University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

MEMORY, GRATITUDE, MINISTRY

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

A Communion Meditation by Robert E. Dunham

University Presbyterian Church

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

All Saints’ Sunday        November 4, 2007

            My grandmother was a no-nonsense woman who grew up on a Missouri farm.  She lived her life by aphorisms, little gems of wisdom she had gleaned from here and there.  “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” she borrowed from John Wesley.  “A penny saved is a penny earned,” she picked up, of course, from Benjamin Franklin. From ol’ Poor Richard himself she also garnered her favorite bedtime advice for her grandsons, “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” With my family living in what we called simplicity, and what the sociologists called poverty, that last bit of advice held particular promise for me.  As my brother and I grew older and became a bit more independent, she would send us off on whatever journey – whether it was to school in the morning, or a date in the evening – with another piece of aphoristic advice, “Remember who and whose you are.”  They are words I passed on to my own children; I know they weren’t original with my grandmother.  Many of us have received such counsel. 

            The Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor remembers struggling with what to do with her life when she was younger… remembers one night when, half asleep, she prayed to God to tell her as plainly as possible what she was supposed to do. To her surprise, she actually heard an answer.

            “Anything that pleases you.”… 

“What?” I said, waking up. “What kind of answer is that?”

“Do anything that pleases you,” the voice in my head said again, “and belong to me.”

That simplified things considerably. I could pump gas in Idaho or dig latrines in Pago Pago, as far as God was concerned, as long as I remembered [who and] whose I was.[1]

“Remember who and whose you are.” As I said, many of us have received such counsel. But this week I think I came across the origin of the words: “Remember who and whose you are.”

            I believe now that they come from the twenty-sixth chapter of Deuteronomy.  They’re not the precise words, mind you, but the sum and substance of them are here.  Moses has just finished laying out the code of laws that will govern the Hebrew people in the new land that God is giving them, and he concludes it all with this one word of ritual instruction.  He lays out for them an order of worship and says, in effect, “Remember who and whose you are.”

When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance… and when you settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground which you harvest from the land… put it in a basket and take it to the priest and say, “Today I declare to the Lord that I have come into the land that the Lord promised us.”  And when the priest takes the basket, you shall say, “A homeless Aramean was my father; he went down in Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number”… and so on.

The homeless Aramean was their ancestor Jacob, and the story they were to recount in this sacred offering was the story of God’s dealings with Jacob and his offspring through famine and survival, through oppression and escape, through wilderness wandering and coming into the land. This little summation is the first recorded creed in Scripture. Moses calls the people to recite it over and over again, every time they bring their first fruits, as a ritual for remembering who and whose they are.  That memory, he knows, will kindle their gratitude for all God has done for them, and will prompt their willingness to share the first and best fruits of the land, regardless of the shape or size of the harvest.

            The whole Deuteronomic law closes with this provision of a liturgy for the people to express their gratitude for God’s “inexpressible gift.”  The offering of first fruits served as a pattern for Israel’s response of gratitude for God’s persistent way in the world.  In this statute, a people who had experienced that way firsthand were called to remember it and demonstrate their thanks.  Their memory was not a memory of how God had made it easy for them; the way of God’s guidance had included suffering, powerful deliverance, blessing and providential care.[2]  Through it all God had brought them here. And so, in a most profound and fundamental way Moses sets forth forever the purpose of the offerings people bring out of their labors, including the pledges and commitments we brought last Sunday and the tithes and offerings we will bring this morning.  We give out of gratitude, and our gratitude is forged by our memory of God’s goodness to us.

            Look back over the story of which you are a part, Moses says.  Remember the story.  Rehearse the story.  You will see that the story is one of difficult beginnings leading to present fulfillment.  It is a story that swings back and forth between hope and hopelessness. But look closely; it is not an account of a people overcoming great odds by sheer force of will and courage, thus triumphing over all obstacles to achieve a happy life.  No, this is not a story of sheer will, but of sheer grace.[3]  Remember the whole story, Moses reminds them.  It’s the reason behind bringing the first fruits.  Because once you find your memory, it will yield gratitude… and in that gratitude you will find your purpose, your ministry, which is faithful stewardship of the gifts God has given you. 

