Remember

Scriptures:     Acts 16:1-15,  Psalm 67     Revelation 21:10, 22-27; 22:1-5    John 14:23-29

One of the annoyances of having reached my mid-fifties is that I’m finding I need to write things down – dates of appointments, names of people I need to call, occasionally even things I need to pick up at the store.  All my life I’ve had a good memory – and for the most part I think my memory is still mostly ok most of the time -  and up until the past few years have been able to keep my calendar and my list of contacts organized in my head without having to write myself reminders.  But now, sticky notes are my friend; otherwise, I’m apt to walk someplace and by the time I get there, I forget why I went.  And God help me when it comes to remembering the names of people I’ve just met; I can’t very well be pulling sticky notes out of my pocket every time I meet someone for the first time.  Even though I often ask people I’ve just met to repeat their names a few times until I remember them, I still have a lot of mishaps. Sort of brings a whole different meaning to the phrase “having a mind like a steel trap”:  at this point in my life, anything that gets into my mind gets mangled.  

Memory – it’s such a big part of what makes us human.  Without our memories, how do we know who we are, or where we fit in to our family, our workplace, our friends, our church, our lives?  Without memory, life is just a sequence of events, with, as Fr John McNamee, former pastor of St Malachy’s in North Philadelphia, would put it, “no beginning nor end nor middle nor sense”.  With memory, we connect what we experience in the presence with what we’ve experienced in the past.  In connecting our experience of current events with our memories of past events, we create meaning for ourselves.  Because of our ability to remember, our lives are not just a sequence of random events, but become a narrative, a story, as we reinterpret past events to help us understand future events.  We all experience trauma in our lives, but the stories we tell ourselves about that trauma have the power to shape our present and future, for good or ill.  On one hand, the fear we feel about some tragic event may cause us to close off parts of our world:  this person or place or event made me feel terrified or furious or caused excruciating pain; I never want to feel that way again, so I’ll never again subject myself to similar persons or places or events.  It’s a very natural reaction, the reaction that keeps a small child from touching a hot stove a second time after their finger has touched a hot stove the first time.  Once burnt, twice shy.  On the other hand, we may be able to tell ourselves a different story, that this person or place or event made me feel terrified or furious or caused great pain, and with God’s help I was strong enough to get through it, and now I feel so strong I want to help others get through it.  Same tragedy; two different ways of responding, all because of our gift for creating meaning for ourselves, all because of our ability to remember. 

In our Gospel reading, Jesus is eating his last Passover meal with his disciples.  He knows he’ll be betrayed and arrested that very night, subjected to a farce of a trial, given a sentence that is a mockery of justice, and executed.  (And yes, we from our vantage point know he’ll be resurrected, but his disciples knew no such thing; even when Jesus talked about rising on the third day, they had no idea what he was talking about.)   So, from the standpoint of the disciples in that moment, Jesus’ time with them was running short; indeed, Jesus’ time with them was quickly running out.   And when time is short, when time is running out, there’s no time for small talk; we have to get real and say what needs to be said. 

We’ve been listening in on this conversation.  Last week, Jesus told his disciples, “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another.”  Like I said, getting real, saying what needs to be said.  And in today’s reading, he tells his disciples, “Peace I leave you; my peace I give to you.  Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”  A little later on, he tells them that he is the vine and that his disciples are the branches, that they must abide in him and he in them if they are to remain alive and lifegiving. 

But that’s a lot to hold onto.  Perhaps the disciples were anxious that they would forget what Jesus said and lose track of his message – “Stop, Jesus, slow down, you’re going too fast, I can’t keep up with all this….” because Jesus said, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and *remind you* of all I have said to you.  It’s striking that the writer of Luke’s gospel, who also wrote the Acts of the Apostles describes the Holy Spirit, and so does the writer of John’s gospel, but Luke and John describe the Holy Spirit in very different ways.  It is Luke’s image of the Holy Spirit that has stuck with us, the image of the Holy Spirit that we will celebrate two weeks from now on Pentecost – the Holy Spirit coming down with the rush of a mighty wind and alighting on the disciples heads like divided tongues of fire, causing the faithful to speak in tongues and preach.  But John speaks of the spirit in a different way, in a quieter and gentler way, as God teaching us and reminding us of Jesus’ words. 

