout our marriage, whenever something special or beautiful or fun or meaningful or inspiring or comforting or sweet was happening we would look at each other and say: “Run the tape.” Saying “run the tape” is our way of making sure that we are actively engaged in the creation of memory. Just this weekend we had the pleasure of hosting beloved friends in our home up here, spending time walking in the Michigan woods, eating good food, talking and laughing—the tape recorder was on almost all of the time.

How many times have we done this in the roughly fifteen years we’ve been married? Somewhere along the way, I lost count. Sure, in the course of our time together we have known hardship.  But I’m here to tell you that we have got lots and lots and lots of tape.

Will this work in the long run? Later in life, when I go back into my inventory of memories will I find these tapes that I’ve tried to create? I don’t know. And, do you know what? I don’t care.

I’ve learned that the very making of the tapes is a great gift in itself. I have come to value deeply what it requires of me: to watch; to remain mindful; to slow down; to pause; to focus; to imprint God’s present and manifest blessings onto my spirit and soul and mind. The discipline of it yanks me out of the half-dead state in which I might otherwise stagger through my days on this planet. To use a popular contemporary reference, it forces me to make my brain into a zombie-free zone.

I think this is what God wanted of the ancient Israelites and what Jesus wanted of those who would follow him. I take the command to be: when God is acting in your life—which is an awful lot of the time—don’t miss it; hit the brakes, look up, and run the tape; remember and be grateful; and then live like a person who hasn’t forgotten.

So now excuse me for a moment, we have something to do.

Stop. Breathe.

Be completely in this place Don’t check your watch. Don’t worry about where you’re going next. In fact, don’t worry about anything at all. God has you in the palm of his hand at this very instant. And everything else will wait.

Think of the beautiful peninsula-on-a-peninsula that the Lord has given you as a home. Reflect on the sweet, sturdy, and welcoming building where you get to worship. Ponder the food and shelter and health and love that you have in your life, even if you wouldn’t mind having more or a better version of some or all of them.

Consider all of the people around you in church this morning—people who do good in our community and in the world; people who have chosen to spend their precious Sunday morning in this place; people you respect and admire; people who make you laugh; people with whom you sing and pray and read the Bible; people you count as family—whether by biology or by choice; people you cherish.

And as you’re doing all that thinking and pondering and reflecting and considering, don’t forget the most important thing of all. Run the tape. Right here. Right now. Run the tape.

And the people said: Amen.

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