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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