October 23, 2011 – “Chain of Memory”
Phil Blackwell
“Chain of Memory”
Deuteronomy 34:5-12, Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17, Matthew 22:34-46
Last month I was a float in a high school homecoming parade. Mundelein High School north of Chicago was celebrating the 50th anniversary of its founding, and they asked me to represent the first graduating class, the Class of ’62. So, I rode in the parade just behind the Great Lakes Naval Base marching band and got to hear “Anchors Aweigh” eight times.
I was seated on the back of a 1951 canary-yellow Packard convertible with a sign on each side of the car with my name misspelled. I was the fourth most interesting part of my “float.” First, the car itself was admired by all. Second, the driver was a teacher at the high school, so all the students lining the parade route called out his name and waved. Third, his ten year-old son seated in the passenger seat was supplied with several large bags of candy, the contents of which he flung out toward the curb, so he was the favorite with little kids sporting plastic grocery bags. And fourth, me sitting with a smile on my face returning waves to the elderly people seated in folding chairs on the sidewalks . . . classmates.
Returning to the school brought back memories, mainly good ones, and I saw people I had not seen in years, all pleasant reconnections. But, Carl Sorenson was there, and he remembered a moment that I only wish was true, given that I have no recollection of it at all. Carl was the equipment manager for the basketball team when I was the last player off the bench in any game, either because we were ahead by 20 points or behind by 20.
But Carl got started with some of us old-timers. “Remember when Blackwell won a game single-handedly? It was against McHenry. We were down by a point in the last minute, and Phil drove to the basket.”
Me? What was I doing in a game in the last minute and only one point behind? And I doubt if I ever drove to the basket, being one of the shortest players on the court. I think my instructions were never to shoot but just harass the opposing guard.
“And Phil was fouled. Well, not exactly, but he faked it so convincingly that the ref called it.” Now, that sounds plausible.
“And he made both free throws, and we won by a point!” When did I ever make two consecutive free throws? I averaged only 1.5 points a game; the odds against me make two in the final minute are enormous. And if I had, would I not have remembered?
But, I did not stop Carl from telling the story. “No harm, no foul,” as we say on the basketball court, and there may have been some truth in it. Oral tradition, you know, and it is important to remember who we were then so that we can understand who we are now.
We have that going on in our reading from Deuteronomy today, the Israelites remembering who they were so that they can understand who they are. Moses had led the people out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, around the desert unto a new generation was ready to cross the Jordan River and colonize the land to the west. And now, Moses ascends Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to see the peoples’ new homeland. He would not live to occupy it. He dies, and Joshua becomes the new leader.
And then, comes the memory as the biblical Carl Sorensons look back: “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land, and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.”
That is a glowing tribute for a man who, when he was leading people around the desert for forty years was the focus of the tribes’ ridicule, hostility, and mutiny. But now, remembering him for who he was, the people can see who they are.
The chain of memory, a phrase Stephen Prothero borrows from a French sociologist, Daniele Hervieu-Leger, to dramatize how important it is for a culture to hold on to its past. He contends in his book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know – and Doesn’t, that we in the religious realm are breaking the chain of memory and are forgetting the stories of who we were.
Prothero teaches at Boston University, started by Methodists, incidentally, and routinely gives a religious literacy test to his incoming students. “Name the four gospels.” He is more likely to get John, Paul, George, and Ringo than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. “According to the Bible where was Jesus born?” “What is the Golden Rule?” “Is ‘God helps those who help themselves’ in the Bible?” “What is the holy book of Islam?” The answers are Bethlehem, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” no, and the Koran. His students do not do well on the test.
Remembering not only tells us about the past; it also tells us about the present, and it prepares us for the future, preserving the chain of memory.
The psalm from which we heard read the opening and closing verses, Psalm 90, is also the hymn we soon will sing, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” Isaac Watts, the originator of British hymn singing in the Protestant congregations of early 18th Century England took this psalm which recognizes how God embodies the past, present, and future all rolled into one and puts it into simple words for the simple Christians. “O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home! Before the hills in order stood, or earth received her frame, from everlasting, thou art God, to endless years the same.”
The chain of memory from the beginning of creation to now to whatever comes next remains unbroken as long as remember. We will be turned back into the dust of the earth in the full sweep of God’s time, but we are significant because we are a part of something bigger than who we are individually. We are part of God’s unfolding story, and we best not forget it. “O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come; be thou our guide while life shall last, and our eternal home.”
