January 24, 2016 | 8:00 a.m.

Remembering

Judith L. Watt
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Nehemiah 8:1–3, 5–6, 8–10
Luke 4:14–21
Psalm 19

We will find that when we look at the life of the Bible, and the life of the world in which it is to be found, we discover that the heart of its public dimension, and indeed the source of its dynamism, is the principle of inclusion by which all of the exclusive divisions of this world are transcended and transformed.

Peter Gomes
The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

I would guess that all of you have had the experience of returning to some significant place from your past and finding that place so different from your memory of it. You return to your high school of long ago and are astounded by how small the hallways seem. Or you gain entrance into a house you grew up in and are shocked by how your memory of your bedroom is so different from what you actually find.

The people who had gathered around Ezra and Nehemiah to hear the reading of Torah were those who had come back to a place they had once loved. They had come back from a long, long period of exile to their beloved Jerusalem. Jerusalem once housed their glorious temple and way of life, their shared faith. They were community when they lived in Jerusalem. They had missed that place. Now they were back home. But now nothing was as they had remembered it. The glorious temple had been destroyed, so they built a new one. But the new one couldn’t compare to the one they had remembered. Everything was different. Too much had changed. There was a sense of hopelessness and disorientation. Anxiety and fear, as is always true, took advantage of that hopelessness and disorientation and crept in.

In many ways, I think we are living in a time when we are like those people who have been exiled. We keep trying to return to what once was. We hear political candidates capitalizing on that desire of ours. But the world that once existed doesn’t exist any longer, and so there are bouts of hopelessness and disorientation, and we fight in so many ways to keep fear and anxiety from taking up too much room. Maybe we stop reading the news. Or we overindulge in things that make us feel better. Or we spend a lot of time blaming and accusing. Or we simply become depressed and sad. Sometimes it feels as though we don’t have much to hold onto or that there’s nothing we can do to change anything. And so we keep trying to return to what no longer exists.

The verses from Nehemiah describe a significant event in the life of this disoriented, disappointed community. They describe the public reading and proclamation of the Torah—the law, the scripture, the text. On that day, in front of a distressed and splintered people, people who had been gone from this place for such a long time, Ezra climbed up on a platform in the midst of thousands and read Torah from early morning to midday. When he opened the book, everyone stood up. The reading continued for hours, with interpretation we’re told, so that the people gathered could understand. And the people wept at the words. Imagine that scene. Thousands of people gathered. Ezra climbs up on a platform and opens the scroll. Everyone stands. They hear the reading for several hours, and there is interpretation, and at times they weep.

This act of the public proclamation of the story that had been this people’s story was what had been so sorely needed. These people were hungering to remember from whence they came so that they could be reconstituted into a community, grounded again in their common story, and fueled with new passion and vigor for their future. They needed to be reminded whose they were. They needed to be reminded of the ups and downs of their ancestors of faith. Their tears? Maybe their tears were the result of the realization of just how far they had wandered and had lost their way while they had been in exile. Or maybe their tears were the result of the awe they felt over this great gift of Torah that had been given to them and about which they had forgotten. Perhaps they remembered how much they had once cherished this Word. Ezra’s public proclamation of scripture to a people who had been exiled for so long was an effort to reconstitute them, to call them again into a community with purpose and meaning.

The Reverend David Jones, a Methodist pastor in Decatur, Georgia, preached a sermon on this text about the power of remembering like this. He said,

Every year at our family reunion Uncle Bevel would open his dog-eared copy of The L.B. Jones Family History and read us a story. He read stories that some of us had never heard and others of us had neglected or forgotten—stories about where our ancestors came from, why they settled in Georgia, what they believed, and how they lived because of what they believed. Uncle Bevel read those stories to us for thirty years. They helped shape our character and form our family values. (David Jones, Senior Pastor, Decatur First United Methodist Church, Decatur, Georgia, “Everything Depends on Remembering,” 24 January 2010)

Isn’t this what we do each and every week? We come back to this place, out of our weeks filled with all kinds of news and challenges, doubts and fears, preoccupations and demands, and we hear again this public proclamation of scripture, the story of who we are and whose we are. We might not understand all of what scripture is about, but there’s an attempt to interpret, through the sermon and through the music throughout the service. And somehow, in the mystery of faith, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are reconstituted and formed again. At least I hope we are. At least I hope some of you feel that. Formed again so that we can go back out into our worlds of jobs and worry and activities and kids and care-giving demands and competition—refueled, even if only a tiny bit. Refueled because we’ve come together and remembered our story—our collective community story—and we take it with us, if only for a few short days until we become disoriented again.

