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WE ARE WHAT WE REMEMBER
It was a show of wisdom on the part of the Congress of the United States to incorporate a day of remembering into the national calendar. The fact that Memorial Day has degenerated into a holiday that provides merchants with yet another occasion to turn a dollar does not argue against the need to remember. I was interested to read recently that a tiny White House commission has spent the past five years and $1.5 million trying to bring a new American tradition to Memorial Day's barbecues, parades, and sales: a moment of remembrance, just a 30 second pause, at 3: p.m. on Memorial Day. It's no wonder that the commission's energetic executive, Carmella LaSpada, is frustrated that the idea has not caught on. But it's hard to quiet down a country of 300 million busy people in a busy nation in a busy world, as Chuck Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska, who sponsored the legislation to create the commission, observed.
We live in an era of exaggerated speech. Extravagant claims bombard our senses daily. "You are what you eat," they say. "You are what you wear." "You are what you drive." "You are what you feel." All of these overstate to make a point. But it is a claim of an altogether different order to say that we are what we remember!
In a power conscious age, it is vital that we not overlook the power of memory. While there is much about brain cells that we do not know, we do know that the human brain has virtually limitless ability to store and retrieve past experience.
Memory experts criticize us for under-using this intriguing capability. Men like Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas could memorize whole pages of telephone numbers in a matter of minutes.
Pat and I, after our wedding, went on our honeymoon to the Elbow Beach resort in Bermuda, where we were met by the "Recreation Host." I must say that my first reaction was that the last person I needed on my honeymoon was a recreation host! Be that as it may, we told him our names, and for the next week every time he saw us he called us by our first names. There must have been at least 200 couples staying at the resort that week, and as I got it, he could call everyone by name.
Our tonsils may function well or ill without our willing, but the faculty of memory, we are told, is different. It is not just there. It is capable of responding to training and attention. Most of the time when we fail to remember someone's name, it is because we never seriously intended to do so. We are what we remember. Tell me what you remember, and I'll tell you who you are.
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Think of this truth as it relates to our individual mental health and our general well being. It is axiomatic in psychology that most neuroses and emotional disturbances are connected with memory. We have a costly way of remembering what we ought to forget and of forgetting what we ought to remember.
If someone were to ask me in casual conversation, "did you have a happy childhood," I would say yes. I would bring to mind all kinds of family relationships and associations, people, experiences that could only be described as positive. But if I really began to work on that question, dug down deep and probed, I could find much in that childhood that could be described as negative. The time my older brother, in the Berkshire mountains of MA, on a winter overnight hike, when we came to an icy stream with just a log over it, and after Roy crossed over, saying to me, "Come on Jack, you can do it." I was so scared I would fall into that icy stream! Or the time I was walking the dog for the egg delivery man with whom I had an after school job. I remember coming to the park in Hawthorne, NJ, where there was this guy just sitting on the grass enjoying the view. I innocently tied up the dog to a tree, and sat next to him, thinking I would just enjoy some casual conversation. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, he made a very inappropriate gesture to me, and I remember this bolt of lightning that soared through me. I was so terrified that when I jumped up to get away from him, my hands were trembling such that I could hardly untie the dog. Negatives are there and retrievable if one sets out to do so.
Many people suffer by keeping alive some wrong committed against them. But this is not the worst. We frequently remember, dwell on, become obsessive about, some wrong that we have done, which, by constant thought and magnification, can even become the unforgivable, unpardonable sin. "The unpardonable sin!" What fantasies have been spun around that concept.
A wise counselor was visiting with a woman who was utterly convinced that she had committed the unpardonable sin. The counselor drew up an empty chair and said to the woman, "Let's imagine Jesus in this chair. Tell me now that you hear him saying, 'I won't forgive you.'" We tend to remember what we ought to forget.
