September 28, 2025

Remembering

In today’s scripture reading, Jesus relates a bizarre parable about a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus who both die, and when the rich man discovers his fate in the fires of Hades, he wants an emissary sent back from the dead to warn his five brothers not fall into the same careless ways and suffer in eternal anguish as he is.  He is told that even if someone rises from the dead to warn them, they won’t listen.  I don’t think it’s intended to be an accurate description of the afterlife; I think Jesus was simply using a popular fiction to make a point.  Well, I can’t help it, the darn story makes me think of Marley in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol coming back from the grave to warn old Scrooge to mend his ways so he won’t end up like him, forever dragging the chains of his misdeeds around with him.

Both tales make basically the same point, but I have to confess I like Dickens’s version better.  I think it’s because the scriptural story ends with a negative judgment: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”  Dickens, on the other hand, ends on a positive note: Scrooge is redeemed by his visitations from beyond, and, as Dickens writes, “It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”  But there is one brief phrase in Jesus’ parable that knocks me out.  It’s when the rich man is wailing from the depths of Hades and looks up to heaven begging Father Abraham for some relief from his torment.  The answer begins with these haunting words: “Child, remember . . . .”  Both Jesus’s parable and Dickens’s tale are told for our sake.  Both are cautionary tales to remind us how terribly important it is to remember – to remember our own histories and take lessons from them – to remember who we are.

Robert Douglas Fairhurst, in his editorial notes to Dickens’ yarn relates that, “In April 1842, just over a year before he described Marley’s ghost dragging his heavy chains across the floor, [Dickens] had visited the shackled prisoners in the Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and wrote to John Forester of being haunted by ‘a horrible thought’: ‘What if ghosts be one of the terrors of these jails? . . . The utter solitude by day and night; the hours of darkness; the silence of death; the mind for ever brooding on melancholy themes, and having no relief . . . The more I think of it, the more certain I feel that not a few of these men . . . are nightly visited by spectres.'” Fairhurst comments, “Perhaps it is not surprising that Dickens was troubled by the idea that prisoners were haunted by the ghosts of the past.”

There is something terribly important about remembering, whether it is, as Scrooge was forced to do, remembering the missed opportunities, careless adventures, and failures of love, or remembering the best in who we once were and could be again, who we were created to be, and might become.

I understand that experts about brain function are learning that memories are not as dependable as we often think.  It seems that each time we bring up a past incident we reconstruct that memory bit by bit.  And each time it’s recalled, the memory is subject to some minor revision, so that something recollected in our minds numerous times might seem as if it’s etched in stone up there somewhere, but our memory might actually be quite a distortion of what actually took place.

Consequently, remembering is a tricky thing.  We may think we are remembering clearly and accurately, and we may simply be fooling ourselves.  I’ve come to see this in my own experience.  Just a few days ago I had intended to plug in the chord that recharges the generator battery in the basement.  I wanted to plug it in at night before bedtime and then unplug it in the morning.  So, I left a note to myself on the kitchen counter about the generator battery.  In the morning, when I got up and went into the kitchen, I saw the note on the counter and beat myself up for being so stupid as to forget to plug in the chord when there was a note sitting there plain as day.  So, I decided to leave the note there and go down and plug in the chord and then unplug it in the afternoon.  So, I went down to the basement and behold the chord was plugged in.  And try as I might, I could not remember plugging that darned thing in.  I searched my memory and there was none there.  I have more and more of these kind of episodes, and suspect that many of you do as well.

There was an old Earth, Wind and Fire song that went “Do you remember the 21st night of September? . . . While chasing the clouds away.”  Well, the 21st night of September was just one week ago.  How many of you remember what you were doing last Sunday night?  I’ll bet if a husband and wife tried answering that question they might get into a significant disagreement: “We just watched TV and went to bed.”  “No, that was the night the Joneses came over.” “No that was Saturday night.”  “No, I’m sure it was Sunday because we went to church that morning.”  . . .and on, and on.

