The Two Faces of Faith: Remembering and Anticipating

 

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.

 In the present reflection we consider the face that looks back and remembers.

 Things That Weren’t There Anymore 

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.

 For example, in 1902 Philadelphia-based restaurateurs Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart opened their first Automat named Horn and Hardart. They had already established, in 1888, a small café of the same name that sold cheap coffee and quick meals. Theirs was the first Automat in the country.  In my day, it was not there anymore.

 American Bandstand premiered locally in late March 1950 as Bandstand on Philadelphia television station WFIL, channel 6.   The show went off the air in 1989.  In my day, it was not there anymore.

 Week by week, Things That Aren’t There Anymore catalogued buildings, parks, venues, cultural treasures, and restaurants that were gone.  As I watched, I felt nostalgic for times and places and a city that I, myself, had never experienced.

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.

 Remembering is part of our faith. The Hebrews were told repeatedly to remember, 15 times in Deuteronomy alone.  In Hebrew faith to remember is to believe; to forget is unbelief.  Amnesia is a form of atheism in the Hebrew Scriptures.

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. 

 This commands ends with the words: “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and follow carefully these decrees.”  As the sons and daughters of ex-slaves, people who in their day were excluded and marginalized, the present generation is to invite the excluded and marginalized into their homes and lives.   Remembering brings with it responsibility.

 Faithful Remembering is not the Same as Nostalgia

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.

 Nostalgia discourages and disheartens us.  It diminishes our energy to stake out a life in the present and clouds our vision for what is possible in the future.

 We should remember how God has faithfully sustained and nurtured our congregations.  We should give thanks for the courage and sacrifices of our ancestors in the faith.  In remembering how they wrote their chapter of God’s story, we realize that we too are now writing our chapter of that same story.  This is quite different from wanting to return to former days and write on pages long past.  We write our portion of the story  in the present tense. 

 The Hebrews Sometimes Got Stuck in Nostalgia

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.

 Isaiah does tell these exiles to remember God’s faithfulness.  In 44:21-22, the prophet writes:

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. 

 No Encores

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