The reverse of that mistake is that we forget what we ought to remember. Our beginnings, those who helped us get our start, love that met us, human and divine, when we least expected it. There is no finer therapy for a misused memory that a verse in the 103rd Psalm: "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits." We are what we remember.
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Think of this truth as it relates to Christian experience. It would be hard to overstate the role that memory plays in Biblical religion. The word "zachar", the verb "to remember" is an exceedingly dominant verb in the Hebrew Bible. It was so critical for Israel not to forget. Notice from the scripture for today: "And when the Lord your God brings you into the land… with great and goodly cities which you did not build, and houses, which you did not fill, and cisterns which you did not hew, and vineyards and olives which you did not plant, and when you eat and are full, take heed lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of house of bondage." (Deut. 6: 10-12)
The word, the teaching, the Torah, was to be bound to the forehead, and to the arms, posted on the doors and taught to the children generation following generation. When the Hebrews found themselves in Babylon, and began to contemplate the possibility of fusing themselves with the Babylonian culture, the Second Isaiah rose up and said, "Harken to me, you who pursue deliverance, you who seek the Lord; look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah, who bore you." (Is. 51: 1-2)
Christians too are held to the faith by memory. When Paul advised those young Christians not to forsake the assembling of themselves together (Heb. 10:25) he was reminding those young Christians that they lived in a world that operated with an awareness of a different history. By gathering together on the Lord's Day, they would become mindful again of the piece of history by which they had been redeemed; the recollection of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Remember it! Small wonder we have on the front of our communion table the words, "This do in remembrance of me."
Whether we are conscious of it or not, the most significant thing happening here today and every Sunday is the fact that by word, by sign, by symbol, by prayer, by hymns, by anthem, by thought, we are remembering the history from which redemption comes. The church is the only institution on the face of the earth that is charged with the responsibility to keep alive the memory of the saving deed of Jesus.
As individuals, and corporately as the church, we are what we remember.
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Finally, think of this truth as it relates to America now. On this Memorial Day weekend, there are at least two things we do well to remember. One, of course, are those who died to secure the liberties we enjoy. Organizations such as the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars are important institutions, and the individuals that they represent remind us of an indebtedness that we should never, ever, forget.
National defense and the war on terrorism are as vital as a local police department, but a thoroughgoing pacifist would have to stand for the elimination of both. I find myself in conflict with our strategy in Iraq, and yet we should not invoke an abhorrence of pre-emptive war to justify indifference to those who paid the supreme price.
The other thing that bears remembering this weekend is the quality of the American Constitution. This Republic is the noblest political experiment in history. That we have failed to live out fully the text and promise of the Constitution does not in the least detract from its inherent worth.
This is the age of the underdog. Our consciousness is constantly being raised to new levels with regard to illegal aliens from Mexico, and the need for a wall. By the way, Pat and I lived for over 12 years in Fort Walton Beach, FL, where I served First Presbyterian Church. Right next to FWB is the village of Destin, which also has marvelous beaches. Some wag from there wrote a letter to the Northwest Florida Daily News, suggesting that the border problem could be solved with one small step. Turn the problem over to the Destin Condominium Association. They have successfully walled off the beach so that nobody can get there!
Other underdogs come to mind: the victims of natural disasters, the American Indian, the American Black, the homeless, hungry, and abused. As accurate as these observations may be, this is not the whole story of life in America, and we know it.
I enjoyed some time back a comment by Martin Marty, who teaches at the University of Chicago Divinity School and writes a column for the Christian Century. He was reacting to one particular voice in America that is persistently sounding the death knell. Dr. Marty, gifted with the ability to turn a phrase, said of that despairing prophet, "He has a complete grasp on one half of the truth."
Folks, without making any claims for chosenness, or an appeal to a manifest destiny, it can be safely said of America that never in the history of the race has so much freedom been available to so many. Millions around the world wish they were here. We must be doing something right!
We are what we remember. This is true for us as individuals, as a church, and as a nation. Tell me what you remember, and I'll tell you who you are!