3 Week Series

Week 1: Remember

Deuteronomy 15:15; Ezekiel 36:31; Revelation 2:5a

The month of January is named for Janus, one of the few Roman gods without a Greek counterpart. Janus was depicted as having a double face. One face looked to the past for wisdom and the other looked ahead to the future. Janus was thought to influence beginnings and endings and was often found at doorways and entrances.

January is the time of year when many of us take inventory of the past and make corrective resolutions for the future. Since an honest in-depth inventory of the past is sometimes painful, we tend to skip over the painful and embarrassing places that undermine our favorable self-image and dwell on the times and places that make us look good. Oh, we will root around in the events of the past year and find a few “not so bad” things we thought, said, or did, and exercise enough superficial honesty about socially acceptable foibles to fool any onlooker and make us immune to being honest about the real problems in our lives. Then we will make a few inane resolutions such as eating less candy, exercising more, being nice to animals and small children, and attending church more often. Thus, we deceive everybody, including ourselves, while the real resolutions that would lead us into a significant new beginning never cross our minds. Does that sound like anybody you know? How do you think I know about these interesting avenues of escape from reality? Well, I have been there.

There are two essential steps to a successful new beginning: remembering and forgetting. It is not only important to remember the personal past through which we have lived. It is equally important to remember that past through which we did not live but that influences our lives and the world in which we live.

January is an appropriate time for us to look back and be advised and strengthened by the past so that we may be prepared for what the future holds. Our heritage is not only in our private recollections; it is also heavily endowed with shared memories that speak to us from the past. Voices from the past address us all. There is a history that predates the lives of any yet living, without which we are ill-prepared to meet the future.

The very fabric of our faith calls us to look back and remember. Some of the most tragic stories in the Bible have to do with the lives of people and nations who forgot. When the great prophets of Israel spoke, they nearly always began by looking back.

Our Jewish forebears in the faith were constantly reminded by Old Testament scriptures to remember the past. “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you . . .” (Deuteronomy 15:15a). The Jewish Celebration of Passover is an annual reminder and reenactment of how God redeemed Israel from slavery in Egypt. Passover is not only an acknowledgment of the power of God; it is a not too subtle warning to “stay out of Egypt.” Do not let this happen again. Remember how awful it was! Remembering is essential to freedom from past mistakes. The Spanish-born philosopher and critic George Santayana said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

There is a sense in which we are saved by history. Knowing history helps make up for the brevity of our lives. In our myopic view of reality we sometimes forget that our brief sojourn on earth is but a drop of time in the ocean of eternity. Our personal part in history is infinitesimally small.

Since our time on the stage of history is so short, it is quite possible for us to miss the theme of what God is doing through the ages. If we do not know any more history than that through which we have lived, we may not only be depressed by the failure of our age to accomplish great goals in our lifetime, but we are likely to misunderstand the theme of the eternal in the history of time. There have been periods of time in the history of the church that lacked grace or positive movement. There have been periods that were downright disappointing. If the people of the church in those times focused only upon their time in history—if they knew no history but their own—surely they died disappointed.

There have been times in my own ministry when, if I had not known more history than that through which I was living, I would have despaired. There have been years of disappointment and failure, institutionally and personally, that alone could have defeated one’s spirit, but that were bearable when understood in the light of the total history of the church. It is essential for us to see that God is not limited by our failures. I have thanked God many times for offering some understanding of how God works in history so that I might not despair in those times of unresponsiveness and failure to which I belong. Saint Augustine suggested that God stands, at once, at every time, in the past, present, and future. God is not bound by time. In fact, time may not be as rigid as we think.

It is not enough to remember the past as objective history in a general sort of way. It is a precarious assumption to speak of “objective history.” That assumption deserves to be examined—at your leisure. Creative remembering that prepares us for real new beginnings must at last become personal and specific.

When Ezekiel spoke of the path to renewal for Israel, he was painfully specific about what should be remembered. “Then you shall remember your evil ways, and your dealings that were not good; and you shall loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominable deeds” (Ezekiel 36:31). As we used to say down on the farm where I grew up, “That is plowing pretty close to the corn.” The book of Revelation is more gentle in addressing the church at Ephesus, but equally specific. “Remember then from what you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first” (Revelation 2:5a).

