Blessed Are the Forgetful
Dr. Jim Wilson, November 1, 2009 Forgetting can stir up deep-seated fears. At a gathering late last summer, I was chatting with some folks from my first church. I asked about a couple who had been active in the church during my tenure. But I could not remember their name. The folks tried to come to my rescue by offering several names, none of which clicked. I was both embarrassed and frustrated. Finally, one of group said, “Jim, maybe its Al?” I shook my head and said, “No, that doesn’t sound right.” He laughed and said, “No, I mean Al as in Alzheimer’s!” Just for a moment, a bolt of fear ran through me. I have seen the devastating results of that disease. Quickly, another person commented, “Sometimes it is good to forget. Heck, it may even be a blessing!” I thought much about her words and while doing so remembered a tragedy that had happened in that congregation. In fact, it had happened to the family of the woman herself. About two years before I was appointed to the church, her son had been killed in a head-on collision. John was a sophomore at the University of Illinois and was driving home with two friends for Thanksgiving. A drunk driver crossed the median and hit John’s car, killing him and one friend: the other friend was seriously injured. John’s parents, Bob and Mary, were faithful members and were, as you might imagine, devastated by the loss of their son. John was a brilliant student, an excellent athlete, an Eagle Scout, and just a great young man. Bob and Mary could not let go even almost four years later. They were prisoners of their sorrow. Nothing could dull their pain. Then one day, it was as if a miracle had occurred. They came to my study and said, “We want to help in the program for troubled teens.” They did. And soon other involvements took place. After a few months, I felt enough time had passed that I could ask what had happened, what had freed them from their sorrow. Mary said to me, “I really don’t know. One day I got up and just forgot to remember!” I replied, “Mary, I thank God that you did!” She answered, “It was time for Bob and me to move on. Remembering the horror of that day was getting in the way.” And so it was. And that was both surprising and somewhat difficult for me to hear. I believe remembering is critically important both relationally and theologically. After all, it is abundantly clear that the Biblical writers call us over and over again to remember. Whether it is the prophet thundering, “Remember the Lord, your God…” or Jesus holding the bread and cup, saying, “Do this in remembrance of me,” remembering is a central theme for our faith. In a host of places in the First Testament, we are told to remember is to live and to forget is to die. Remembering is critically important if we are to be faithful. And yet, there is an undercurrent where God says things like, “I will remember your sin no more;” or “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth, the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” In other words, God chooses to forget and calls us to choose to forget. Forgetting too may be a blessing. It is a piece of God’s forgiveness. So, we have this curious mix of being blessed as we remember, and, on other occasions, being blessed as we forget. I think this curious mix is at the heart of John the Seer’s vision outlined in our text for this morning, even as it is also significant for the lives of the saints. The Book of Revelation is without question the strangest and most controversial book in the Bible. It gives any self-respecting, mainline preacher a case of the nervous jitters, simply thinking about preaching from it. It does me. John is writing from exile on the island of Patmos to seven churches experiencing severe persecution at the hands of the Romans, probably during the reign of Nero. It is apocalyptic literature which means it uses vivid symbolic language and often violent images to describe the great battle between the powers of evil and the kingdom of God. The symbolic language and images serve to codify the message, making it unintelligible to the Romans. However, it often succeeds in making it unintelligible to would-be interpreters today. As a result we are often confronted with some wild and distorted interpretations. One writer describes Revelation as “A happy hunting ground for bigots, fanatics, and not a few kooks.” So, I want to be very basic this morning. Simply stated, John is writing to offer a word of comfort and hope to Christians experiencing the oppressive power of Rome. He speaks of a cosmic transformation taking place which is bringing to fulfillment the promises of God. Contrary to all appearances, writes John, the Roman Empire is not in charge. God is in charge and God is bringing the promise of a new creation inaugurated at the resurrection of Christ Jesus into being. This is the hope that fills the souls of faithful Christians throughout the generations. John offers a grand vision, one that sees a New Heaven and a New Earth coming as the first heaven and the first earth pass away. The sea too is no more, which means that the transformation is complete---the waters of chaos, the habitat of dragons has passed away. Now comes the New Jerusalem down from heaven, the Holy City, the habitat of the saints. Next a voice is heard announcing the message that God now dwells with is people; the faithful now live in God’s presence. In God’s presence, life itself is transformed as God’s healing love wipes away every tear, liberates faithful from the grip of death, ends mourning and crying, drives pain away. These will be no more, no longer will they be remembered; they have passed away. God declares this as the intent of his transformation---“See, I am making all things new! It is done!” In other words, the promise is now realized. God stamps his imprimatur on the vision stating, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end…” To speak of God as the Alpha and the Omega is more than claiming God brackets both time and history at both ends. It is another way of saying, God’s liberating and transforming love is both the source and purpose of history. What does all this say to us on this All Saints’ Day? I think this curious mix of remembering and forgetting characterizes the lives of the saints and speaks to us about our lives. Without question, All Saints’ Day is a day of remembering, a day on which we remember the saints both well known and lesser known, those saints known only to us and those known only to God, those whose lives are captured in books and whose faces appear in stained glass, and those whose lives are written only on our hearts and whose faces appear in a pictorial directory. We remember those who have shaped our life and faith by their witness. We remember them and through remembering them, we remember the blessings of God in Christ. They lived their lives in God’s presence as he dwelt with them. Now they call you and me to live in that same presence. Yet, I believe we are called to remember that these saints were blessed as well by their forgetting. By God’s grace, St. Paul was free to forget that he persecuted the church so he could remember Christ Jesus’ call to him to become an apostle and lead the outreach to the Gentiles. St. Peter had to forget, by God’s grace, that he had denied Christ Jesus in order for him to remember his calling to be the rock on which that same Christ Jesus would build his church. By the grace of God, John Wesley was able to forget his failure as a missionary in Georgia in order to remember his calling to lead a people called Methodist. Saints are people who are able to forget in order to remember, to let go of past failures, past sinful behavior, past doubts and fears, and let God lead them into the future he promises. Faithful remembering necessitates faithful forgetting. Such forgetfulness comes as a grace-driven choice, not neglect or arrogance. We forget in order to remember. In his book, LENIN’S TOMB, David Remnick points out that when Russian historians started remembering the Stalinist past, the debacle in Afghanistan, the economic disintegration, Mikhail Gorbechev exclaimed, “We cannot go on like this!” The remembering was proving to great a burden for the Russian people to carry, chaining them to the past, immobilizing them for the future. At some point they had to forget, let go in order to have a future. The saints I have known both from study and in person know this truth. On occasion, we must choose to forget in order to remember, to let go in order to let God lead us into the promise, the promise of a New Creation in which our tears are wiped away, where we are freed from death, where our mourning and crying are no more, where our pain yields to healing. Miroslav Volf, one of my favorite contemporary theologians, sums up the matter in his book, THE END OF MEMORY: REMEMBERING RIGHTLY IN A VIOLENT WORLD, “No final reconciliation will take place without redemption of the past and the redemption of the past is unthinkable without forgetting. Indeed, only those who are willing ultimately to forget will be capable of remembering rightly.” The saints live in this reality---forgetting in order to remember. It is a choice we make. So, my fellow saints, let us heed God’s call to remember, to remember the saints and their witness to the promise of a New Heaven and a New Earth. As we remember we will indeed be blessed. But let us also choose to forget, to let go in order to remember faithfully. As we forget, we will also be blessed. Oh, by the way, I did remember the name of that couple! Thanks be to God! Amen! |
