Sermon June 28, 2009 - Guest Preacher Rev. Dr. Fred Gee
Deuteronomy 5:12-15
I Corinthians 11:23-25
Remember…
In her autobiographical book, The Woman Who Can’t
Forget, Jill Price shares her amazing gift of being able to remember
every event in her life since she was fourteen years old. Give her a day and year and she can tell you
what day of the week it was, where she was, what she did, and what was going on
in the world that day. Or, give her an
event and she can tell you the day, week, month, and year. She is one of a handful of people tested by
the University of California Irvine's Center for the Neurobiology of Learning
and Memory and diagnosed with a “hyperthymestic syndrome.”
I heard her interviewed on Public Radio last year;
and more recently I heard an NPR interview with a man with the same
syndrome. While some of us--especially
those of us who are getting older--might wish to have that kind of memory, it
has its downside. Both persons I heard
interviewed shared that not only did they remember everything good in their
lives, they remembered all the bad and painful events they wished they
could but cannot forget. And in
remembering both the good and the painful events, they vividly relived them,
feeling again every bit of emotion attached to the original event.
That kind of memory is what Old and New Testament
remembering is all about. To remember biblically is not to simply recall; it is
to mentally, emotionally, spiritually participate in a past event as if one had
actually been there and then to act accordingly. In that sense, to remember a biblical story,
a commandment, or a covenantal promise is to claim it as our own--and embrace
it and live it as people who will not, cannot forget.
One of the critical assessments the Old Testament
writers and prophets had of why things kept going wrong in the life of Israel
was the people’s tendency to forget what God had done for them and expected and
commanded them to be and do in response.
Remember, they said: remember that you were enslaved and God set you
free--and in remembering, grant every other person the same freedom and rights
and privileges you have.
The Deuteronomy 5 version of the Ten Commandments has
a rather different take on the rationale than we are used to for keeping the
Sabbath as a holy day of rest. The more familiar version in Exodus 20, which
many of us memorized at one time or another, commands God’s people to keep the
Sabbath as a day of rest in imitation of God’s rest on the seventh day of
creation. But Deuteronomy instructs us to keep the Sabbath as time to
remember: to
remember that we
were slaves in the land of Egypt, and the LORD our God brought us out
with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD our God
commanded us to keep the Sabbath day.
(Deut 5:15)
But observing the Sabbath--in both the Exodus and
Deuteronomy commandment--requires that we, in the words of Deuteronomy, provide
an equal respite for
Ourselves, all the members
of our families, all our male and female employees, all our livestock, and all
the immigrants and aliens in our towns, so that all of them may rest as
well as us. (Dt. 5:14)
And
that puts a whole new light on what it means to remember.
One of my favorite, poignant remembering stories is
about Willie Stargell, who some of you may remember was an all-star player and
team leader for the Pittsburgh Pirates in a career that lasted from 1964-1982.
In an interview near the end of his career, Willie was asked why he spent so
much time working with and helping the younger players. Willie’s simple reply
was: “I remember when I was a struggling rookie.” That said it all: he remembered!
When we Christians think about remembering, our mind
immediately goes to the Last Supper and the Lord’s Table, both of which
parallel the fourth commandment’s call to remember. For some time now I have been wrestling with
the question of what we are to remember at the table and in partaking of
communion. Are we simply to remember and
imitate the meal Jesus had with his disciples the evening before his death? Are we simply to remember and celebrate Jesus
giving his life for the forgiveness of our sins? Or is there more to our remembrance and
participation in the Lord’s Supper?
Given our long-standing familiarity with the phrase
on the front of our communion table and the words of institution we recite
every Sunday at the table, it came as a real surprise to me when, during Holy
week, I looked again at the stories of the Last Supper and discovered that only
the gospel of Luke contains the commandment to “do this in remembrance of
me.” What’s more, in Luke Jesus said
that familiar phrase only in reference to the bread he invited
his disciples to take and eat! And that
fits with Luke’s later stories in which Jesus is known in the breaking of the
bread. The only place we do
find an instruction to both eat the bread and drink the cup “in remembrance” is
in First Corinthians eleven, where Paul recites what has already become a
liturgical formula he says was passed on to him.
So, then, what about the cup; the wine of
communion? We have generally been taught
and use words of institution indicating that in partaking of the cup at
communion we are to remember that Jesus shed his blood for the forgiveness of
our sins. Here, I was further startled to find that only the gospel of
Matthew connects the cup with the forgiveness of sins! [I can see you are all reaching for a pew
Bible to check this stuff out!]
In his little booklet about the Lord’s Table, Glen
Carson, who led our recent Elder retreat and was our guest preacher the next
morning, points out that none of the four gospels and Paul agree about what
Jesus said about the bread and cup at the Last Supper with his disciples. They
all had their own take on it, but for some reason--probably because of its
liturgical quality--the church chose Paul’s version as our most-oft repeated
words of institution.
I must now confess that these realities are something
I have overlooked for forty plus years of ministry and am going to have to
spend some time reflecting on and unpacking.
