The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for March 26, 2006

Texts: Numbers 21:4-9/Ephesians 2:1-10

Title: “But God Remembers”

              For fear of boring you I am reluctant to take you to a place we have often visited. [Of course, if fear of boring a congregation was ever really the issue few preachers would ever rise to speak.]

              The place I would take you is the Palestine desert where a people newly liberated from their oppressor through the mighty acts of God is finding the going difficult. So I ask you, what do folks do when they find the going difficult? If you know a little bit about the people to whom these comments refer, then you know what they did.  So, what did those Israelites do? Judging from your facial expressions I know that many of you are on to this.  They complained, didn’t they? 

              Mere weeks had past since the Israelites fled Egypt for the Promised Land. Be assured it was no picnic fighting the obstacles the desert presented; stifling day time heat, cold nights, thirst, and hunger. As the excitement surrounding their liberation waned, so too did the peoples’ enthusiasm for their journey. Egypt had been no garden spot by any means, but at least the people could taste a fresh melon now and then or enjoy a fresh fig.  Water was readily available. As the distance from Egypt grew, unpleasant memories of the sojourn in Egypt faded, even as their resolve to continue a rigorous journey faded.

              Moses was the fall guy.  There always has to be a fall guy. Hailed a hero for the leadership he offered in the first days of freedom, with the passage of time Moses became the object of complaint and ridicule, the people losing confidence in him, and by extension, losing confidence in God.

              It is with that background we read this small excerpt from our first lesson, the people demanding, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?  For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” A significant bill of particulars to lay at Moses’ feet, and that good man had absolutely no remedies to offer for their dissatisfaction.

              The people, of course, paid a harsh penalty for their forgetfulness.  It is doubtful the peoples’ memory would have been nearly as flawed had they known that their disobedience would earn them a visit from poisonous serpents.  Unfortunately, they did not enjoy such foreknowledge.

              Free from the chains that bound them, the people forgot the source of their freedom.  The Israelites repeatedly forgot who they were, and whose they were, this despite the extraordinary investment God made in them. We might go so as to say that forgetfulness became the recurring theme in their life under God. 

              The people forgot, but God remembers. The serpent-afflicted Israelites would have wished that God hadn’t remembered their disobedience so well. Yet the story didn’t end there, did it, for God remembered other things as well.  God remembered the covenants he made with his chosen, and so when the disobedient people recognized the error of their ways and sought forgiveness, God forgave them.

              If there is one theme that plays throughout God’s encounter with Israel as the Old Testament reports it, it is that the people forget, but God remembers. The theme plays out in many different circumstances and in many different venues, but is customarily initiated with Israel’s complaint as it was in this morning’s lesson, followed by a response from God in which the people are enjoined to remember the history in which they stand, and the God who maintains  sovereignty over that history.

              People forget---it’s what we do---and these detail-laden lives we live make the doing extraordinarily easy.  Compared with us the Israelites had it made. Let’s face it, they had but really three things to remember: they suffered. God heard their cry.  God delivered them. Not much to remember when compared to all the stuff that modern life drops in our laps.

                 In their defense, however, the point might be argued that the persistent hardships they faced in transit to the Promised Land may have substantially dimmed Israel’s  memories of God, yet even conceding that we must remember that those good people also had Moses to help keep their memories alive and fresh. Furthermore, when Moses died there was Joshua, and after Joshua, God anointed others to lead his chosen people.

                People forget, but God remembers. Cut from one cloth, ancient or modern we forget. Afflicted, the ancients forgot.  “Where is God,” they demanded.  “No food, and we have no water, better that we had remained in Egypt. How long must we suffer?” Overwhelmed, we forget.  Bills to pay, children to raise, parents who need our attention, retirement to think about, well, you get the picture.  Overwhelmed by the concerns of life, we forget.