In May of 2007 the Alabama State legislature issued a formal apology for the state’s role in the history of slavery and the countless later indignities visited upon its black citizens under the color of law. It was a dramatic moment for a state from whose capital the telegram initiating the Civil War was sent—the state whose capitol city was the site of the beginning of the civil rights movement when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus. One state senator commented that sometimes one cannot move forward without first taking account of the past. Being willing to look at a shameful past is not easy, but it is essential to the healing process and to the building of a better future.

If we do not remember specifically how and why we got into a situation or lifestyle that makes a new beginning essential to repositioning our lives, then we are likely to find ourselves right back where we started before year’s end. If we take inventory of where we are and “remember from what we have fallen,” then we are ready to repent and begin again. It is not always easy to do the emotional heavy lifting required to intelligently determine what should be kept and what should be thrown away. Not everything that we thought or did, that got us into a painful situation from which we need to be delivered, is necessarily wrong. Frederick Buechner, in his book, A Room Called Remember, speaks of how we may not only choose the wrong road but can also choose the right road for the wrong reason. It is good to love, but Buechner speaks of how we can love too much for the good of either the lover or the beloved.

If we can bear to sift through the actions and motives that got us to where we are, it is likely that with God’s help we can correct our course and get to where we want to be. I cannot tell you what to forget and what to remember, what to hold on to and what to turn loose. The specific details about our acts and motives are so highly individualized that you cannot depend on someone else to tell you what to do. There are things in our lives that no one else can remember. Others can support, love, and encourage, but we have to do our own heavy lifting.

Have you ever heard someone say that they came so near death that their whole life flashed before them? Has that video ever played in your life? People who have had “near death experiences,” who have clinically died and been brought back to the land of the living, often speak of being in the presence of overwhelming love and acceptance in the form of a being of light. They say that their whole life is reviewed in the presence of that incredibly loving being and they not only saw and understood themselves but felt unconditionally loved. Most of those who have had the experience testify that it was so wonderful that they did not want to come back.

Perhaps if we could bring ourselves to really remember our past in the presence of God in this life we would not only create the essential conditions for a new beginning but also get a foretaste of what it will be like when we “lay it all out” in the presence of God in the world that is to come.

Remember. Remember. Remember.

Week 2: Forget It

Philippians 3:12-13

One day, the church receptionist informed me that my daughter was in the outer office and needed to ask me a question. When she walked through the door, she had a puzzled look on her face, and she said: “Daddy, I have forgotten what I was going to ask you!” I said to her: “It must not have been very important if you forgot it.” With an air of disgust for my crisp tone, she came back as quick as a flash: “Oh Daddy, don’t you know that people sometimes forget some of the most important things in the world?”

She was only eleven years old and she already knew! Forgetting important things can get our lives out of focus. But forgetting, and our obvious capacity to forget, is not necessarily a negative component in our mental makeup. Some things should be forgotten so we can move on without the unnecessary emotional baggage of negative memories.

When some negative feeling or attitude is hurting us, or hurting someone we love, it is good religion and good mental health to intentionally toss it into the wastebasket of forgetfulness. That’s not always easy, but it is possible. People who learn to do this are usually able to keep their lives in manageable units. Conversely, those who cannot or will not are often the source of great misery to themselves—and to others.

When a painful broken relationship is over, it is very important to be able to forget the details, and the hatred and the resentment it has generated, and remember only the lesson learned. There are many kinds of broken relationships to which this admonition could properly be applied. People get “bent out of shape” over political and theological ideology and refuse to be civil to those who disagree with them. Disputes over church business create more hard feelings and broken relationships than most people would imagine. People leave the church or refuse to speak to some people when they come to church. It can happen over some of the most frivolous things. The history of that sort of behavior goes all the way back to some of the very first Christian churches established by the apostle Paul. Read Paul’s letters to the churches and you will find it there. You do not have to look very far in any social setting to find examples of how people get their feelings hurt and cannot seem to “turn it loose.”

This kind of behavior is often seen in the principal persons of a divorce, and it tends to spread to family members on each side. It develops in its most ugly form around child custody and money. Sometimes— many times—the rancor continues for years, spreading ill will and poisoning every relationship it touches.

