Remembering What Matters

Remembering What Matters

A sermon delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson

May 27, 2018

at Bethany Presbyterian Church, Zuni, Virginia

Joshua 4: 1-9

2 Peter 1: 5-15

Let us pray,

Help us to see despite our eyes

Help us to think outside of our minds

Help us to be more than our lives

For your eyes show the way

Your mind knows the truth

Your being is the life.

Amen.

On this day in 2012 asked to give Commencement address

Love as if life depended on it

Taken from Commencement

Know yourself, be yourself, always,

One unified searching soul.

Encounter each challenge as it comes.

Remember that suffering strengthens,

That pain deepens your soul,

So instead of avoiding, attack.

Attack life and live.

Taste each breath you take.

Feel each tear you shed.

Treasure each time you laugh.

And love as if your life depended on it

Because it does more than you ever could know.

I can give no other advice

On this your commencement,

Than to stop for only a second,

Smile, take a breath, and go. . .

In that speech I challenged them to just like the title says, Love. . .

We worked to define love last summer

The giving of your complete self - - like Christ

The offering of yourself to another

For Christ that meant the cross

But what does it mean for us. . .

what is our sacrifice. . .

what is our gift. . .

how would we know

For those boys I told them to go seek, and find, they were young and headed to new things

We sit here having lived a life of giving, but I think we would all agree, we are still searching, still seeking, and still therefore have more to give. . .

But how do we seek?

Calvin links two ideas in his Institutes that may help us. . . Knowing God, and Knowing Self

They are linked because as being made in the image of God

Having been made by God

Having God be the source of all good things

If we can come to know God it shows us something about ourselves, and conversely if we can come to know ourselves it teaches us something about God. . .

How do we come to know ourselves. . .

Who are we?

What forms us? Or how does God form and shape us?

He shapes our inward parts. . . we each have it. . . our internal self

He shapes the experiences we have, and all of these come together in making us. . .

And he shapes the world around us, and the people who play in our lives. . . external influences on us

One of the troubles the world has today is that people only recognize bits and pieces of this spectrum

We often distrust external, WE think they can define themselves

Or we think we know everything from our own limited experience

Or we try to shut off our nature, and overcome it and shape ourselves,

as if what we are is something in need of changing

You see it all over. .. . and it is destructive

Balance needs to be attained, summoning and welcoming to all aspects, in harmony, whole

Trinity Sunday – External, Internal, Experience

There is much we could talk about with each

But today I want to focus on the external. . .

the world around us, the people who play a role in our lives

And the amazing part is, some of these people you will never meet,

some have come before, living in the past,

some live in another town, another state, some have lives which take place overseas. . .

but they all through God’s providential hand play a role in making us who we are

And we cannot know ourselves unless we recognize that important piece

Look at our Old Testament Lesson. . .

4 When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, ² “Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, ³ and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, from right where the priests are standing, and carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight.”

⁴ So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, ⁵ and said to them, “Go over before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, ⁶ to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ ⁷ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”

⁸ So the Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, as the Lord had told Joshua; and they carried them over with them to their camp, where they put them down. ⁹ Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been^[a] in the middle of the Jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant had stood. And they are there to this day.

Look at the importance of memory, memorializing, looking at those who have come before. . .

And given. . .

It is a theme of life in the promised land

And when they forget. . . .

The slavery itself in Egypt was caused by a forgetting,

 “Pharoah came to the throne who did not know Joseph” he had forgotten, simply forgotten

Can you think of all the men and women who God has given who have brought you to this point?

It is a fascinating exercise to try to trace an event or a life, and trace it backwards, outwards,

To do history in reverse. . . it is a never ending set of circles outward, lives interconnected

Paul calls it a cloud of witnesses. . . do you ever take a moment to consider that cloud?

All the people who have lived and made a difference on who you have come to be and the world you live in?

Some positive, some negative, all though a part, and you can’t pick and choose?

Why do people want to tear down statues and memory? To change things

To try to control what has shaped their lives, and the lives of others. . .

Not because they are afraid of the statues, though that may be the public claim

Not even because they are afraid of the ghosts of the statues

To be honest it really isn’t about the ideas either too much. . .

Clue – Communism is just a red herring – Slavery is just a red herring

Obviously slavery isn’t the problem because they are doing exactly what a slaver would do

Rob someone of a piece of themselves, its about trying to shape a reality that is different from what is

To change ourselves. . . to change others. . .

They know that memory, and identity are forever joined. . .

And if you can cut out parts of yourself, and pretend they are not, you can create a new person

A fragmented shell. . . but a person who is shaped to be the desired outcome

But that person is not whole

Because the world today does not want whole people, how could you control them?

They don’t fit into a demographic

They don’t fit into a statistic

They don’t fit into pigeon hole, a box, their square peg just won’t fit in anyones round hole

They don’t fit into an assembly line

They don’t fit inside a political party

They don’t fit inside a proscribed television news audience

They would be aware, and independent, and responsible, and responsive, and loving,

That is what a whole person does and is

It isn’t only the statues that keep us from being whole, but it is part of it surely

The Church also stands to try to make people whole, or at least it should, but fall short

This comes from a poem by TS Eliot “Choruses from the Rock”

Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws?
She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget.
She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they like to be soft.
She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts.
They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is will shadow
The man that pretends to be.

Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.

Is it important to be good? Why bother, let the system do it for you

Look at the New Testament Lesson

⁵ For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; ⁶ and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; ⁷ and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. ⁸ For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹ But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.

¹⁰ Therefore, my brothers and sisters,^[a] make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, ¹¹ and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

¹² So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have. ¹³ I think it is right to refresh your memory as long as I live in the tent of this body,¹⁴ because I know that I will soon put it aside, as our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. ¹⁵ And I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things.

Look at how Peter connects goodness and memory. . .

I will always remind you

Will always be able to remember these things.

We come to Memorial Day,

and we always say remember those who have died for your freedom

but how should we remember

Cook outs, the pool opening,

Patriotic hymns, they choke me up

Standing for the national anthem? But look at what happens when you don’t. . .

A politician wearing a flag pen on his lapel? Imagine what would happen if they didn’t. . .

Died for our freedom?

What do we do with our freedom?

Do we just give it back?