                 Longstanding promises of God tend to be thrust aside when more immediate concerns are thrust upon us, it’s only human nature. But immediate concerns have a very short shelf life.  Today’s, concerns are superceded by tomorrow’s and tomorrow’s by the those of the day after. Yet the piece of eternity we occupy is too small to accommodate everything we would stuff in there. We can live out our lives never satisfied that we have met all of our obligations.  Jesus was definitely aware of that, counseling his followers, “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.  But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

                  It is a challenge of great proportions to set such priorities, for distractions abound. We forget so easily. Forgetfulness was rampant in Ephesus, and the Apostle Paul felt compelled to remind them of certain facts.  “Remember [he writes]at one time you Gentiles by birth, called ‘the uncircumcision’ by those who are called ‘the circumcision’-a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands---remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.  But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

                   People forget, but God remembers.  The Apostle Paul made a career of reminding people who they were in the eyes of God.  His reminders took on varied forms according to the context in which he found himself. Recall that in his first letter to the Corinthians from which we I quoted last week, Paul reminded those folks that their commitment to the Risen Christ was judged foolishness by the world’s wise, and for that fact they should not expect their words and works to be well received.

                  Instead of the very practical, pastoral instruction he shared with the Corinthians, his letter to Ephesus has a more pointedly theological emphasis. In the section I earlier read Paul is reminding his reader of the great life and death battle being wages for the human soul. “Remember,” he says, “you were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived.”  “All of us once lived among [the disobedient] in the passions of the flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.”

                “We were just like everyone else, sharing the preoccupations of everyone else, aligning our conduct around the prevailing moral standards of everyone else.  We were just like them, Paul writes, and we were dead.  But dead we did not remain, for God remembered us. He remembered his covenant promises made over generations.  He came to our rescue.  “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses--- even when we were dead through our trespasses---made us alive with Christ.” 

                  We were dead, but God remembered us.  Dead under Pharoah’s hand in Egypt.  God remembered us.  Dead, displaced from our homes and exiled by the Babylonians.  God remembered us.  Dead, having bought into what the world regards as wisdom.  God remembered us. Dead to the freedom we abused by sinning. God remembers us.

                   Chronically preoccupied with the many things that so insistently demand our attention, depressed, lonely, or bearing the burden of guilt, we forget who we are, and whose we are. But God remembers. Not only that, we are God’s preoccupation.  We are never absent from God’s mind.

                   In the midst of her exile in Babylon, Israel was heard to cry out, “The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.” Wait, not so fast, declared the prophet Isaiah, responding in God’s name, “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.” Never absent from God’s mind.

                  Struggling to find words to communicate the breadth of God’s investment in us, just as the prophets of God who served before him did, the Apostle Paul came up with this short summary statement, a statement that those who read the passage I read this morning are likely to overlook in favor of Paul’s celebrated statement about salvation by grace through faith. The statement, the concluding verse of our lesson, reads as follows: “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”

                “We are what [God] has made us,” and we were created in Christ Jesus, who makes us truly alive, to live as God would have us live. We may have our own plans, self-destructive plans that offend God, and we may forget who we are and whose we are. God, however, remembers, for we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works. God is no more likely to forget us than that woman nursing a new born child is likely to forget her child.

                In our pride and arrogance we forget that God remembers.  Invited into God’s covenant in baptism, that act signifying our rebirth from death to life, is God’s way of curing our forgetfulness. Our baptism reminds us that we are God’s creation.

                 Oh yes, people forget, but God remembers.  The other day my eyes happened to fasten on the cover of our church directory. That cover features a picture of our church taken on a sunny spring or summer day. The church looks glorious---grass, shrubbery, trees.  The current landscape up there is so barren the picture caught me up short.  It’s amazing how fast we can forget what was.

                   By this time my senses have been so numbed by the effects of the storm that it is difficult to retrieve a picture of what our church and Canal Boulevard looked like before the fateful day in August.  Each time I make my way up the boulevard to our Vicksburg house I have to pay particular attention to where I turn.  The landscape has dramatically changed, the storm, however, left a new reference point, in this case a house at Mouton and Canal Boulevard that was destroyed by the tornado that passed through the neighborhood after the storm.  Lakeview as it was is becoming a fading memory.  It’s amazing how fast we can forget.

