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Last updated on
June 19, 2003
Remember The Future
Delivered June 15, 2003,
by Mark Hurst
Alan Kreider has an article in the June 2 issue of the Canadian Mennonite entitled "The two edges of confession". In the article he says the following:
| "We confess God by telling the story of the Bible and by telling stories from our world today - from the global church, [and] from our own experience - in which that story goes on. (7) ...This is our vocation: to bring our stories into harmony with God's story. As we confess God by telling the story of the Bible, we will learn to recognize the ways of God. We also will tell our stories, of alienation and God's forgiveness, of despair and God's saving hope, of need and God's provision. And we commit ourselves to work together with God as we treat others as God in Christ has treated us.(6-7)" |
Remembering the future! We recall stories of the past so that we can be faithful in the future. Any history teacher will tell you that part of the value of studying the past is to learn from past mistakes so we don't do the same stupid things over and over again. We can also gain identity from the past for living today and into the future. Knowing "who we are" - our past and present - helps us be more confident about where we are going.
The Bible is full of remembrances. Psalm 105, our reading today, is just one example of recalling the past and what God has done for the people of Israel so they can live faithfully in the present and into the future.
| "O give thanks to the Lord, call on his name, make known his deeds among the peoples." |
Tell the biblical stories and tell our stories of how God has and is working among us.
| "Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wonderful works. Glory in his holy name...Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually. Remember the wonderful works God has done..." |
Anniversaries are times of remembering "the wonderful works God has done" among us as a church. And also the times that were not so wonderful. But the whole purpose of remembering is to draw us closer to God, it is not to just glory in our past. God is the one to be honoured not us. The Psalmist says "Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually." In the presence of God we find out who we are and where we are to go.
The passage from Deuteronomy we read today says:
| "Take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children's children." (Deuteronomy 4:9) |
Remembering is to be an inter-generational event. It should be a natural part of our interaction as families and as a church community. We heard a commentary recently about the family "table". A storyteller was encouraging families to tell their stories around the dinner table, the place where values get shared from one generation to the next.
After his talk a counselor who works with single moms said he made the same mistake she made - he assumed families have tables. They don't. They have TVs, couches, chairs, stereos, etc., but no family table. No place to tell the family stories.
He said a study of National Honors Society finalists found that the only thing they had in common was that they ate together with their families around the dinner table. The commentator's final plea was "More tables!"
Tables are really not the issue but the remembering the past and telling the stories is the important point.
The writer of Hebrews says:
| "Recall those earlier days when…Do not, therefore, abandon that confidence of yours; it brings a great reward. For you need endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised." (Hebrews 10: 32-36) |
Again the emphasis is on "doing the will of God". Recalling the past only for the sake of reveling in the past is not enough. We do it to be more faithful in the future.
Earlier in Hebrews 10 it says:
| "Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching." (24, 25) |
This is where confession comes in. Where those disappointing times where we hurt each other are remembered, we need to practice confession, forgiveness, and love.
So I encourage you as you recall and remember over the coming weeks to recall the tough times along with the good and deal with hurts and offenses that still linger and keep us from following God faithfully into the future.
I read a story recently that uses spider webs as an illustration of what our lives should be.
| "Huston Smith tells of a tribesman who pointed out that ‘the circles in spider webs are sticky, whereas its radii are not. This means, he said, that if you wander from side to side in life you get stuck, but if you move toward its center you don't.'
The recollected life is one in which a person edits and limits those pathways that are detours, those sideways roads that are busy, and possibly pleasant, but lead nowhere. It is the radii, those strands leading toward the center, that are followed…you and I need to become creative in the triage of our complicated lives. We need to explore what to add or subtract from the daily routine so that we might become centered in God." (Saint Benedict on the Freeway, 40) |
The "recollected life" he is talking about is the remembering and recalling that I have been talking about. Part of our remembering is so that we can sort out our lives and be more centered in God - the "Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually" that we saw in Psalm 105.
Anniversaries can be a time of sorting - sorting through our past, dealing with the junk, glorying in the good stuff, and setting priorities for the future. This sorting can be done individually and corporately. And we don't have to wait for special anniversaries to do this.
One practice that is built into the life of the church for remembering is communion. We remember Christ's death and resurrection regularly so we can faithfully follow God. "Do this in remembrance of me" is connected to "Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup." (1 Cor. 11: 28). Remember but sort out the junk and be centered in God.
My prayer for you is that your time of remembering will be a time of reflection, confession, forgiveness and love along with the traditional times of celebrating the past and glorifying God for what he has done in your church community. Remember the past. Remember the future. AMEN