Memories, Memories, Memories
Sermon
Rejoicing In Life's 'Melissa Moments'
The Joys Of Faith And The Challenges Of Life
Reflections For Maundy Thursday
Memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives! If you are as old as I am, you probably remember where you were and what you were doing on December 7, 1941. On that day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I was in the living room that Sunday afternoon in my home in Griffin, Georgia. I was eleven years old. One of my parents picked up the phone and heard a voice telling someone to turn on the radio. We were all on party lines in those days. So we turned on the radio and heard the news about the attack.
That Sunday night we went to church with another family. As we were driving back from Bethel Baptist Church, which was out in the country, we saw a big red glow in the sky toward Griffin. Our momentary thought was that the Japanese had already bombed our own little hometown. But sanity returned soon, and we dismissed that rather far-fetched possibility. It turned out that the dressing rooms at the swimming pool had caught fire and burned. The next day I and other seventh graders of Orr's Grammar School gathered around a radio to hear President Roosevelt speak of the "day that will live in infamy." He asked Congress to declare war on Japan.
I remember also the day President Roosevelt died. We all asked, "Who is Harry Truman? How can he possibly take Roosevelt's place?" That afternoon my best friend Charlie Perkins walked about three miles from his house to mine to talk about it. We all went to prayer meeting that night.
I remember as well the day the troops landed on Normandy, the day the Germans surrendered, the days the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and when the Japanese surrendered. All these things were many years ago. Yet they live on in that treasury we call our memory. Memories, memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives.
It seems that most of the national events we remember in the '60s were bad. We remember where we were and what we were doing when President John Kennedy was assassinated, when Senator Robert Kennedy was shot, and when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed. When the last event occurred, my daughter Nancy was seven years old. We lived in Wilmington, Delaware. She had seen her mother and father crying that day when we heard that he had been killed. There were rumors of riots in the big cities. Nancy was confused about what it all meant. That night I went up with her to tell her a goodnight story. She said to me, "Daddy, why would anyone want to shoot Dr. King?" I shall never forget that question. Why indeed? Racism was a word and a reality Nancy didn't know about.
This was the little girl who had been in the car the night we saw Guess Who's Coming to Dinner at the drive-in. When the young white woman brought her black fiancé home, her mother's mouth dropped open when she first saw them. Nancy saw the mother's shock and did not understand. She said, "What's the matter?" That's how innocent Nancy was of racism. That's why she asked me, "Daddy, why would anyone want to shoot Dr. King?" I was at a loss for words. I tried to explain that some people didn't like him, thought he was a troublemaker. Some people even hated him. That's why someone shot him. Memories, memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives!
There was one good recollection from that decade. I would guess that many of you stayed up late that summer night in July 1969, when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon. What an exciting moment that was. For a little while it helped take our minds off Vietnam and all the trouble, confusion, and turmoil of those years. Memories, memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives!
Nothing is more essential to making us human than the power to bring to mind what happened once upon a time. The past lives on in our ability to recall those events that have made us who we are as individuals and as a people. If memory were lost, we would cease to be the persons we are. We would have no identity, no sense of where we belong in the scheme of things.
Nations have memories. Every year on the Fourth of July, we celebrate the birth of our independence. We recall those documents that say who we are as Americans. We use the occasion to remind ourselves once more where we came from, to ask if we have been true to the ideals of freedom, equality, and justice for all. We live by appropriating the past, reinterpreting its meaning for today, and creating our own new meanings in preparation for tomorrow. Without a past, we have no present identity and no direction for the future. Memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives!
Individuals and families have memories. What an interesting time we could have if just went around calling up those important occasions from times past. Parents remember the day each of their children was born. The night Paul, my oldest child, came into this world, Eloise had been scheduled to attend a shower given by her Sunday school class. Paul arrived two weeks earlier than expected. I stayed with Eloise until early evening. Then I left Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, for the shower. There I was, the only man present. When the time came, I began to open the gifts. One item was a mystery to me. I held it up and exclaimed over it. "How nice, how cute!" The problem was that I was holding it upside down. The women had a good laugh at my expense. Memories, memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives!
We recall those significant times of passage in particular -- births, graduations, new jobs, marriages, the serious illnesses, and the crises that turned out well and those that did not. We like to remember the good times. Eighteen years after he arrived in this world in Nashville, Tennessee, Paul was a senior in high school in Brighton High School in New York. He had applied to a dual degree program at Oberlin College and at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. It was April 15. He had not heard from his application. He called me at school to tell me that the mail had arrived. Nothing had come from Oberlin. I suggested that he call the college and inquire. "After all," I said, "they promised to let you know by April 15." A few minutes later the phone rang again. I picked it up to hear a very excited voice exclaim, "Dad, I was accepted into both." Good news for Paul and for the whole family that day. Memories, memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives!
