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May 28, 2006
Joshua 4:2-11 & 20-24
“Stacking Stones/Moving On”

How do you remember things? Are you like me and you make long lists and put yellow sticky notes all around your house or your office or your locker at school? I have a “to do” list, a grocery list, a “books to read” list, a “great ideas” list, and, of course, a list of lists! The stereotypical way of remembering things is to tie a string around your finger. Great… except I never could remember why I tied the string on my finger. Then there are those of you who have photographic memories and don’t need external reminders about what to do or who to call or where to go. Bravo!

Memory is such an important thing to us human beings. Our ability to remember history, our own and others’, and to pass along the learning’s from that history together are two of the fairly unique things we humans do, and it has enabled us to progress far beyond our base animal lives. My Western Civ. history books are among the college textbooks that I treasure the most because I learned so much from them about how to live my own day to day life.

Memory, and its kindred act of remembering, is what we honor on this weekend, on Memorial Day. But rather than remembering what’s on a “To Do…” list, or what groceries to buy, strange names and centuries-old dates from a school book, Memorial Day helps us to put flesh and bones on our memories by remembering the people of our lives, family and friends and even strangers who made a difference in our lives. Memorial Day is particularly set aside to remember those who have served in the military, who have given their strength, wisdom, time, passion, and – for many – their very lives to protect the values of this great country.

But rather than use Post-It® Notes or textbooks, we remember our saints and fallen heroes with monuments, small and large. Using the most permanent materials we know how to use, granite, marble, limestone, bronze, stuff that has already stood the test of time, we cast and carve out our memories for all of time. We want our loved ones and our heroes to be remembered long after we are gone. In cemeteries, battlefields, public squares, capital buildings and even on street corners and rural highways, we place markers trying, sometimes successfully and sometimes desperately, to inscribe into history the memory of those who meant something to us and, oftentimes, to the larger world around us.

But the question I struggle with today is this: When is remembering not good? I think, for the vast majority of occasions, remembering is a blessed enterprise. But every now and then it becomes unhealthy, misguided, destructive. At these points, our memories-gone-awry short circuit our present and endanger our futures. This is when memories are more harmful than helpful.

For the most part, remembering loved ones is a blessed thing. Rabbi Harold Kushner tells of a passage in the Bible, in chapter 48 of the book of Genesis, which never fails to move him. He writes, “The patriarch Jacob is on his deathbed and is looking back over his long and eventful life. In an age when most people never traveled outside the village of their birth, he has lived in three countries. He has made and lost fortunes. But of all that has happened to him, the one thing he remembers is that his beloved wife Rachel died when they were young. I read the account of his remembering the loss, and in my own mind I add the words that I suspect Jacob was thinking, but not saying aloud, ‘Rachel died, and somehow I survived her death, and every day since then I have thought about her, and that act of remembering has kept her alive in my life.’” Rabbi Kushner continues, “Only human beings can do that. Only human beings can defeat death by summoning up the memory of someone they loved and lost, and feeling that person close to them as they do so.” (1)

I’ve recalled to you before my childhood memories of the cemetery on the ranch out in the dusty plains of Southeast New Mexico. In the midst of the more recent bronze and granite headstones, whose inscriptions are clear as the day they were etched, we would walk amongst many of the old, old, wooden markers and a half dozen of the soft stone ones, long unrecognizable due to decay and sandstorms. Even as a young child, I wondered with a sense of dread how those who were buried there would be remembered, and what unspeakable tragedy it would be to have no one to remember you.

In the same way I see the news reports of mass graves following natural disasters, such as the earthquake in Indonesia this week, or due to the evils of humanity, such as the genocide in Darfur, or the homeless buried in Potter’s Field, and I worry: who will remember them?

But I’ve said in many a memorial service that as people of faith, we need never worry about who will remember our loved ones after we are gone, and our children are gone. We use but do not rely upon markers of stone and metal. Instead, we believe that the greatest memorial of all is to be remembered by God, who remembers us all and has each of our names inscribed upon the divine heart.

I’ve thought a lot this week about situations and places in the Bible where memorials are erected: One of the two most famous is when Joshua placed the 12 stones in the Jordan riverbed and the 12 stones at the sacred site of Gilgal (meaning “circle”) to remind the people of Israel as well as the nations of the world how awesome God is. The second happens somewhere between Mizpah and Jeshanah when Samuel took a stone and set it up and called it “Ebenezer,” which means “stone of help,” to remind everyone of God’s help in their battle against the Philistines.

Twelve stones, to recognize the twelve tribes of Israel, set deep in the riverbed of the Jordan, which had become dry enough for all the wandering Hebrew peoples to enter into the “promised land,” thus bringing their journey full circle having left slavery crossing the dry bed of the Red Sea.