Remembering their story gives the people an identity… and shapes their character.  More than that, as the story is remembered and retold, subsequent generations will learn to make it part of their own memories, and a community of gratitude will be formed and reformed.  When there is no memory, there is no identity.[4]  If there is no memory, then it is easy to become too rooted in the moment. When the faith community becomes too attached to the surrounding culture and circumstances of life and allows memory to fade, it begins to believe that its life depends upon its circumstances rather than upon the grace of God.  Then, along with memory, gratitude recedes into the background, and there is no strength or motivation for [ministry].[5]  Properly understood, the act of memory stirs the response of gratitude, which, in turn, provides the foundation for all our mission and ministry. 

            Memory is not always a joyful act, but it is always important.  In May of 1992, in the city of Sarajevo, during a time of war and violence that destroyed much of that beautiful city, a mortar shell exploded in a public square.  Such artillery explosions were commonplace at the time, but that day the blast took the lives of twenty-two people who were waiting in line for food.  The next day, at the exact same time, a young man, a cellist with the Sarajevo symphony came to the place where the mortar round had exploded, set up his chair, tuned his instrument, and began to play Tomaso Albinoni’s Adagio [Tom Brown plays a few measures on the organ]. The cellist returned each day to play the same piece for twenty-two days, once for each of the twenty-two persons who had died.  It was, in a sense, a liturgical act, an act of consecration and remembrance, so that the dead would not be forgotten.[6]  In their memory, a new resolve emerged to live beyond the violence.

            Today, during the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving, Anna will read aloud the names of those church members who have died during the last twelve months; you will then have the opportunity to name aloud your own dear ones who have died.  In calling their names, we will bring them to mind, reconnecting us with their story within God’s story.  On All Saints’ Sunday, we gratefully remember those who have helped us remember whence we’ve come, and who and whose we are. In a parallel way, every time we celebrate the sacrament, we engage in an act of remembering God’s history of redemption.  In words not unlike those Moses gave to the Hebrew people, the liturgist recounts the saving acts of God, calls to our memories the redemptive grace of God’s work in human history, and almost always concludes with words like these, “Remembering all Your mighty and merciful acts, we now take this bread and this wine from the gifts you have given us, and celebrate with joy the redemption won for us in Jesus Christ. Accept this, our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving….”  Remembering prompts gratitude, which prompts our ministry of sacrificial stewardship.

In 1983 I joined a group of 21 other Presbyterian ministers from around the country who were asked to visit Presbyterian mission sites across the continent of Africa and to report on our findings.  As a side part of that trip, three of us from the Atlanta area also made arrangements to visit some resettlement villages in Ghana, villages to which our presbytery had sent fishing and farm and sewing supplies to help in their economic redevelopment.  Wherever we went we were received as benefactors and honored guests.  Songs were sung in our honor, prayers of gratitude were spoken in thanksgiving for our coming; goats were slaughtered and prepared for us. Everywhere we were given generous gifts in appreciation for our assistance, assistance which truthfully had cost us very little.

            The extravagance of the gifts was far out of proportion to the value of what we had sent to these people.  Frankly, I was a bit embarrassed by it all. In one village we were presented with a goat, half a dozen chickens, assorted fruits and vegetables -- all of which amounted to a deeply sacrificial portion of the village's economic assets.  Aside from the question of how I was going to share the back of the Land Rover with the livestock on the trip back to the city where we were staying, the gifts were just too much. So I protested that the villagers needed to keep these things, because they had so little.

            But a gracious Ghanaian woman, far wiser than I, set me straight.  She acknowledged the sacrifice, but explained, "Everything we have is a gift of God.  If we cannot learn to give from the little we have now, how will we ever learn to give when, by the grace of God, we have more?"  It dawned on me then: they weren’t giving gifts to us; they were presenting their first fruits to God; we were merely the vehicles of their expressions of gratitude.  I also realized that when it comes to first fruits, no gift is too extravagant… not by comparison to the extravagance of God… not when we truly remember whence we’ve come… and who and whose we are.