So, I am driven again to ask, if this is a table of remembrance, what
are we to remember here? Perhaps, just
perhaps, there is a clue in the fact that the one thing on which Matthew, Mark,
Luke and Paul all agree is that Jesus’ action and instruction at
table with his disciples is related to a covenant.
The Covenant in the Old Testament, you may recall,
was the relational agreement God made with Israel to be their god--alongside no
other god; and that, in grateful response, the Israelites would devote
themselves to this one God and live their lives according to this one God’s
ethical laws and teachings. And, like
most old world covenants, this covenant was both accepted and renewed with a
blood sacrifice. The problem was--as I indicated earlier--that Israel had a
pathological penchant for forgetting the second part of the agreement about the
way they were to live their lives and relate to each other and people who were
not like them. On more than one occasion
the people were called upon by prophets and kings to renew the covenant which
they had broken. In fact, it became the mantra of the prophets that Israel’s
only hope for peace and prosperity was to faithfully keep their covenantal
agreement with God and live according to its statutes and ideals--like the one
about the Sabbath.
Then came Jesus, presented in the Gospels and the
writings of Paul and the early church as the initiator of a new covenant
signed, sealed, and delivered with his blood.
However, I have difficulty accepting the traditional idea that the
essence of this new covenant is that our salvation has been bought with Jesus’
shed blood and on the cross. Rather,
what I am on my way to being convinced of is that at the Table and in our daily
lives we are to remember more than Jesus dying for the forgiveness of our
sins--which, given the fact that God has always forgiven sins, seems
unnecessary. In case you doubt that,
remember that the Old Testament says of God,
As far as the east is from
the west, so far does God remove our
sins from us…(Ps 103:12)
and
Though your sins be as
scarlet, they shall be like snow…
(Isa. 1:18)
So, I am thinking that the new covenant we are to
remember with the bread and cup--and flesh-out in our daily lives--is about
more than just Jesus’ death. I am thinking it‘s about the sum total of all that
Jesus taught us by his words and his actions.
Last fall in our Sunday School study and discussion
of early Christianity we learned that some New Testament scholars and early
church historians believe that the earliest tradition behind the gospels was a
collection of the sayings--or teachings--of Jesus represented by writings such
as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Truth, and the Q source. All three of those early sources seem to
affirm--implicitly or outright--that it is what Jesus taught us which
saves us, not his death. In
response to that learning, one of our class members confessed that he had
always been troubled by the idea that Jesus died to save us from our sins, but
that he could readily accept the idea of Jesus teaching us how to live.
If remembering what Jesus taught us is the essence of
the new covenant, then that calls us to a different kind of sacramental
remembering at the Table and in our everyday lives: that we are to remember not
only the redeeming grace and forgiveness of God, we are to remember to love God
with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and love our neighbors as
ourselves; that we are to remember to forgive and treat every other human being
as we would like to be and demand being forgiven and treated--even to
loving and praying for our most bitter enemies; that we are to remember to
reach out in compassion to the least fortunate people on this earth; that we
are to remember to be reconcilers and peacemakers--willing to endure ridicule
and persecution for doing so; and that we are to remember to work diligently
for the day when God‘s kingdom will be established on earth. I am now thinking that those basic concepts
and all that Jesus taught us are what we are to remember when we break bread
and drink the cup--along with remembering Jesus’ own commitment to those
convictions even unto death.
I find a very strong clue to that in Matthew, where
at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus pronounces those who both hear and
do his words “blessed” and in Luke’s version of the same where Jesus takes
his would-be, but apparently passive followers to task incredulously wondering:
“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell
you?”
Is it not Jesus’ expectation that we actually live
by his teachings; that being a Christian is more than simply believing and
accepting that Jesus died for our sins?
Isn’t his expectation that we then live different kinds of
lives--lives as people who have been redeemed to live by a new covenant; by a
different set of moral and ethical standards?
And--as if I needed another clue that there is more
to Christianity than believing that Jesus died for the forgiveness of our sins--there
are Jesus’ parting words and marching orders to his disciples at the end of the
gospel of Matthew:
Go…and make disciples…teaching
them to obey everything that I have commanded you…(Mt
28:19-20)
There
it is: Jesus final word. Remember and obey everything he taught us;
and in remembering, share with others the Jesus Way that they too might
live redeemed and obedient lives.
I believe that the combination of remembering and
obeying is what saves us and has the potential to transform our lives and
the world. And that potential is in both
Old and New Testament commandments and the teachings of Jesus--if we
would remember them and let the table with its bread and cup serve as reminders
of those redeeming truths he taught us and for which he gave his life.
So, how can I cap all this? I find the essence of all the Law and
prophets, the teachings of Jesus, and the Lord’s Table echoed in those
haunting, challenging lyrics from the musical The Fantastiks:
try to remember and if you
remember, then follow, follow, follow
….our hearts should
remember, and follow, follow, follow…
Amen.