In a few weeks our congregation will present to our third graders their own Bibles. Why? Because it is the story of who they are. They need to know their own story going all the way back to Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, and Moses as his last dying view is of the land beyond the river that he will not occupy himself but will be settled by his people.
These same children, along with many others, will present the Nativity Story at one of our December worship services. Why? Because they look cute in their costumes as shepherds, angels, and the littlest ones as sheep because they are too young to protest? No. Because it gives all of us a chance to sneak in a few Christmas carols even though it still is the Advent season? No. They do it because it is how they learn to “live into” the story, to try it on for size, to make it part of their own story, not just something enshrined in the Bible but a narrative that comes alive for them in the present. It is a way of keeping strong the chain of memory.
Another way of keeping the chain of memory strong, much grimmer than Bible Sunday or the birth of Jesus enacted . . . on Wednesday, November 2nd, at 5:30 p.m. we are going to host one of five presentations throughout the city of the “Urban Dolorosa.” This will be a somber choral lament over the violent deaths of hundreds of children in Chicago. The “Stabat Mater” is an historically rich expression of Mother Mary’s lament over the death of her son, Jesus. It is part of the chain of memory of the Christian Church. Susan Johnson, the minister at Hyde Park Union Church, and Father Vaughn Fayle, a Franciscan brother who not only is an organist and composer but also is a teacher at the Catholic Theological Union, have taken the “Stabat Mater” and recast it for us today.
A choir, soloists, children singing, a string ensemble, with direction from the Steppenwolf Theater, and the reading of names, hundreds of children’s names . . . all strengthening the chain of memory so that it will not break, so that we do not forget, so that our future does not repeat the past.
5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 2nd, about a 45-minute musical call to remember so that children will not be murdered in our city. You need to be here with as many people as you can bring. And if not here, then at one of the other four sites.
Remembering is of little use if it is disconnected from the present and the future. But in God, the Lord who has been our dwelling place in all generations, the one who, before the mountains were brought forth, or even the earth and the world had been formed, was our eternal home, in this God all time collapses into a single, immeasurable moment, this moment. There is no other time than the present. But if we forget the past, then our present is meaningless.
A lawyer asks Jesus a question. This is at the end of the 22nd chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, and it is the last thing that the religious authorities say to Jesus in order to discredit him. After this they remain silent until they execute him.
The question, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus answers by relying on the chain of memory. He goes back to the basic core of God’s instruction remembered by the keepers of the lore in order to tell people what they ought to be doing now. “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Here Jesus combines the ancient prayer, “The Shema,” and Leviticus 19:18, to form the chain of memory that defines the behavior expected of all faithful people in his day, including his detractors, the scribes and Pharisees, as well as for us 2000 years later. If we forget who we were, we lose the sense of who we are and who we are called to become.
Walter Brueggemann, the Old Testament professor who has said so many things crucial to my understanding these days, in commenting on this teaching of Jesus, says almost incidentally something I am highlighting as the main point for today. “The amnesia prized in our society, given iconic force in the ‘delete button,’ makes erasure easy and credible. It is enough to erase the bad stuff of violence, oppression, and exploitation that has defined much of the church and much of our culture. But the more elemental erasure is the erasure of the gifts and miracles by which we live, so that the capacity for gratitude evaporates into an ocean of self-congratulations. It is this erasure that Moses warned against.” (Journal for Preachers, Pentecost 2011, p.15)
Remembering is not an act of living in the past. Rather, it is preserves a chain of memory which allows us to live in the present and move into the future. And ultimately, to take Brueggemann’s suggestion, remembering is an act of gratitude.
Soon we will enter upon a season of Thanksgiving, a national day of . . . what? Self-congratulation? Self-satisfaction? Self-absorption? Not if we truly remember.
And before that we in the church will observe a day of remembrance, All Saints Sunday, when we remember those who have been exemplars of the faith who have died and gone before us. On November 6th when we name the names it will be an act of remembering so that we will know how we are to live right now.
And then, over the next month we, like most every congregation, will be engaged in a stewardship effort to garner pledges of financial support so that we can expand our shared ministry to serve even more people. Will we make it a time of celebrating “the gifts and miracles by which we live,” so it becomes an expression of our “capacity for gratitude?” We will, if we remember, if we preserve the chain of memory. Amen.
Philip L. Blackwell
The Chicago Temple
October 23, 2011