We remember the not-so-happy times as well. In 1966-67 I was on sabbatical leave in Chicago. Nancy was in the first grade. One spring day Eloise was measuring Nancy for a new dress. "Stand up straight," her mother said. "I am standing up straight, Mommy," was the reply. That brought to our attention that Nancy had a curved spine. For the next dozen years scoliosis would be a familiar word in our family. Fortunately, we lived in Delaware near the Dupont Institute, a center of advanced research and treatment for scoliosis. We received a great deal of free care of the highest sort, made possible by large gifts from the Dupont family. For Nancy this meant first wearing an upper body cast all the time, then a Milwaukee brace for 23 hours a day. For a decade she spent her daily life encased in steel and leather. She was the object of attention and crude remarks by thoughtless kids. Eventually her spine was essentially straight. I shudder to think what her life might have been like before the advent of modern medicine and technology. Memories, memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives.
And we remember the dying too. On October 21, 1987, the mother of Paul, Nancy, and Melissa passed away at age 55. For years she had fought it with surgery, chemotherapy, and the best that doctors had to offer. Finally, the cancer got to her liver. Then it was just a matter of time. She spent her last months in the wonderful care of volunteers at Mt. Carmel Hospice in Rochester. Gradually the disease worked its evil. At 11:55 a.m., the nurse took away her stethoscope and stepped back from the bed. We knew the end had come mercifully to release her from her suffering. Memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives!
Religious communities also have memories. The house of Israel remembered above all else those days in Egypt under Pharaoh's bondage. They recalled the coming of Moses, the Exodus, the wandering in the wilderness, and the making of covenant with Yahweh, their God. It was these crucial events that constituted them as a people. They defined their identity, marked their destiny, and formed the common bond by which they were united to all other Jews.
We Christians have memories too. We come here this evening to recall the night on which Jesus was betrayed. Tomorrow we will remember the cross. On Sunday we will remember and celebrate the resurrection of Christ from the dead. These are the crucial events that define us as a community of Christian believers. We know who we are because of what we remember. So we gather here tonight to tell once again the old, old story of Jesus and his love, to confess that Jesus Christ is the church's one foundation, to recall the old rugged cross, to survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory died. We assemble to remember that on the night Jesus was betrayed, he told his disciples that whenever they reenacted that night of eating and drinking together, they were to eat the bread and drink the wine in remembrance of him. We gather tonight for that purpose. Memories, memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives!
Memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives! If you are as old as I am, you probably remember where you were and what you were doing on December 7, 1941. On that day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I was in the living room that Sunday afternoon in my home in Griffin, Georgia. I was eleven years old. One of my parents picked up the phone and heard a voice telling someone to turn on the radio. We were all on party lines in those days. So we turned on the radio and heard the news about the attack.
That Sunday night we went to church with another family. As we were driving back from Bethel Baptist Church, which was out in the country, we saw a big red glow in the sky toward Griffin. Our momentary thought was that the Japanese had already bombed our own little hometown. But sanity returned soon, and we dismissed that rather far-fetched possibility. It turned out that the dressing rooms at the swimming pool had caught fire and burned. The next day I and other seventh graders of Orr's Grammar School gathered around a radio to hear President Roosevelt speak of the "day that will live in infamy." He asked Congress to declare war on Japan.
I remember also the day President Roosevelt died. We all asked, "Who is Harry Truman? How can he possibly take Roosevelt's place?" That afternoon my best friend Charlie Perkins walked about three miles from his house to mine to talk about it. We all went to prayer meeting that night.
I remember as well the day the troops landed on Normandy, the day the Germans surrendered, the days the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and when the Japanese surrendered. All these things were many years ago. Yet they live on in that treasury we call our memory. Memories, memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives.
It seems that most of the national events we remember in the '60s were bad. We remember where we were and what we were doing when President John Kennedy was assassinated, when Senator Robert Kennedy was shot, and when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed. When the last event occurred, my daughter Nancy was seven years old. We lived in Wilmington, Delaware. She had seen her mother and father crying that day when we heard that he had been killed. There were rumors of riots in the big cities. Nancy was confused about what it all meant. That night I went up with her to tell her a goodnight story. She said to me, "Daddy, why would anyone want to shoot Dr. King?" I shall never forget that question. Why indeed? Racism was a word and a reality Nancy didn't know about.
This was the little girl who had been in the car the night we saw Guess Who's Coming to Dinner at the drive-in. When the young white woman brought her black fiancé home, her mother's mouth dropped open when she first saw them. Nancy saw the mother's shock and did not understand. She said, "What's the matter?" That's how innocent Nancy was of racism. That's why she asked me, "Daddy, why would anyone want to shoot Dr. King?" I was at a loss for words. I tried to explain that some people didn't like him, thought he was a troublemaker. Some people even hated him. That's why someone shot him. Memories, memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives!