                 Can you retrieve a good picture of what your life was before the storm?  I can’t either.  So many things have changed for you and me both personally and vocationally. It is difficult to hold a picture of how things were.  It’s just amazing how fast we can forget. Lakeview and Carrollton have been disfigured, and our memories have been   disfigured with them.

                 We forget, but God remembers, and we can rely upon God’s memory. Yet you and I know that the temptation to believe God has forgotten us is very strong when we consider all the things, including the good memories, we have lost. There is no easy way to make sense of what we have experienced in light of our faith. We want to focus on what has been taken away, a very human reaction.  But God uses opportunities like this worship service to remind us that history isn’t invented randomly on the fly.  No, we are not given to know where hurricanes and other tragic events of nature, or man, fit into God’s providence, but we are granted knowledge much more substantial: “We are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

                The disappointments of life, and life’s many preoccupations, tempt us to forget those simple facts, but God is not similarly impaired.  God remembers, and his memory has never failed, and will never fail, because God is eternally committed to his creation.

                  You think God has forgotten?  The storm and its aftermath might tempt us to think so.  That is an illusion. Go ahead and test God’s memory.  Risk believing in God, and see where that takes you.     

PRAYER

                With this new day’s dawning, O God, we call upon thee who are the giver and sustainer of life, using the language and images you yourself have given us.  Grant that the language and images we use in worship may expand our reach into eternal realms. With your word as our guide, and your Spirit our interpreter, we move forward to a destination you alone know, yet we move with confidence knowing that your spirit guides us.  May this day’s portion of our journey be fruitful, yielding new perspective on this quest in which we are engaged.

                  O God, we are what you have made us.  What you have made and why you have made it is not always clear.  We struggle to penetrate the mysteries of life, beginning with our own personal motivations for doing what we do.  Increase, O God, our self-awareness, and our ability to differentiate between that which is life-enhancing and that which is self-destructive.  We have so much to learn, O God, and so little time to learn it.  May we not squander the opportunities we are given but profitably use them in accord with your holy will.

                  O God, we acknowledge that our personal concerns and aspirations so absorb us that we give little thought to the needs and aspirations of those who share life with us.  Broaden our perspective, O Lord, to see the world as it really is rather than what we, in isolation from neighbor, might conceive it to be. Ever attentive to the needs of the orphan, the widowed, the forgotten, O God, you charge us to account for the least in the world by liberally sharing our gifts. May we accept that responsibility as readily as we received the great generosity that has been extended to us.

                Lord of all, we pray for all those who face great decisions today. Some are called to make decisions regarding employment, others housing, still others retirement, or medical treatment.  May your counsel, O God, provide clarity for the conflicted and confused, and where confusion persists grant patience onto the day when clearer judgment may prevail.

                O God, as we welcome volunteers from the north into our midst, we savor once again the unity that is ours in Christ Jesus. Sharing a common confession of faith, and a common commitment to share the fruits of the gospel, we gather not as strangers but as brothers and sisters.  Much to share with each other and much to learn from each other, may this opportunity for fellowship we will enjoy this week not only bear fruit through restoration efforts undertaken, but also strengthen our unity across congregations.

                O God, intensify the resolve of all who seek peace today.  Rent by violence and bloodshed, the world is a cruel and threatening place for many.  Even as they cower in fear, the innocent live with little hope that change will come.  O God of the ages, hear the cries of the destitute and the forlorn, and may those voices resound loudly and insistently until their just demands are heard, and individuals and nations rise to their defense. O Christ who lived in solidarity with the persecuted and victimized, we forget justice at our peril, for you insist on justice, not merely for an elect, but for all people.

               Created by you, O God, to live life fully, we pray that you forgive us our sins and brace us against adversity.  Teach us patience before the questions that remain unresolved for us, and persistence in asking them onto the day when we shall see you face to face. In reverence and praise of thee we pray in the strong name of Jesus…