Remembering

Last week I had the opportunity to teach a class at my college as a part of my internship as a teacher’s assistant.  I am a TA for a class called Spiritual Formation and Discipleship, which focuses on the spiritual disciplines.  Each week a different spiritual discipline is the focus.  I was given the opportunity to prepare a full 75-minute lesson on a topic of my choice, provided it fit into the context of spiritual disciplines.  I chose the topic “Remembering”.  It seemed appropriate, considering that it was shortly before Remembrance Day weekend, but I also wanted to expand on the idea of remembering and its importance to our spiritual lives as Christians.  The following is an abbreviated form of my lesson. (Sorry that it's still kind of long...)

Remembering may seem like an unusual topic in a class on the spiritual disciplines.  It’s not something that you usually find in lists next to things like fasting and service.  However, I would like to challenge you today that remembering is in fact an important part of our spirituality.   

To begin, it is important to clarify what we mean by remembering.  According to the dictionary, to remember is “To bring to one’s mind an awareness of…”.  However, the Hebrew word for remember expands on this definition: “To remember, recall, call to mind, usually as affecting present feeling, thought, or action”.  So the biblical concept of remembrance does not just involve the mind; it also involves feelings and action.

When remembering is mentioned in the Bible, it is generally in connection with some kind of response or action.  One example is Genesis 30:22, when God remembers Rachel and allows her to conceive.  Another example is in Deuteronomy 5:12-15, when the Israelites are commanded to keep the Sabbath.  They were to remember that they used to be slaves in Egypt and that God saved them, so they should no longer work like slaves but instead should take time to rest.

So today our working definition of remembering is: “Knowledge accompanied by appropriate action”.  We have not actually remembered something unless it affects us in some way.  Remembering is very practical.

Today we will be focusing in on three different areas in which it is very important for us to remember.  The first is remembering the heroes of faith.  This weekend our country will be remembering and honouring the heroes who fought and died for our country.  As Christians, we have our own set of heroes – people who have gone before us in our faith, who worked, struggled, and often died, to pass their faith on to us.  These heroes of faith include people we read about in the Bible as well as people throughout history, and include the great and powerful as well as the simple people who were faithful in small, day-to-day-ways.

Remembering the heroes of faith can inspire us to live lives of faith ourselves.  An example of this is found in the book of Hebrews.  Hebrews 11 lists many heroes of our faith in what could be called the “Faith Hall of Fame”.  Reading this passage, you get the feeling that the list could continue, through the Old Testament, into the New, and then right through church history, up to this present day.  In class we took the time to make our own “Faith Hall of Fame”, writing down the names of people that we find inspiring and that have encouraged us in our faith.

The writer of Hebrews carries on to say:  “Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (12:1).  Our heroes of faith can inspire us and encourage us.  As we remember their stories, we can be encouraged in our own story, and challenged to press on in our own walk of faith.  It is so important to remember them.

Secondly, it is important to remember history.  As we remember history, we can learn from it.  One of the interesting things about history is that it often seems to repeat itself.  And in a way, this makes sense.  Even though technology advances, and the context changes, people are not all that different.  We still have the same motivations and needs – for security, love, food and shelter, meaning in life.  It can be possible, through learning about the past, to gain insight into the way our world is today, and we can gain wisdom for how to respond to the events of our time.  When we don’t remember, we can make the same mistakes that others have made in the past.  The philosopher George Santayana once said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  Another way that someone articulated this same message is that “History repeats itself because no one was listening the first time”.

A vivid example of this in the Bible is the story of the Judges.  It becomes almost predictable – the people start worshiping other gods, they become oppressed by the nations around them, they cry out to God, God sends a judge to deliver them, they serve God for a while, but soon turn to other gods and the cycle repeats again and again.  It makes you wonder – would the Israelites ever learn from history?!

Perhaps repetition that is that obvious is not generally evident throughout history.  But while events may not repeat in an exact way, there are remarkable similarities and patterns throughout time.  Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme”.  It is these rhymes, these echoes of the past, that allow us to learn from history in order to live more wisely today.

I gave a couple of examples of this in class, but here I will focus on just one example: War.  On Remembrance Day, we remember those who have been willing to give their lives for their country.  And I think that it is a good thing to honour them.  But have you ever wondered why there keeps on being war after war?  For example, do you know why World War 2 took place?  Yes, Hitler was a significant threat, but why was there a Hitler?  You have to go back a few more years to an event we know of as World War 1; a war that began in 1914 – 100 years ago.  But at that time, that war was not known as World War 1, it was called “The War to End All Wars”.  When it was finally over, many people truly believed that there would never again be a need for war.  However, the result of that war for the countries that lost, particularly Germany, was economic disaster.  Things got so bad in Germany that the German people became desperate, and when someone stood up and claimed that he could change their lives for the better, they followed him willingly – his name was Adolf Hitler.  The “War to End All Wars” simply bred another war; a war that had even more devastating effects, with over 60 million people losing their lives.

And World War 2 – did that bring the final solution?  Was that the “War to End All Wars”?  No – since then there has continued to be war after war: The Cold War, The Korean War, The Vietnam War, The Gulf War, war in Afganistan, war in Iraq… we see history repeating and repeating and we have to wonder – does war actually help?  Can war stop war from continuing?  History seems to say no.  Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”  But we can only learn that lesson if we remember.  And may our remembering also be practical, as we seek for ways to break the cycle of war and violence that is in our world.  In the words of the MCC Remembrance Day pin: To remember is to work for peace.

Finally, it is also important to remember what God has done in our lives.  While remembering the heroes of our faith can encourage us, and remembering history can be insightful, this is remembering at a very personal level.

This concept can be found throughout the Bible.  The Old Testament is full of passages where God’s people are urged to remember what he has done.  Remember that you used to be slaves in Egypt.  Remember that God saved you.  Often the Israelites were told to set up visible reminders so that they wouldn’t forget what God had done.  One example of that is in Joshua 3:14 - 4:7.  After the people of Israel crossed the Jordan, God told them to take rocks from the riverbed and make a monument so that they would remember.  The New Testament also contains the instruction to remember.  One famous instance is at the Lord’s Supper: “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). 

While it is vitally important to remember what Jesus did for us 2,000 years ago, he is also active in our lives now, and it is important to remember that.  We all experience ups and downs; times where everything seems great, and times that are really hard.  When we are in those harder times, one thing that can help us get through is remembering what God has done in our lives.  It can remind us of how God does care for us and how he is present with us, even if it doesn’t feel like it.  It can also give us hope that the future will be better.

Now I want to give a little disclaimer.  When we reflect back over our lives, it can be easy to feel a lot of regret.  We see all of the things that we did that we shouldn’t have done, or that we should have done and didn’t do.  It can be very tempting to beat ourselves up and try to punish ourselves over and over again for those failings.  But that is not healthy remembering.  It is true that just as we can learn from world history, we can also learn from our own personal histories.  It is good to learn from the mistakes that we have made.  But God does not want us to live in shame and regret.  When we dwell on the past, he is inviting us to dwell on what he has done - on his faithfulness to us.

In class we brainstormed different ways to help ourselves remember what God has done in our lives.  Ideas included journaling, talking with close friends, going through old facebook posts, and setting up a pile of rocks like the Israelites.  What ideas do you have?

Remembering is important.

Remembering the Heroes of Faith leads to encouragement in our own faith as we step out to do what God is calling us to.

Remembering History leads to wisdom, and we can engage what is happening in our world in an effort to change things for the better.

Remembering what God has done in our lives leads to hope when we’re going through hard times.

So this Remembrance Day… remember!