Sermon: "Never Forgotten"

The Rev. Bryn Smallwood-Garcia
Congregational Church of Brookfield (UCC)
May 25, 2008

Second Sunday after Pentecost

Never Forgotten

Isaiah 49:8-10, 14-16
Matthew 6:24-34

Prayer:   “May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts and minds be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.”

Words of remembrance are at the very heart of our Christian faith.  In our sacraments we remember Jesus’s baptism and his Last Supper, and we study ancient history each week as we read scripture and hear sermons.  We need to remember the saving acts of God, because we human beings can be so forgetful – except when something BAD happens. Somehow we have perfect recall of things that go wrong in life.

When I did oral history interviews with my father’s mother and her sisters, I was surprised at how few good things they remembered. They were born just before the turn of the last century and yet they couldn’t recall the day when World War I ended or when women got the right to vote.  But they DID remember quite well what sister got what for Christmas back in 1906!  Some of them were STILL mad about getting less than the others that year – the year their mom had died.  Most of us are truly gifted in remembering “the worst of times.” We have great talent for holding grudges and worrying. 

I come from a long line of great worriers.  My grandmother Lela was a huge worrier and so was my mom, her daughter.  They could see the threat of death or dismemberment in every sharpened pencil, in every stick on a path.  I was an adult before I heard from my mom the story that explained it all for me.  My grandmother had been 9 and outside playing with her younger sister, who was 4.  They were laughing and chasing each other through the front yard when her baby sister tripped on the front walk and fell and hit her head.  The next day she died. 

Think about it. Our worries are related to our life experiences.  What do you worry about?  Do you worry you’ll not have enough money or food to eat?  My in-laws’ pantry and freezer are always stuffed full, but I can understand why, because they went through some very hard times during the Great Depression.  Do you worry you’ll say the wrong thing and make a fool of yourself, or get blamed for something you didn’t do?  I bet you that happened to you once before.  The many “dangers, toils, and snares” of our lives can leave us bound with worry.  Injustices can leave us bound with bitterness.  But the word of the Lord has the power to set us free.

Jesus knew that.  Jesus was preaching to people who had a lot to worry about – poverty, political oppression, violence, racism, leprosy – not to mention the usual death and taxes.  The people of Israel were taxed ruthlessly under the Roman Empire – in some places the poor were taxed by 35 percent.  Like many of the less affluent in our country, who are losing their homes to soaring interest rates on variable rate loans, they were going bankrupt and losing their land in record numbers.  So Jesus knew times were hard and there was every reason to worry.  So what in the world was he talking about here in Matthew when he tells them not to worry?

There is something to be said about how, when you have absolutely nothing more to lose, that is when you are the most free from worry.  I remember talking one time to a member of my first church in California about her worries about finding the time organize all her pictures before she died.  She had been a professional photographer, so had been trying for years to find the time to sort through boxes and boxes of photos and put them in albums to give to her children and grandchildren.  But like many of us with big projects, she never could quite get around to it.  I remember one warm October Sunday standing with her outside on the lawn after church and looking up at the dry leaves whirling and some ominous wisps of smoke rising up over the hills.  By the end of that day, the Oakland Hills Firestorm had killed 25 people, injured 150, and had destroyed more than 3,000 homes, including 30 where our church members lived.  This photographer’s house had been one that had burned to the ground.  Now getting photos into albums was the LEAST of her worries. 

She came to church the next Sunday just very grateful to be alive, since some of her neighbors were not so lucky.  I’d never seen anyone look so unhappy in a new dress – she’d had bought new clothes since her whole wardrobe, along with everything else, had burned to ashes in the fire. So of course she was grieving the loss of life and her home, but also the destruction of her life’s work – those boxes of beautiful photographs.  All her family’s memories were gone forever.  But here’s the amazing thing: copies of those photos soon started arriving in the mail.  Over the next few weeks she was inundated with more memories than she knew what to do with.  Because not only had she taken hundreds of pictures of her kids as they were growing up, she had mailed off hundreds of those photos to family and friends.  She had shared with everyone she knew her most joyful memories and now they were returning to her.  “In a time of favor I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you,” God says in Isaiah. The Lord does provide.

The Jewish people also knew quite well the destruction of fire, as their beloved temple – built in the Golden Age of Solomon – had been destroyed when the Babylonians had captured Jerusalem and taken them off in chains to what is now Iraq.  They needed Isaiah to remind them of the miracles of salvation history – as they were struggling to hold on to their faith when times were at the worst for them, as they neared the end of their time in exile.  Before they were conquered, their nation’s leaders had placed their hope in their own military strength and aid from their allies to protect them.  But Isaiah knew that his people needed to remember that God was their greatest hope – their God who made them, who had delivered them from slavery in Egypt, would never forget them.

Sometimes the power and grace of God does seem to come rushing into our lives during the worst of times, when we feel as naked as the birds of the air or as fragile as dry grass.  The English mystic Juliana of Norwich had plenty of reasons to worry.  She lived in the late 1300s, during the Black Death, which killed some 75 million people.  Some preachers said plague was God’s punishment, but Juliana instead wrote a book of her visions of a loving God who consecrated every prayer that was spoken and every tear that was shed.   Her Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love is believed to be the first book by a woman ever published in English.  In it, Juliana wrote these words of faith that may seem more foolish than faithful to you, when you consider the terrible times in which they were written: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."  I had a favorite teacher in seminary, a Roman Catholic, who would smile and quote that line to me whenever he’d hear me complain about some stupid paper that was due or a church meeting that had gone on too long.  The day I came back to class after I lost my first baby in a miscarriage, and Michael took my hand in his and repeated those words to me, as a blessing:  "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." 

There are times in our lives when it’s nearly impossible to believe that – and those are the times when we MOST need to remember that to God, we are never forgotten.  Like the birds of the air who neither toil nor reap, like the lilies of the field who neither toil nor spin, somehow – mysteriously – we are cared for by the God who made us, who loves us with the ferocious passion of a mother for her newborn child. 

Jacob and I flew east to visit my dad the week he had to move my mom into an Alzheimers’ facility.  She had become so violent and uncooperative that he didn’t feel he could take care of her safely by himself at home anymore.  So that day we moved my poor mother, who hardly knew what was happening or where she was, into her new apartment in assisted living, I was a little worried about how Jacob would react when my parents’ pastor, Julie, came by to visit and started to lead us all in prayer.  He was 8 and would complain sometimes about having to say prayers at meals and bedtimes.  I was so grateful he went along with it all as we held hands together and Julie prayed for us.  Later on, as we were leaving, I thanked him for coming on the trip with me and for being so sweet to my mom and dad, and especially praying with us without complaint.  But he said, “But Mom, we needed to pray, didn’t we?  Mam-ma needed God back there, and so did we.”

There are times in each of our lives when we need to remember how fiercely God clings to us and remembers who we once were, especially when we have forgotten ourselves. In Isaiah’s time, when his people were saying, “The Lord has forgotten me,” the Lord’s prophet reminds them.  He says, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands…”  

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.