The longer ill will persists, the deeper it goes and the more difficult it is to overcome. Unrequited anger is almost always more damaging to the person who is angry than to the person to whom the anger is directed. It can, and often does, cause physical problems. I once had a parishioner who became intensely angry with me for having signed a petition to integrate the city buses where we lived. He made an unsuccessful attempt on my life. He became physically ill over the matter, and I am not sure that my daily visits with him in his home to pray with him helped very much. Three years later he apologized to me and repented of his behavior and feelings. This is a good example of why the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus, “Be angry but do not . . . let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26).

We should be careful when we admonish people to “forgive and forget.” Forgiving is not contingent on forgetting—at least not literally forgetting. It is a wonderful gift of grace to be willing and able to literally forget.

William Barclay recalled the famous Scottish man of letters, Andrew Lang, who wrote and published a very kind review of a book by a young man. The young man repaid him with a bitter and an insulting attack. Three years later, Andrew Lang was staying with Robert Bridges, the Poet Laureate of Scotland. Bridges saw Lang reading a book by the same young man who had so disrespectfully attacked him. He said to Lang: “Why that is another book by that ungrateful young cub who behaved so shamefully to you.” To his astonishment, he discovered that Andrew Lang’s mind was completely blank on the whole matter. He had completely forgotten the bitter and insulting attack. “To forgive,” said Bridges, “was the sign of a great man, but to forget was sublime” (William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible Series, The Gospel of Matthew, vol. 1 [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956], 224-25).

Literally forgetting is a great blessing, but our minds are not always able to completely eliminate a particular event from consciousness. It is helpful and healing to intentionally refuse to replay a harmful incident over and over. An emotional wound, like a physical wound, will properly heal if we will not continue to pick at the scab as it tries to heal. To forget is to stop picking at the wound. When a wound heals it may leave a scar but the pain will be gone. It is spiritually dangerous for us to repeatedly tell others (and ourselves) that we will never forget “how we were treated” or “what so-and-so did to me.” To repeat it is to peel away the scab and reopen the wound. Forget it!

Let me come at this matter of what we should forget in order to be ready to begin again by suggesting how you can build a lifestyle that will keep you in a constant state of conflict and misery. I got some of these lines from a piece I read in a youth devotional book twenty-six years ago: Don’t forget the smallest offense or slight. Keep score of all wrongs done to you. Be sure to remember each petty statement made about you in the past. Cultivate your garden of grievance each day. Take a few minutes before you get out of bed each morning to recite to yourself the names of the people who have offended you and the nature of their offenses. When you are driving alone in your automobile, use that block of time to recall the names of your enemies and to make preliminary plans for getting even with each of them. Paste the record of your ruffled feelings in your private book of remembrance. Save up grudges and collect grievances like a stamp or coin collector. Display them to others with pride! You will soon learn how easily grievance collecting can become a lifetime hobby that will blend into your total lifestyle. Soon you will find that spare time is not enough time for grievance collecting, and you will look forward to retirement so you can give your complete time to such a demanding hobby. The most lasting value of cultivating the art of grievance collecting is that, if you are persistent and undeterred, you will get a more accurate preview of hell than could be acquired in any other way. And hell is that happy hunting ground to which all master-grievance collectors go, where they can display their collections forever to those who will appreciate them. (Adapted from W. W. Morris, Alive Now [Upper Room Press, May/June, 1981], 54).

Do you understand that?

Forgetting is not all that easy, even when it seems necessary. We hate to give up our fantasies of getting even. They are such a comfort!

Not long ago I met an old enemy I had forgiven, and I actually missed the emotional rush I once had when he was an enemy. I tried to recover the feeling, but it was gone. I could not muster up an ounce of ill will, no matter how hard I tried. I celebrated the victory of forgiveness, but there was a part of me that grieved the loss of an enemy. Oh, how we love to hate our enemies—both real and imagined. Forgiving and forgetting are not easy.

Clearing the way for a new beginning takes more than a fanciful wish.

Those of us who have struggled with the process can easily identify with the Eastern proverb that says: “My skirt with tears is always wet, I have forgotten to forget.”

Learning what to remember and what to forget and learning how to remember and how to forget are essential elements in the process of beginning again. The thing to remember if you want to forget is the power of “intentional effort.” Just forget it!

