The Mystery of Memory

REYNOLDS RAP
November 6, 2010


ROLLING OUT THE RAP

On this coming Thursday, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, those of us who live in Canada will once again wear our poppies and perhaps we will gather at a local monument. We will remember those who died in the wars of the past and present. We will do this, I trust, not to glorify war but to remember the horrors of war and to pray for a time when war shall be no more, when humanity will indeed “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sward against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2:4).

In Canada, we call it “Remembrance Day.”


THE MYSTERY OF MEMORY

Many years ago, James Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, was elected “Lord Rector” of the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland. The office was purely honourary. The only responsibility was the delivery of the Convocation Address. Associated with the address was a tradition of student heckling which made its delivery a real challenge for even the ablest of orators.

The day Barrie delivered the addres is remembered because, early in his introduction he uttered a sentence which caught the attention of his student audience who then listened intently until he was finished. His words were, “God gave us memory that we might have roses in December.”

“Roses in December” – memory, the human capacity to recall, to call past events into the present, the memory of the summer garden almost as real as the real thing. Have you thought of what a marvelous thing it is, memory? The great Augustine of Hippo, in his Confessions, claimed it was the capacity which made us distinct from other animals, this ability to stand outside of time. We have the ability to be conscious of ourselves living within the flow of time so that we are therefore not simply creatures living in time but are able to transcend time, and so also to transcend our selves. I possess the capacity to be an object of my own regard.

To quote my favourite theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr,

As a creature who is involved in flux (in the flow of time) but who is also conscious of the fact that he (sic) is so involved, he cannot be totally involved. A spirit who can set time, nature, the world into juxtaposition to himself and inquire after the meaning of these things, proves that in some sense he stands outside of and beyond them (Human Nature, p. 133).

As a result, we human beings can never be only creatures of time. We have intimations of the eternal, that which is beyond time. We can never be completely satisfied with a philosophy of “eat, drink and be merry” for we know that “tomorrow we die” (note Luke 12:16-21). We seek the eternal, for “God has placed eternity in our hearts” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

No doubt this is the reason the Bible lays so much stress upon remembering. Look up the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy. Again and again – “You shall remember.” Remembering is central to Judaism. The Passover remembers the deliverance of the Hebrew people from slavery. The “festival of the booths,” when devote Jews, in or about their homes, build rough temporary shelters, reminds the people of Israel of the time they spent in the wilderness, a time to recall, to call into the present, an event from the past. The intimation is that in the act of remembering, the past again becomes alive, real, a reality of our present consciousness.

And in Christian tradition, when we share together the Lord’s supper, Holy Communion or the Eucharist, it is not just to remind ourselves of an ancient event, but in the breaking of bread and sharing of the cup, Jesus Christ is in fact really present. “This do in remembrance of Me,” He said, “for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim my love until I come again” (I Corinthians 11:23f.). It is as though time is somehow caught up into eternity, and events of the past are no longer dead and buried, but living and vital, and the past becomes very, very real.

Isn’t this one reason why people attend their place of worship week after week? That place has a kind of sacredness, it is crowded with memories. You can remember so many things you might have thought were dead and gone – the baptism of your child, or your marriage, or the funeral of someone you loved. It is the place, perhaps more than any other place, where you think your long, long thoughts, where you may be most conscious of God’s presence, most conscious of the awesome mystery of life and eternity, where we have the courage to ask and face the great eternal questions of our existence.

On November 11th, it is fitting that we should remember.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them. (Laurence Binyon)


AFTER WORDS

This is a good tme to give credit to the editor of the Rap, my wife, Brenda. I produce and publish, but Brenda is the one whose sharp eye for detail spots the typos and grammatical snafues. She also does a good job of keeping it to a reasonable length, and her good judgment has saved me from many a foolish notion. We celebrate forty-eight years of marriage on November 10th, the day before November 11th.

For personal reasons, there will no Rap for the next two weeks. Yes, I know I said I would send it regularly every Saturday, and for one who is consistently inconsistent, I think I have done pretty well. God willing, the Rap will be back November 27, the day before the first Sunday of Advent.


LAST GASP

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a famous preacher about the beginning of the twentieth century. He was training a class of student preachers to preach “on the spot,” to deliver a sermon immediately on a text he gave them. One student, a short guy, was given the story of Zachaeus (Luke 19:1-10); a passage some of you would have heard read and perhaps preached last Sunday.

In this supposedly true story, the student got up to the pulpit and said, “Zachaeus was a short man. So am I. Zachaeus was up a tree. So am I. Zachaeus made haste and came down. So do I.”

It is not recorded what Spurgeon said.


Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God.

It’s a Rap. Grace and peace. Alan