You might be thinking to yourself how little you know of scripture and how seldom you actually rely on it. But can you imagine what your life would be if you had no benefit of the concepts of this text in your life? You might not know scripture well, but what if you had no exposure to the stories, the stories of miracles, the pronouncement of inclusion for those on the margins, the pronouncement of inclusion for you when even you are on the margins of life? I know, whether you realize it or not, that this Word has formed you and changed you and transformed you, little by little, and that it will continue to do so. The weekly activity of public reading and proclaiming keeps forming us, not only as individuals, but as community too. Look around. Notice who is here. You don’t all know each other, but all of you are gathered here to hear what the Word of God might be for you today. You’ll leave again, both as individuals and as a community of people, and you’ll use something of this morning for at least a few days, until you begin to forget the story.

In an interview with Krista Tippett, Dr. Mary Catherine Bateson, daughter of anthropologist Margaret Mead, an author and scholar in her own right, spoke of her weekly duty as reader in her Catholic church. Dr. Bateson’s parents weren’t particularly religious, but she has found that her church participation has surprised her and become very important. In the interview, she said,

First I just thought . . . I’m going to read well and loud enough and slow enough and do a good job. But what I’ve found over time is first of all, that the readings have a different meaning when they’re read from the lectern during Mass, when they’re read in the context of a community. . . . When I stand before the community, and I look at these people—my relationship with the people has changed, which I didn’t expect. I didn’t know that would happen.

Tippett asks her how she would explain this feeling. She answers,

The community comes together, and here are these words that have been read and reread and reinterpreted for 2,000 years. When you think about how many people on a given Sunday are trying to find something fresh to say about something that’s been read and preached on in hundreds of churches for thousands of years, I mean it boggles the mind. But they do (they find something fresh to say or to learn), because you are always meeting the ritual a little bit different from the way you were last week or yesterday or whenever. Confronting different things in your life. There’s a resonance between the tradition and the present that makes it fresh. I don’t know how better to put it. (On Being, NPR, 1 October 2015, www.onbeing.org)

We mainline Protestants are hesitant to even entertain the possibility that we are affected by scripture in such profound ways. We are not too articulate in speaking about how scripture affects us, partly because the fundamentalists and the literalists have taken that away from us. We don’t want to be one of them.

Robert McAfee Brown, in The Spirit of Protestantism, writes about scripture and our Protestant tradition regarding scripture. Again and again Brown affirms that scripture is a living word, a word that can’t be diminished, owned, ossified, or possessed. Brown writes, “Our whole approach must be based on a distinction between the Word of God and the words of scripture. The Word of God is none other than Jesus Christ, the word made flesh.” Scripture, sermon, and sacrament are called the Word of God only if they point beyond themselves and are vehicles, instruments, for us to meet the incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ.

These words are a vehicle for us. They hold the possibility of our meeting Christ and Christ meeting us. Luther described the distinction between the words of scripture and the Word of God another way: he said scripture is the “manger in which Christ lies.” Scripture is not the Christ, but it houses Christ.

The people stood when Ezra read from the scroll. Do you know why we stand during the Gloria Patri and before the second scripture is read? I often wonder if you think we are standing for the pastor as he or she enters the pulpit. We stand, like those Israelites stood when the scroll was opened, as a symbolic activity. We stand to acknowledge that in the hearing of scripture, Christ is in our midst. It’s like standing to greet Christ.

One of our deacons told me about an experience she had after our pastor, Shannon Kershner, preached a few weeks ago on the text about Jesus’ baptism. In that sermon, Shannon had suggested that we spend some time with that story of Jesus coming up out of the water and hearing the words, “You are my Son, the Beloved, and with you I am well pleased.” Our deacon decided to read the story once each day that week. She explained that she did that for about three days, read the story each day, and then on the third or fourth day, suddenly she heard the words in her head change from “You are my Son” to “You are my daughter and in you I am well-pleased.” She teared up when she told the story. She teared up because she had met Christ on that day in the words of scripture. Those words, that story, were the manger that held Christ—and she met him in that manger and he greeted her.

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like much goes on here in worship. We come distracted or discouraged. Sometimes we wonder what we’ve heard. But the public proclamation of scripture, this thing we do every week, is a gift given to community and it is a gift to be cherished. It reconstitutes us and refuels us so we can live for a few more days. Sometimes we meet Christ in these words or in this sacrament. Sometimes we are fortunate enough to realize it. Thanks be to God. Amen.