Week 3: Whenever You Are Ready

Revelation 3:8

The open door is a powerful symbol to anyone who is ready to leave a troubled past and launch out on a new beginning. One of the great “I am” proclamations of Jesus is “I am the door” (John 10:9 ESV). The symbol of the door held open by irresistible divine power is more encouraging to a wounded soul looking for a way to begin again than the symbol of Christ standing outside the door knocking, awaiting the initiative of someone who is inside (Revelation 3:20). The door held open by divine power suggests that God in Christ has already acted in our behalf. We do not have to open the door; we only need walk through it.

The symbol of Janus in January reminds any thoughtful person to consider a new beginning for some aspect of life. It is a timely (calendar) reminder that comes once each year. The open door in Revelation is not an annual proposition. It is an anytime proposition. There can be a new beginning in your life whenever you are ready.

There are many things, other than (in addition to) the calendar, that make us conscious of the need and the opportunity to make a new beginning. When someone we love dies, life is never the same again. The death of a spouse or a child or any significant other so radically reshapes relationships and feelings that a new beginning is essential. After allowing time for the shock to wear off and the grieving process to run its course, there comes a distinct time to gather up the loose ends and begin again without the presence of someone who was once so central to life.

Any significant loss is in some sense like a death and requires a period of grief and readjustment before beginning again. Eric Hoffer, longshoreman turned philosopher, reminded us that a person’s heart is a grave long before that person is buried. Youth dies, and beauty and hope and desire. Something in us dies when we lose anything great or small. All losses require a reassessment of life to accommodate that loss.

We have all witnessed essential new beginnings, in and out of season, from January to December, in the wake of divorces. There are so many of them! The lives of children are abruptly rearranged in painful ways long before they are able to understand what has happened and why it has happened. Divorce forces so many unwanted new beginnings, emotionally, financially, and physically. While these new beginnings may well produce healthier lives later, the pain of the moment is devastating. Those who go through the experience welcome the powerful hand of God holding the door open for us.

Every pastor witnesses new beginnings in persons who have lost their jobs or who have suffered significant financial setbacks. Beginning again isn’t easy, but it is possible and necessary.

There are new beginnings that may well bring “joy in the morning,” but they are preceded by a long dark night of suffering and sorrow. You have probably witnessed an alcoholic or drug addict making a new beginning. You may have had that experience yourself. It is a terrible experience any time of the year, but when you are ready it is possible. When all your strength of will power is gone, God will send someone to hold the door open.

Not all new beginnings are successful on the first try. Some find it necessary to begin again several times before making it safely through the open door. Do not become discouraged if you have to begin again, again, and again until you make it. We all fantasize that starting over again can be done with one big effort and that the process will never have to be repeated. That is a wonderful thought, but more often than you might think, old habits and old patterns of defeat tend to return. They slip up on your back slide. They return in disguise and have you in their clutches before you realize what is happening. Do not despair. Any new beginning that is worth our time and effort is worth doing again. The door does not close when you fail.

There is a sense in which a life-changing God-directed new beginning never ends. The life and times of the patriarch Abraham in the Old Testament book of Genesis is a good example of how an important new beginning takes a lifetime—and more. There is a passage in the New Testament book of Hebrews that summarizes the long story of Abraham’s new beginning.

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:8-10).

After answering God’s call, Abraham never had a dwelling place more permanent than a tent. He left his home in Haran not knowing where he was going and spent the rest of his life without ever reaching a permanent destination. He was a wayfaring pilgrim whose new beginning never ended. There never was a time in which Abraham was not reshuffling the circumstances of his life (and the life of his family) in order to follow the call of God to a destination beyond the parameters of this world. Abraham was forever beginning. His life was a journey, not a destination, and so is my life and yours.

Let us make the changes and adjustments imposed on us by circumstances or changes chosen because we see a better way. These are new beginnings that can be made whenever we are ready. It doesn’t have to be January or on our birthday. It can be anytime we realize we are not moving in the right direction. It can be anytime we don’t like the way we are and we see how we can be different. Just don’t forget the big new beginning that lasts a lifetime. It is our journey in faith to a destination about which we have only faint knowledge. Only God knows. All changes and adjustments of what we think, say, and do are to be made with deference to that larger purpose and call about which we must trust more than we know.

Paul said it best. “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12-14).

Just remember the big picture and make changes that are respectful of the big picture. You can do that anytime—whenever you are ready.

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Adapted from The Abingdon Preaching Annual 2009, ©2008 Abingdon Press

The Abingdon Preaching Annual 2012 is available now from Ministry Matters.