Memory, and the ability to observe our lives and those of others and create meaning from them, is part of what makes us human.  If we are to be followers of Jesus, we must remember what Jesus told us, and in order to remember, we must sometimes be reminded. You see, there are many ways to remember any given event, and we can create meaning from our experiences in many different ways.   It is the work of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, to teach and remind us so that we create memory and meaning in our lives in ways that are based on the life and teachings of Jesus.  Indeed, it is the work of the Holy Spirit to make Jesus the lens through which we view our lives and all around us. As we go through life, encounter struggle, encounter temptation, it is the Spirit that helps us make the connections between these struggles and the words of Jesus.  When we are tempted to hatred or, worse, indifference, it is the Spirit that reminds us of Jesus’ command to love one another.  When we are agitated or anxious or depressed, it is the Spirit that reminds of Jesus’ words in today’s gospel, “Peace I leave you, my peace I give you.”  When we feel isolated and alone, it is the Spirit that reminds us that we are never alone, that we are connected to the body of Christ and a part of the body of Christ.  

We see the power of the Holy Spirit’s mission to teach and remind in our reading from Revelation.  The writer, John, exiled to the isle of Patmos, one of the Roman Empire’s dumping grounds for dissidents and troublemakers, exiled to work in the quarries on Patmos, exiled from the Roman Empire, is having a vision of a very different empire, the reign of God to come.  In this vision, he speaks of the Tree of Life, with its twelve kinds of fruit, one kind for each month of the year.  In this vision, God is helping John to reach in his mind all the way back to the book of Genesis – back to the Garden of Eden, where there was the Tree of Life.  The tree of life appears like bookends in our Scripture, back in the beginning, in Genesis, and at the end of the book, in Revelation.  Despite all the sin and hatred and ugliness of thousands of years of human history, despite the hatred and exclusion that John experienced from the Roman Empire, God still held out to John, and God still holds out for us, the vision of the tree of life, and the river of life, there for the taking, without money and without price, offering life to all who will have it. And John goes on to say, “But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.”  The Spirit’s work of teaching us and reminding us of everything Jesus said will be so complete in us, that Jesus’ name will be on our foreheads; there will be no possibility of mistaking who we are and to whom we belong.

Our reading from Acts gives us a striking portrait of what it looks like when we are in the process of having Jesus’ name engraved on our foreheads, of what people look like when the Holy Spirit is active in their lives.  Paul is out and about preaching the word. He had just parted company with Barnabas, because Barnabas wanted to work with John Mark – by tradition John Mark was the writer of Mark’s gospel, the earliest of the four – and Paul didn’t.  Paul settled on another man, named Silas, and they began to go about preaching.  Oddly, we’re told that Paul had wanted to preach in Asia – what we would now call Asia Minor, the present day country of Turkey – but the Spirit of Jesus didn’t allow it.  So while the Spirit of Jesus often pushed Christians into proclaiming their faith, oddly in this instance, Paul was instructed by that same spirit to bypass Asia.  Perhaps it just wasn’t the right time. Instead, Paul was redirected to Macedonia by means of a vision. Paul and Silas went to Philippi, and went outside the city gate to a place near the river where there was a place of prayer for Jews.  We’re told there was a certain woman, named Lydia, who sold purple cloth.  Purple dye was very expensive in those days, so this Lydia would have been used to dealing with society’s movers and shakers, and likely was comfortably off herself. And we’re told that the Lord opened Lydia’s heart., and she and her household were baptized.  This Lydia, used to dealing with society’s movers and shakers, apparently could be quite forceful herself; we’re told, “When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, ‘If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.’ And she prevailed upon us.”  Having been led to Jesus by Paul, Lydia wanted to show Paul hospitality, and she wasn’t taking no for an answer. Remember that it was never part of Paul’s plan to be at Lydia’s house in the first place – he’d wanted to preach someplace else entirely, in Turkey.  But Paul was opened as the Spirit taught and reminded him, and so he followed the Spirit’s leading, and Lydia and her household were saved.  Not long after, Paul cast a demon out of a fortune-telling slave girl and was arrested for this – and it was Lydia who in effect provided jailhouse support, welcoming Paul after he was released.  Her example was so striking that by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Lydia’s name and story were included in Scripture – especially striking when we consider the number of women who remain nameless in Scripture, and the patriarchal culture of that day in which women were to be seen but not heard, if not ignored altogether.

Memory, and the ability to connect events to create meaning, are part of what makes us human.  Our scriptures today call us to remember – to remember the words of Jesus, the words of Scripture, to remember those like Lydia who have provided help and hospitality to us in our journeys, to remember to make room for the Spirit to work in our lives.  As we prepare for communion, this, too, was a way in which Jesus asked us to remember.  Amen.