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"Remembering and Changing"
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
A Sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley
November 18, 2001
University Baptist Church
Minneapolis, MN
On Friday night, Kim and I attended a banquet at St. Anthony Main celebrating the 150th anniversary of the founding of First Congregational Church. Such a young church in comparison to ours. It reminded me of the stories I heard about UBC’s sesquicentennial celebration. Like ours, there were former pastors, reminiscences, music, story-telling and heartfelt celebration for who the congregation was, who it is and who it will be in the future. What an important thing it is to remember who we are. Not only are those who forget history doomed to repeat it, but people who forget history miss out on great stories. Get Adele to take you to the historical room up in 307 or just listen to her tell stories of this church. Come to think of it Bea, Doty and lots of others can tell the stories of this church with great precision and insight.
Just yesterday, we gathered here with Margaret Landry’s family to remember the life of Margaret’s mother, Dorothy. And amidst the music and the poetry and the tears, we heard reflections and stories of a long life which touched many people. Those stories help us to remember who we are. The reliving of them also reminds us of who we want to become.
Today’s scripture is from Moses’ final instructions to the people of Israel before they were to enter the promised land. This is Moses’ "I have seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord…"
During their 40 years in the wilderness, the people had to put their trust in God more than ever before. The chips were down a lot for the people back then. They were hungry. They were mad. And even in their despair they started wishing for the security of the fleshpots of Egypt. At least in Egypt there was bread. It was slavery, but at least they weren’t hungry. At one point the frustrated people of Israel said to Moses, "were there not enough graves in Egypt that you had to bring us all the way out here to die?"
The people of Israel had not only forgotten the oppression and difficulty of Egypt, but they had forgotten that God was the one who freed them. God was the one who had led them as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. And in their deepest despair, God provided manna from heaven to feed them.
Most scholars believe Deuteronomy was not written by Moses, but was written during King Josiah’s reign. It was a time of reform for Israel. It was a time of arrogance and wealth. It was a time when they worshipped idols and forgot who they were. Deuteronomy was "found" and lo and behold it held words from Moses which were apropos for the situation of change they were facing. "Remember" the old book said. Remember you were slaves once. Moses tells the people, "remember who you are. A wondering Aramean was your ancestor." In other words, you were once homeless too. You did not have it so good at one time. So when you reach the land of your inheritance, the promised land, the land flowing with milk and honey, you will not forget that it was God who led you.
God leads us out of slavery and oppression.
God grant us justice and hope where there was despair and death.
Without God, the moral fiber of the world ceases to exist.
God is not the one who grants you riches. God is the one who leads you out of slavery and grants you hope and justice.
Once you have your first harvest, you must not hoard all of it for yourselves. But you must give of the first fruits, 10 percent of the first fruits, the finest fruits, put them in a basket and bring it to the house of God.
Moses attached a ritual to this giving of the first fruits saying that you should take your baskets and say to the priest, " I declare this day to YHWH our God that I have come into the land which YWHW swore to our ancestors." Then the priest shall take the basket and lay it before the altar of God. And you shall thank God and rejoice. They did this at every harvest festival as a way of remembering and thanking God for not forsaking them. It was the first Thanksgiving meal.
That is what is important to remember as you change into the future. Remember from when you came. It’s a part of who you are.
That’s one of the challenges of thanksgiving, remembering as we change.
I heard the other night about a person asked about why he was in church. He said, "I’m not what I want be and I’m not what I’m going to be, but I sure ain’t what I used to be."
I mentioned in my weekly e-mail sent to members and friends of UBC that we need to certainly change. But we can only do that effectively if we remember. Looking back is not enough. Some of us are stuck in the past, reliving glories or tragedies of days gone by. Others are so focused on the future that they ignore the rich heritage and sacrifice that brought them to this place. We need to find ways to look forward as we are sustained by the lessons of the past. How we honestly integrate our lives is the mark of true Thanksgiving.
