LiMember - Remembering & Relationship

Children’s Sermon

Kairos Picture? What we remember best are the people?

Scripture

1 Corinthians 11:2 - I praise you because you remember my instructions, and you keep the traditions as I delivered them to you.

Engage

I’m reminded almost every day that as we age, we miss out on new trends and fashions, and the rapid moving of the culture. Melanie and I are both at the point where we can watch the Grammy’s, or the Emmies, what have you, and not know the majority of the people winning awards. Really, I’m ok with that. I had a funny happen a few months ago, or at least I found it funny. One of our youth was wearing a concert t-shirt of a band…a band I followed intensely in my high school days. I commented something to the effect of, “Oh, wow, I remember that tour. Have you listened to the album? Did your dad go to the concert or something?” I got this look. A look to the effect of, what the heck are you talking about, it’s just a shirt. What I didn’t realize is that the wearing of concert t-shirts, or band t-shirts by youth these days is just a fashion thing. They may wear a t-shirt and not have even the first clue about who the band is, what their music is, etc.

Well, whether they know it or not, they’re wearing history. The Victory tour by Michael Jackson and his brothers, probably the biggest concert event in my upbringing, happened. Some kid today might wear a t-shirt and not even have a clue what a feeding frenzy it was. This series is about how we remember things. The command to remember is all over Scripture. Along with Don’t Be Afraid, it’s quite likely the most abundant command in Scripture, beginning with Genesis 8 - the command to remember the rainbow as a sign of God’s promise to humanity. Another one of the instances is found in our NT Scripture today…Paul praising those who’ve remembered his instructions.

I found this picture (SHOW PICTURE) of the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City. This is a WW1 Memorial. It’s been redone and, as I hear it, is fantastic. The next time I have any quality time in KC, I intend to go. But I don’t think I could’ve told you anything about the Liberty Memorial even through high school. I drove by it, only about 10 miles from my house), countless times and didn’t know what it was. Here is this rather fantastic memorial to a monumental event in our nations history…and I didn’t have a clue. You also see in this picture a tree. And that is true to life. Here is this memorial and yet life goes on. Trees grow leaves, they lose them, seasons change, the sun rises and sets, people are born and die, and very few of them really even notice the memorial or countless others like it covering a multitude of history.

Today, I’ll be introducing this series in a way…covering some basics. In the following weeks I’ll be framing the concept of remembering using the institutions of family, nation, and church.

When I first came to St. Luke, I preached a series about how we should be proud to be Christians and about how Christianity has been, and continues to be, an overwhelmingly positive influence on the world. Christianity has had a massively positive impact, I’ll guarantee, on how people remember.

Encounter

We remember all kinds of things in all kinds of ways. For example, I don’t know if you’re like me, but when I think of the alphabet…what letters are where, I sing the song in my head…do you? Or, when I remember how to spell Mississippi, I say M I S S I S S I P P I with a cadence. These are silly examples of a universal truth. Memory isn’t just mental, it’s material. Another way of saying this…memory is embodied. I’ve said before that objects, music, pictures, and the like can be time machines BECAUSE they connect us to memories. Physical memories of events, people, and places. Let’s consider the Liberty Memorial, as an example. When I visit the Liberty Memorial, I learn about it, see pictures, see the models of the trenches, etc. In some ways, I can imagine being there, but I can’t truly remember it. Now, if we still had WW1 Veterans living, and one of them visited the memorial…or, even better, the ground where they traveled and fought, they would much more perfectly REMEMBER WW1. I might better learn, or remember, about WW1 if I didn’t just visit the memorial but actually went to France, or Germany, and saw the memorials on the ground where the battles happened.

Remembering, friends, is best done in RELATIONSHIP. Relationship with land, with country, with church, and best with other humans. This comes through in our Scripture today from Paul to the Corinthians…they learned, they remember, through relationship with Paul. I think this truth is behind a disturbing trend I’ve mentioned numerous times before. Our younger generations, probably one to two generations after me and beyond, are information soaked but intimacy starved. I heard another person say they suffer from an epidemic of envy due to all the glossed over things they see on social media. Technology…social media, and the like, are a poor substitute for true communities. Facebook and other platforms like it have tried to fill this gap…you may know they even have a memories interface…and remind you of memories on a daily basis. But it’s a poor substitute for true community. Our younger people are suffering because they NEED communities of memory to sustain them.

Remembering is best done in relationship…interactive relationship…best between human beings.

As Christians, we also know beyond any shadow of a doubt that memory is eternal. Well, most memory. What do I mean? We know that death is absolutely not the end of our existence. And, we know that the memories we make here, even if forgotten a time during our earthly lives, will be with us in eternity. Some things, prayerfully, will be forgotten…what things? The things wiped clean by Jesus our Lord. I don’t think it’s unlikely, or untrue, to say that forgotten sins in eternity will essentially be unexisted…wiped…erased…deleted, gone. Perhaps residing in our character in some way, but forgotten. In other words, the lessons from them won’t be, but the memories themselves will be. Yet, in this life, it’s our command to remember…particularly our relationship with God, Christ, and the Spirit. They are eternal and so is our relationship with them. Memory, in most cases, is immortal. We have the Bible, yes, that is a static record of events gone by…but those events live on in their impact and those events, and what has happened since, is happening now, and will happen in the future, are recorded in heaven and live on. Even if the Liberty Memorial, or Lincoln Memorial eventually crumble and turn to topsoil, the memory of those events lives on in eternity.

Remembering is best done in relationship!

Empower

I think of my dad as an example of all this. How is my dad remembered? How do I and others remember him. Naturally, each persons memory of him is unique. I remember things my brother and mom don’t remember and vice-versa. But my memory of dad seems to be organized around some themes…themes that are, mainly, places. They are embodied. Memories of riding in the boat at the lake with him…fishing with him. Memories of him laughing about and loving on our duck, Daphne. Memories of playing catch with him in the back yard or playing tennis or golf with him. As I think of those things, images come up…Images of him, and images of places. Sometimes, images of music playing or sounds. I recall fishing with him once at Lake Quivira Country Club on a weekday evening. In my minds eye I can see it…and can remember listening to Denny Matthews narrating a Royals game on the radio. Others would remember him similarly…they’d think of him at Hallmark Cards, walking the halls. Or at the lake, or wearing tennis shoes with dress socks and a white t-shirt while fishing at the country club…most country club types probably don’t remember that fondly....one of my friends remembered his voice most profoundly…the deep sound it made as he communed with them.

Memory is a funny thing, but it’s an important thing. Clearly, it’s important to God…not as a static thing in the past but as a living thing…A living thing we feed and nourish throughout our lives, most effectively in relationship.

We shared the testimony of James Ward last week. James did an IMPORTANT thing when he gave that testimony. Not as much to us as to his family, but important to us nevertheless. He gave a clear, simple example of how we can actively remember things. He put effort into it, he thought about it, he did his best to lift lessons from his life.

We’ll get into the church later on, friends, but the church matters immensely in all this. Attending church matters. Outside of our families, and in some ways even superseding our families, it is the place we are, or should be, most committed to for our lives…that can help us REMEMBER in community. And, it’s the most directly tied to eternity…even more than our families…we focus as much as possible on eternal things here and how they impact temporal things...

Remembering is best done in relationship AND with Jesus as active Lord and savior...

Pray