So the same is true of remembering our past selves.  I think you and I are inclined to unknowingly edit those memories, sometimes to make them a bit rosier, and sometimes to make them even more heinous.  Maybe that’s why it took the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future to point out to old Scrooge what his past was truly like and what that might mean for him, and maybe that’s why Father Abraham told the rich man in Hades that people needed Moses and the prophets to make it all clear to them, and that if they didn’t listen to them they wouldn’t see the truth even if someone rose from the dead.  It seems that you and I can’t remember ourselves on our own.  We need help.

I have a confession to make: Die Hard is my favorite movie of all time.  I’ve seen it so many times that I think I know all the lines by heart.  But it never ceases to amaze me that lines I think I have down pat, I discover I’ve remembered incorrectly.  Having the movie on DVD allows me to watch it over and over and to thereby keep correcting my memory (Dadgie has always loved that).

I think that’s a lot like what we do here in this place.  We gather every week and sing some of the same hymns, hear passages of scripture read that we’ve heard time and again throughout our lives, and listen to a preacher say some of the same things over and over – we had a professor in seminary who said that every preacher has only three basic sermons, and if he’s lucky, one original idea.  So why do we do it?  Why do we keep coming here, offering similar prayers, going back time and again to the same Bible that tells the same stories.  I’ll tell you why.  It’s so that we can remember.  It’s so that we can remember who we are, who we were created to be, and who we are intended to be.  We need this Bible, and these same old stories told in the same ways for thousands of years, because it’s all too easy to fool ourselves into thinking we know – thinking that our picture of Divine reality, and our place in it is clear and etched in stone.  We need to keep getting jolted by things in the Bible that surprise us because they remind us of a part of ourselves that we may have conveniently forgotten or inadvertently distorted.

G. K. Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, said that some things, indeed, get repeated over and over but God just might be involved in what seems to us like monotonous ritual: “It might be true that the sun rises regularly because God never gets tired of raising the sun,” Chesterton says. “Its routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.  The thing I mean can be seen . . . in children, when they find some name or joke that they especially enjoy.  The child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life.  Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore, they want things repeated and unchanged.  They always say, ‘Do it again,’ and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.  For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.  But,” Chesterton goes on, “perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.  It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again,’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon.  It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike, it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but is never tired of making them.  It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy. . . .”

Chesterton may be speaking a bit tongue in cheek, but he’s onto a profound truth.  It is the repetition of goodness that helps us to remember what it is to be good.  It is the weekly repetition of bringing our offerings that helps us remember what it is to be giving.  It is the repeated embrace, and same genuine, forgiving smile that reminds us what it is to love.  It is the same Bible stories retold until we think we have memorized every line (even though we keep getting surprised) that helps us remember who we are, and whose we are.

So, in case you’ve forgotten, a little reminder of who you are: You are a rare and precious gift.  And you are gifted – each of us in different ways. You carry within you the very divine image of the creator.  You hold the capacity for great love, and great forgiveness, and great blessing.  There is no other you in all the universe, and so you have been given the grace to use yourself wisely and generously.

“Child, remember . . . .”  Father Abraham told the rich man to remember what he did in life and how, in his wealth and comfort, he never noticed the beggar Lazarus in his misery.  And when the Ghost of Christmas Past led Scrooge to his boyhood home, he asked if Scrooge remembered the way.  Scrooge replied, “‘Remember it? . . . I could walk it blindfold.’  ‘Strange to have forgotten it for so many years,’ observed the ghost.”

Maybe not so strange after all, it turns out.  You and I are very good at distorting our memories, losing track of what truly matters, and convincing ourselves of the certainty of things that are merely ephemeral shadows of eternal truth.  I for one thank the Lord for old hymns, familiar scripture, repetitious greetings, and hugs that are as comfortable as an old shoe.  I am grateful for this table around which we gather once each month to remember with bread and wine the same Christ over and over.  I am grateful because in these rituals of faithfulness, these patterns of being, these circles of love, we receive the rare gift of remembering who we are.