And an Ebenezer, a stone recalling the dead as much as the living, since the Israelites had suffered two terrible defeats in battle before their ultimate win over their enemies. Immortalized in the hymn “Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing,” as “Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I’m come.

I believe with all my heart what Spanish-born American Philosopher George Santayana said best “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (2) I want to remember the past to make our future a better place for all of us. But what past do we remember?

The problem with memory comes when we cannot let be what was. We humans seem to have this insatiable need to try to rewrite the past in order to justify our present situations. We cling to the past, or at least the version we’ve chosen to remember, in order to somehow feel better about who and where we are today. This can involve recasting our ancestors as both villains or saints, when most likely they were a complex mixture of both qualities. When this happens monuments get erected that portray only the glory of war and not the horror of it. Or someone of enormous compassion or intellect or grace is buried in obscurity. Either way, it makes no difference to God, who sees life as it is. But how we remember the past makes incredible difference to who we are as persons now, and to our futures.

When we do not allow the past to be what it was, in all its complexity, all its mystery, all its chaotic and unkempt humanness, we fail ourselves and risk a healthy and solid future for those who follow us. If the skirmishes of our forbearers’ personal lives, and the battles of our nations, are whitewashed, we risk building our futures on false or unstable ground. Such invented histories also condemn our cultures and our countries to eventual failure. George Orwell’s 1984 brings this evil to life for us.

I think our duty on Memorial Day is not just to remember the past and all those who people it, but to challenge ourselves and others to be honest about it and them.

Our first instinct about being honest about the past is that it will bring us despair and hopelessness, for our heroes will be seen with imperfections and our enemies will be seen with beauty. But this fear is only passing, for what instead takes its place is an amazing realization that even with flaws, our loved ones still made a difference in the world. Maybe we, who are certainly imperfect, can, too. Similarly, by allowing our enemies to be well-rounded human beings, we may be given the energy to work with renewed commitment and wisdom with those who set themselves against us.

But being honest about the past also means the past that is not yet dead and buried, our own past. For even though we are still living and breathing, we have history that is now dead to us, for each second that passes is a moment that is gone, never to be lived again. It is dead to us. And with every day also die a thousand possibilities that will never again be presented to us in just the same way. And just like our tendency to rewrite the past of dead saints and sinners, we rewrite our own past. One of the greatest skills learned on our spiritual journey is to allow our own past, in all its complexity, all its mystery, all its chaotic and unkempt humanness to be what it was.

I am reminded of how not to do this by Mike and Zonker, in the Doonsbury cartoon, who are walking down a Walden lane. Zonker says, “That was quite a party last night, wasn’t it, Mike? Another one for the memory books. I guess these really are the best times of our lives, huh, Mike? Bright college years! The midnight sledding parties, the study dates in the boat house, drunken drives to Boston… and the dean’s Volvo! Remember parking it in the chapel? And getting busted at the Stones concert? And the time we all ran naked through the trustees’ meeting!”
“Uh… Zonker?”
“Yes, Mike.”
“We never did any of those things.”
“I know, but one day we’ll think we did.”
“Isn’t it a little early to start embellishing?”
“We’re not getting any younger, Mike. You gotta grab the past while you can.”

Our futures are dependent upon being honest about the past, ours and others. The philosopher Kierkegard once said, “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly one you can never have.” (3)

Here is the irony of Memorial Day: Our fondness for building memorials etched permanently into history is not just reserved for those dead and gone. We save our most fervent memorial-building for those still living. We cast our neighbor as enemy or hero and they are forced to live out in perpetuity the role we have given them. In the same way we carve out a niche for ourselves, and then spend our entire lives trying to either live up to or live down who we are supposed to be. Neither of these are godly ways of living.

Let us make Memorial Day a day of honesty and forgiveness. Let us be honest about those who have died and ask their forgiveness for forcing them into our memories. Let us be honest about those who are still living around us, and literally ask their forgiveness for forcing them to be only what we remember from our past. And let us be honest with ourselves and forgive ourselves for being stuck in a past view of who we thought we should be.
Let us do all of this honesty-seeking and forgiveness-giving now so that our true Memorial will be a future filled with possibility and hope. Nothing would honor our forbearers more than for us to live life to the fullest, honestly and freely. Nothing would please God more than for us to live life to the fullest, honestly and freely.

Amen.

(1) Harold S. Kushner, How Good Do We Have To Be?: A New Understanding Of Guilt And Forgiveness, (1996: Little, Brown, & Co.), pp. 162-163.
(2) George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905, US (Spanish-born) philosopher (1863 - 1952)
(3) Attributed to Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (May 5, 1813 - November 11, 1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, considered to be a founder of existentialist thought. Heard on the television show "Joan of Arcadia" on the episode entitled, "Death Be Not Whatever."





Rev. Allen V. Harris
 

Copyright 2006 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096