Remember
Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 16, 2021
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26 • Psalm 1 • 1 John 5:9-13 • John 17:6-19
Remember
“I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.”
We are nearing the end of these Great 50 Days – the time between Easter Sunday and Pentecost. In the early Church, this time was a time for further catechesis as the newly baptized took their places in the Christian community. Today, in this tradition, it is a time for each of us to consider what it means to be among the People of God, what it means to be an Easter people.
As I read this week’s readings and Gospel, I wondered: What is fundamental and foundational to our lives as God’s people? What is the central truth around which all else is oriented in our lives of faith? And what does it mean to be in the world but not of the world?
Maybe the heart of today’s Gospel message becomes clearer if we can imagine stripping things away, piece by piece. So, I’d like you to imagine that you are here – physically here – at Holy Innocents. Remember the space. The doors. The pews. The beautiful font and sanctuary. The lovely altar linens. The hardwood floor. The painted walls and new lighting. Stained wood and Holy Innocents banner with all those young, lovely faces. The statuary and flowers, the columbarium. The organ and piano. The lay and ordained wearing appropriate vestments. Here, in this place, isn’t it a comfort to your faith? Don’t you just feel counted among God’s people and connected to God in some way?
What if these beautiful walls, this organ, this building melted away. Would you still have faith? Would you still feel counted among God’s people? Would you still feel that connection?
Imagine moths ate through all our beautiful garments, all the chasubles, all the stoles, all the albs, all the altar linens, all the vestments. Would you still have faith? Would you still feel included among God’s people? Would you still feel that connection?
Now, imagine that all the luxuries of this life went away. Meals out; trips to near and far off places; fancy cars; good wine; dinners out. Would you still have faith? Would you still feel included among God’s people? Would you still feel that connection?
And what if you were diagnosed with a chronic medical condition, or struck by tragedy, or the victim of an accident and left with lifelong injuries. Would you still have faith? Would you still feel among God’s people? Would you still feel that connection?
And what if the church wounded you and left its marks and bruises? What if it betrayed you? Would you still have faith? Would you still feel among God’s people? Would you still feel that connection?
What if you were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or dementia and your cognitive faculties were compromised such that you may not know, moment to moment, what faith is, or what you have faith in, such that you cannot remember, such that you can no longer perceive connection. What then?
In his book “Dementia: Living in the Memories of God,” The Reverend John Swinton of the Church of Scotland writes: “Everything we have and everyone we know exists because of God and is deeply loved by God .... human beings are both wanted and loved irrespective of their physical or psychological condition. It is not any capacity within them that gives them value. Nor is it the value that those around them bestow upon them. ... Human beings' value and their identity are held and assured by the God who created them, who inspired them with God's nephesh, who sustains them in the power of the Holy Spirit and who continues to offer the gift of life and relationship to all of humanity.”1
Swinton explains that nephesh is a word that means “the in-breathing of God's Spirit into dust, which creates a living entity.” It is an in-breathing vital to life itself. Swinton goes on to write that “God's memory is for the purpose of re-membering ... to be re-membered by God is to be reconstituted and brought back together, moved from a state of fragmentation to one of wholeness in God: shalom.” Swinton draws all of this together and pointedly writes, “We are because God sustains us in God's memory.”
In fact, Swinton argues that when God forgets something, it literally ceases to be. So, when Swinton writes, “we are because God sustains us in God’s memory,” he’s making an existential claim about the essential nature of being of God and what it means to be counted among God’s people – what it means to be counted among the whole of God’s creation – all of which is remembered by God. This requires nothing of us; it is entirely of God. We are because God remembers. When all is stripped away, when you can no longer remember for yourself, when you can no longer have faith because it’s too hard, or because the church left its marks and bruises and betrayed you, or because your cognitive capacity has become limited, the Good News is that we are held tenderly and lovingly in God’s memory. We are because God remembers even when we can’t, even when we won’t, even when we resist, even when it’s too hard.
I believe this starts to get at the heart of this idea that we are in the world, but not of the world. We are in the world and not of the world because God remembers. In today’s Gospel, God remembers: “that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.” God remembers: “protect them from the evil one.” God remembers: “Sanctify them in the truth.” God remembers: “protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” God remembers. And nothing that can befall us here in this life, nothing that we do or don’t do, can ever change that.
In all of this, there is an invitation to us, as well. We are invited to remember, too. We, too, remember; we must remember. As a community, we must remember those who are poor, those who are strangers in a strange land, people society casts aside, people living on a razor thin edge between barely-making-it and economic ruin, those who are grieving, those who are afflicted, those abused and betrayed by the institutional church and its ministers, those who are subjugated, those who are oppressed, those seeking justice, and those who are marginalized. As a community, we cannot forget, because if we forget, then the needs of the world cease to exist in our consciousness, don’t they? Without communal memory, we, as a community, can grow apathetic toward the world’s needs, can’t we? So, just as God holds all things together as one through God’s remembering, so, too, must we, as a community, remember, that we might all live as one, too. We must remember, so that, in this world, we might move ourselves and our siblings “from a state of fragmentation to one of wholeness.” In that sense, our communal prayers and intersessions are as much about raising things up to God as they are about this community remembering the dignity and needs of all of God’s people and of God’s creation. If we are to live as one, we must remember those in life’s shadows and those caught up in life’s storms. We remember so that we may be for one another sources of love in a world torn.
In the words of Pádraig Ó Tuama’s, “A Prayer for Shelter and Shadow”:
It is in the shelter of each other that people live.
We know that sometimes we are alone, and sometimes we are in community. Sometimes we are in shadow, and sometimes we are surrounded by shelter.
Sometimes we feel like exiles –
In our land, in our languages, and in our bodies. And sometimes we feel surrounded by welcome.
As we seek to be human together, let us share the things that do not fade: Generosity, truth-telling, silence, respect, and love.
And may the power we share Be for the good of all.
We honor God, the source of this rich life. And we honor each other, story-full and lovely.
Whether in our shadow or in our shelter. May we live well
And fully
With each other.2
It is in the memory of God that we are held and promised life eternal. “It is in the shelter of each other” that we are invited to live. Remember.
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1 Rev. John Swinton, Dementia: Living in the Memories of God (Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans 2012).
2 Padraig O Tuama, Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community (Norwich: Canterbury Press 2017).