There was one good recollection from that decade. I would guess that many of you stayed up late that summer night in July 1969, when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon. What an exciting moment that was. For a little while it helped take our minds off Vietnam and all the trouble, confusion, and turmoil of those years. Memories, memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives!
Nothing is more essential to making us human than the power to bring to mind what happened once upon a time. The past lives on in our ability to recall those events that have made us who we are as individuals and as a people. If memory were lost, we would cease to be the persons we are. We would have no identity, no sense of where we belong in the scheme of things.
Nations have memories. Every year on the Fourth of July, we celebrate the birth of our independence. We recall those documents that say who we are as Americans. We use the occasion to remind ourselves once more where we came from, to ask if we have been true to the ideals of freedom, equality, and justice for all. We live by appropriating the past, reinterpreting its meaning for today, and creating our own new meanings in preparation for tomorrow. Without a past, we have no present identity and no direction for the future. Memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives!
Individuals and families have memories. What an interesting time we could have if just went around calling up those important occasions from times past. Parents remember the day each of their children was born. The night Paul, my oldest child, came into this world, Eloise had been scheduled to attend a shower given by her Sunday school class. Paul arrived two weeks earlier than expected. I stayed with Eloise until early evening. Then I left Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, for the shower. There I was, the only man present. When the time came, I began to open the gifts. One item was a mystery to me. I held it up and exclaimed over it. "How nice, how cute!" The problem was that I was holding it upside down. The women had a good laugh at my expense. Memories, memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives!
We recall those significant times of passage in particular -- births, graduations, new jobs, marriages, the serious illnesses, and the crises that turned out well and those that did not. We like to remember the good times. Eighteen years after he arrived in this world in Nashville, Tennessee, Paul was a senior in high school in Brighton High School in New York. He had applied to a dual degree program at Oberlin College and at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. It was April 15. He had not heard from his application. He called me at school to tell me that the mail had arrived. Nothing had come from Oberlin. I suggested that he call the college and inquire. "After all," I said, "they promised to let you know by April 15." A few minutes later the phone rang again. I picked it up to hear a very excited voice exclaim, "Dad, I was accepted into both." Good news for Paul and for the whole family that day. Memories, memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives!
We remember the not-so-happy times as well. In 1966-67 I was on sabbatical leave in Chicago. Nancy was in the first grade. One spring day Eloise was measuring Nancy for a new dress. "Stand up straight," her mother said. "I am standing up straight, Mommy," was the reply. That brought to our attention that Nancy had a curved spine. For the next dozen years scoliosis would be a familiar word in our family. Fortunately, we lived in Delaware near the Dupont Institute, a center of advanced research and treatment for scoliosis. We received a great deal of free care of the highest sort, made possible by large gifts from the Dupont family. For Nancy this meant first wearing an upper body cast all the time, then a Milwaukee brace for 23 hours a day. For a decade she spent her daily life encased in steel and leather. She was the object of attention and crude remarks by thoughtless kids. Eventually her spine was essentially straight. I shudder to think what her life might have been like before the advent of modern medicine and technology. Memories, memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives.
And we remember the dying too. On October 21, 1987, the mother of Paul, Nancy, and Melissa passed away at age 55. For years she had fought it with surgery, chemotherapy, and the best that doctors had to offer. Finally, the cancer got to her liver. Then it was just a matter of time. She spent her last months in the wonderful care of volunteers at Mt. Carmel Hospice in Rochester. Gradually the disease worked its evil. At 11:55 a.m., the nurse took away her stethoscope and stepped back from the bed. We knew the end had come mercifully to release her from her suffering. Memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives!
Religious communities also have memories. The house of Israel remembered above all else those days in Egypt under Pharaoh's bondage. They recalled the coming of Moses, the Exodus, the wandering in the wilderness, and the making of covenant with Yahweh, their God. It was these crucial events that constituted them as a people. They defined their identity, marked their destiny, and formed the common bond by which they were united to all other Jews.
We Christians have memories too. We come here this evening to recall the night on which Jesus was betrayed. Tomorrow we will remember the cross. On Sunday we will remember and celebrate the resurrection of Christ from the dead. These are the crucial events that define us as a community of Christian believers. We know who we are because of what we remember. So we gather here tonight to tell once again the old, old story of Jesus and his love, to confess that Jesus Christ is the church's one foundation, to recall the old rugged cross, to survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory died. We assemble to remember that on the night Jesus was betrayed, he told his disciples that whenever they reenacted that night of eating and drinking together, they were to eat the bread and drink the wine in remembrance of him. We gather tonight for that purpose. Memories, memories, memories -- how important they are to our lives!
