memory

Someone I know was recently diagnosed with Alzheimers. This is a disease that robs you of your cognitive abilities, especially of your memory.  Memory is strange isn’t it?  We’d like to think that our memory is like a dvd that stores a kind of video log of our past on it. An intact archive that we can access, if we focus.   But it is really more like a film strip with still pictures on it.  And it is selective.  It is frustrating when our memories fail us and devastating to receive a diagnosis like Alzheimers…in part because our existence is contingent on our connection to the story of our lives; the people and places and things we have known and experienced. I am because I have a story to tell about myself, my unwritten memoir. My memory is not the only or the best reliable source of my identity, though.  I count on the fact that I am part of your story too. Without a community to remember us, how would we exist?   

Our memory has a very limited storage capacity.  This is probably good self-protection. There are ways that we filter our past, select our memories and forget others. There are things you have seen, have said, have done, that you would like to forget.  Me too.  Part of life is coming to terms with those things; dealing with the guilt, the shame, the sadness that can accompany those memories. Of course we also avoid or suppress memories we cannot deal with.  PTSD is related to the suppression of traumatic experiences embedded in our memories. Memories can haunt us.  That is why worship starts with confession.  We clear the air, acknowledging that every one of us is dealing with something, like a memory we’d rather forget.          

I know that some of you have come here today carrying burdens from the week that has past and from the more distant past.  You carry the burdens of broken relationships, the wounds of bad decisions and misjudgments. You carry the knowledge of what might have been and wasn’t.  You carry the burden of your own mortality, of aging, of becoming irrelevant, obsolete. You carry the burden of loneliness, longing for real, trustworthy companionship.  You carry the fear of an uncertain future, of instability and financial hardship.  You are weary from trying so hard and getting nowhere. You carry with you the scars and the stories of unhealed emotional wounds. That is why we need to hear the message of Jeremiah today.  

Jeremiah says, “The days are surely coming say the Lord when I will make a new covenant…No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other know the Lord, for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord:  For I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”  God has a power that we do not have.  God selectively forgets.  God erases from memory, deletes from the divine hard drive.  God comes down with a bad case of amnesia and this is to our benefit.  Our past does not dictate our future.  God forgives and forgets.  God is doing a new thing.  Everyday is new. Yesterday is gone.  We are not slaves to it. 

So how do we get unstuck, how do we move forward into God’s future?  I believe that God’s future is better than my past.  Say it:  I believe that God’s future is better than my past.  I believe that God is up to something good. I believe that suffering and death are God’s instrument to bring about transformation that leads to wholeness and peace.  I believe that I must die to live.   

Jesus of Nazareth was on a mission to die on a cross in Jerusalem as a sign of God’s faithfulness and love for all human kind.  Nothing could stop him.  Jesus knew that crucifixion was a violent spectacle, meant to entertain, to disturb people, and to maintain the Roman rule of law.  Jesus also knew that they would see more than a dying man on that cross. ( See John 12They would see the seed of a movement that would inspire humanity.  A grain of wheat is buried and dies and then bears fruit or it is just a single grain.  One grain of wheat is nothing, unless it is buried and becomes a stalk.  Jesus’ death produces something, a new kind of human in the world. And his followers are commanded to remember him, when we break bread and drink wine together. We remember our Lord's death until he comes again, wrote St. Paul.  To remember his death is to also take part in the forgiveness that gives us life.         

I know that the last 2,000 years have not been a lot better than the 2,000 before that.  Some would write off Christianity and religion altogether, saying that it has not made a difference. Some might suggest that Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs have made a better impact on the world.   I would say that the past does not matter.  NOW is the time in which the seed of Jesus’ death becomes the root of the tree of life.  Now is the time in which His followers grow and bear fruit that brings life to the world.  Now is the time on which the death of the man and the resurrection of the Son of God become for us the way of salvation.  Church is not perfect.  In fact it is dying.  We are dying.  And dying is part of the process of restoration and life.  St. Paul said I have been crucified with Christ. He said, when we were baptized into Christ we were baptized into his death.  He did not mean to say that Jesus’ death and resurrection insure that believers will go to heaven when we die.  He never says that once. What he does say is that church are people who have died, who have lost their lives, who have known the burdens of the day, and borne them like crosses on tired shoulders. Church is dying.  And it will rise again.  Not the same.  But not brand new either. In some ways everything old is made new again.   

God has forgiven you and forgotten about those things that prevent you from living a God-centered life.  You are free in Christ to serve others every day.  May your memory never fail.  May you receive peace with God, knowing that your past (the good, the bad, and the ugly) does not seal your future. And may you remember the one who was crucified by sharing the bread and the cup with His people.  Amen.