Part 1:
Remembering
Two Faces
The god Janus of ancient Roman myth was a god
of two faces. One face was turned back looking
to the past, and the other was turned forward looking to the future. The two
faces of Christian faith are like that.
One face looks back, remembering God’s faithfulness. The other face looks forward, anticipating
the fulfillment of God’s promises.
When I lived in Philadelphia I would watch a
television show on Saturdays entitled Things
That Aren’t There Anymore. Each week
the program would showcase some thing or place that had influenced the city, and
sometimes the nation, in profound ways.
These were things and places that were not there anymore.
Remembering as Faith
Remembering the accomplishments, struggles,
and courage of those faithful believers who came before us encourages us in the
present. We see our passing and precious
days as an opportunity to write our part of God’s story. We ask what worthy things are we doing with
our allotment of time.
In the Bible, remembering shapes the way we
live in the present. In Deuteronomy
16:9-12, the people are told to celebrate the “Feast of Weeks” and to include
their sons and daughters, their servants, and Levites. The list of invitees continues on to include
aliens, orphans, and widows. You can
almost see the peoples’ eyebrows rising as slaves, immigrants, and unrelated orphans and
widows are included in the guest list.
Nostalgia is a longing for the past and
wanting it back. We remember a time we
associate with good feelings and want to turn back the clock and live there again. Or perhaps we want to return to a halcyon past
in which we, ourselves, did not participate.
This is what I did as I watched Things
That Aren’t There Anymore. I longed
for a city and a way of life that I had heard of but had never experienced
myself.
The Hebrews sometimes got stuck in a nostalgic
longing for the past. In Psalm 137, the
exiles in Babylon sit and weep as they remember Zion. They wonder “how can we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?” They cannot see the
opportunities in the present because they are so captured by things that aren’t
there anymore.
Remember these things, O Jacob,
and Israel, for you are my servant;
I formed you, you are my
servant;
O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.
I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud,
and your sins like mist;
return to me, for I have redeemed
you.
In Chapter 63:7-9 the writer recounts all the great acts of the Lord. Remembering makes the Hebrews brave and hopeful.
Yet the prophet also admonishes these same
exiles to leave behind a type of nostalgia that blinds them to what God is doing
among them in the present. He encourages a type of forgetting that liberates them from longing for the past and
opens them up to what God is doing in the present day.
Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the
wilderness
and rivers in the desert. (43:18-19)
Longing for things that aren’t there anymore
saps their courage and dims their vision.
Isaiah wants his readers to remember what God has done so that they
might find courage in their day to embrace the new things God is doing.
In short, God does not do encores. God does not give us the old things back or do the prior thing again. God does fresh things. No matter how long we stand and clap for an encore, God does not give us back things that aren’t there anymore. God is initiating a new chapter in the grand story of redemption and is calling us to write our part of that story with faithfulness and hope.
Jim Kelsey
Executive Minister—American Baptist Churches of New York State
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