In my own family, Thanksgiving was a time for immediate family. Labor day was when we saw everyone from the extended family. We would all gather at the family farm outside of Cleveland, Ohio which has been in the family since 1909. It was bought by my great great grandfather to provide fresh air for his son suffering from tuberculosis. The brothers and sisters in my great grandfather’s generation owned it in kind, and saw the farm as a place where they could live out the ideals of family and support. It had spent some time as a working apple orchard. There were sheep and goats and horses. By the time I came of age, it was a summer place for family to gather. I worked summers gardening and doing minor carpentry repair and learning the family lore at the feet of my grand parents and great grandparents. They started two family businesses in the construction industry. They pulled themselves up from the bootstraps, endured the depression and stayed loyal to their family. I remember how proud I was to be a Donley. Donley’s construction helped build Jacobs Field in Cleveland as well as major parts of the Cleveland clinic.
But as I got older, I realized this was only part of the history. Another part was that the family, despite their own best intentions didn’t always take care of their own. Maybe they forgot the ideals of their youth. Bitter sibling rivalries mingled with business legalities made it impossible to work or live together. The companies moved in different directions, sometimes leaving family members in the lurch. My own father lost his job as a salesman in the family business because his father sold out his division. And he never told my father about it until he announcement to the whole company. I was in high school at the time, looking to go to college in a few years and wondering if we were going to be able to afford it. Thank God for financial aid and student loans. Many of my family took to alcohol to self-medicate from all of this.
On Labor Day, this family would get together and make nice-nice. Some would not speak with others. Others let bygones be bygones. I was kid and I loved playing with the distant cousins I would see each year. We didn’t have the time to fix all of that history, so we simply went through the motions year after year.
At Thanksgiving, we would gather at a table in one of our homes, only the closest relatives. My grandparents were there and so were a few sets of cousins. Sure we were thankful for the safety of the year, the successes, the people who had touched our lives, but under it all was a bit of this disease. As the adults medicated themselves, the kids played and sat at our own table. We all stuffed ourselves full of turkey and then either dozed off or played a game of football in the frost-covered yard. You could almost forget the hard parts. What was important was that we were together.
We always change. That’s a fact of life. We grow up, we move away. One event replaces another in the hierarchy of memory. Joys and traumas mingle together to form a new outlook on life.
On November 1st of this year, almost five years after my grandfather’s death, the farm was sold. When we went to Cleveland in the summer, I picked up a rocking chair from the farm—one in which my grandmother rocked me as a child. I return the favor by rocking her great-granddaughters in it. Feuding family members have received their share of the inheritance and the capital gains taxes on the old property. My father, who no longer self-medicates with alcohol, finally put closure on a piece of land that had been a second home for his entire life.
I know I am looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with my brother and his family. Something I have not done in over a decade. Each time we get together we not only remember how much we are different, but also we remember how much we are the same. We have similar senses of humor. We have similar sense of justice, although the focus of that justice is different. Sibling rivalries of our youth, though still present, no longer take center stage.
As my family gathers with my brother’s family at our home this thanksgiving, there will be another small table for the next generation, I hope to remember the ideals that brought us together in the first place, and how we have changed. I plan to look at my kids and his kids and see what we can do to make their future brighter and more hopeful. We’ll remember our family and probably the farm, each with our different perspective and integrate that into how we are to live our lives in the coming years.
So as you gather around those thanksgiving tables, what will you remember?
Will you remember past Thanksgiving meals where there was too much honesty, or not enough honesty?
Where too much holiday cheer brought out some uncomfortable truths, or shielded those same truths?
Will you remember the family and friends who have made you into the people you are?
Will you remember the person you are in spite of those at those tables?
Will you seek to become someone new, or at least receive new insight?
We start things off with lofty goals that sometimes we need to remember.
Remember we were once slaves. That is our heritage. We once had another power controlling our lives. But remembering that might allow us to change a bit about the future which we have and hold in our hands.
So I hope as we gather at home or at a restaurant or at the table of a friend or family member, that we will remember not only who we are, but who God longs for us to become. When we do that, then we integrate our lives in a meaningful way and find new ways we can commit to changing before the next gathering at the Thanksgiving table. That is what living a faithful and thankful life is all about.