Springwood Presbyterian Church: Whitsett, NC

The past two Sundays, we’ve heard passages from Hebrews 11 and 12, recalling Biblical people of faith, and remembering how God worked through them to fulfill God’s plan.  Memory shapes us.  It teaches us who we are in relation to God and to our faith ancestors.  Psalm 103 reminds us of God’s mighty acts on our behalf so we will remember to praise God.  As I read from the New Revised Standard Version of scripture, where the word “fear” appears, I will use the word “revere”, since the meaning of “the fear of the Lord” most often means “to honor and revere God, with trust and obedience.”

Psalm 103

Romans 8: 31-39                                                                                              8-22-10

Don’t Forget

One morning in 1994, Michelle Philpots woke up and remembered nothing about the previous day.  The same thing happened the next morning, and the next, and every day since.  A motorcycle accident, followed a few years later by a car crash, caused the traumatic brain injuries that led to the loss of her short-term memory.  On the bright side, she laughs at every joke she hears, even if she’s heard it a hundred times, because she doesn’t remember hearing it; and she can watch the same tv show time and again without being bored.  On the one hand, wouldn’t it be great to wake up to a brand-new day each morning, without all the baggage of our past?  On the other hand, she has to be convinced every day that the man in her bed is her husband.  When she leaves home alone, she uses GPS with her home address programmed in so she can find her way back.  She writes hundreds of notes to herself as reference points for what she does and the people she is supposed to know.   

Memory is vital to our day-to-day functioning: knowing what keys are for, and where we left them—when to take medication and why—how to drive and cook and perform ordinary tasks so we don’t have to relearn the same things over and over.  Without memory, the baby would die of neglect.  Without memory, we make the same mistakes time and again. 

Memory is vital, too, to our personal identity.  It helps us know ourselves in relation to other people, to our community, and to God.  Remembering our parents and how they raised us gives us a background for how we can be parents: how we want to raise our children, or, how not.  Remembering a friend who approached death with more curiosity than fear helps us consider how we might prepare to face our own death.  We remember our baptism and know we are God’s—and that God wants good for us.

Even our national identity comes from remembering.  “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”  Abraham Lincoln, standing on the battlefield at Gettysburg, called the nation to know who it is by remembering its origins in freedom, years before most of his audience was born.  He urges the people to bring memory into the present by living out the promises and ideals of that beginning. 

In the same way, as the psalmist reminds himself of God’s goodness to him and to the whole of creation, he knows who he is—God’s creation--because he can remember who God is and what God has done, for him and for God’s people Israel.  Do not forget all God’s benefits—who forgives all your iniquity, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

Are you surprised the psalmist begins with forgiveness?  He’s more grateful for God’s forgiveness than for his own life or his family or his possessions or his work.  In fact, he doesn’t mention any of these.  Without forgiveness, life is barren. 

But forgiveness heals us in spirit, and often even in body, since many physical illnesses result from, or are aggravated by, stress and unhappiness.  When we’re healed, body and soul, we’re able to put life’s problems in perspective, no matter how big they are, and to either manage them or manage our response to them.  Life is good again.  Life is fresh and new again.  Joy returns, and with it, our capacity to praise God for God’s mighty acts.  And the more we can remember God’s blessings and praise God for them, the more we’re being shaped into a joyful, loving people.

The psalm was likely written when Israel was exiled in Babylon, in despair, bereft of all that made them a nation: a king, a temple, a land.  Yet, the psalmist dips into the deep well of memory—not merely his personal memory, but also his historical memory of events and people long before his birth—and tells himself and the Jews in Babylon to remember all God’s benefits: to remember that, back in Moses’ day, Israel had no king, no temple, no land; and yet, their lives were good, because they had God.  In the bitter time of exile—their punishment for unfaithfulness--all they really need they already have: God’s steadfast love and mercy.  God is gracious, and willing to forgive: good news for any time, any people.

Good news, because, unlike us, God does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.  That sounds like good news—for us.  But we want God to behave according to our standards of justice, and to lay low those folks we disapprove of.  Yet, if we will remember our own sins, we will also know how blessed we are that our ways aren’t God’s ways.

For reasons known only to God, God chooses to limit God’s anger, and to extend God’s goodness endlessly—to limit judgment over sin, and to extend forgiveness from everlasting to everlasting.   Or perhaps it isn’t so surprising when we consider that God’s very nature is love. 

Surely, God will judge each of us.  God doesn’t forgive us lightly.  As we remember the cross, and the suffering of Jesus, and the suffering of his Father God, we know we can never measure up to that sacrifice of love. 

But just as surely, God--who treats us like a loving father, a compassionate mother—will be merciful, and God’s mercy will outweigh God’s justifiable anger at our sin.  Our new Presbyterian catechism (Q. 81) reminds us that, “although God is merciful, God does not condone what God forgives.  In the death and resurrection of Christ, God judges what God abhors—everything hostile to love—by abolishing it at its very roots.  In this judgment, the unexpected occurs: good is brought out of evil, hope out of hopelessness, and life out of death.  God spares sinners and turns them from enemies into friends.   The uncompromising judgment of God is revealed in the suffering love of the cross.”

We are blessed to excess by God’s grace and mercy.  May we, with the psalmist, daily remind ourselves to bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.  Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits.