Sermons

“How Do We Remember?”

John 20:19-31; Acts 16:6-15 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California

May 26, 2019

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might rejoice in your welcome and share it like the gift it is.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

How do you know what you know?  Beyond what you learned in school or from the news, how did you learn where you came from?  Who told you the stories that tell you who you are?  Who shaped the stories of your family heroes?  Was there one storyteller in your family, perhaps someone who told the same stories over and over?  Or did different relatives have different versions and different favorites?  Are you sure you got all the relevant background on the family’s black sheep?  Did you ever hear their side of the story?

I ask these questions because, on this weekend when we’re focused on remembering those who have died, it’s important to consider what has shaped the memories we share.  Whether it’s the history of a nation, or our family histories, or the story of our faith, it’s vital to take a step back occasionally and examine the storytelling as closely as we listen to the story.  Both of our scripture lessons today include multiple invitations to consider the existence of other perspectives and wonder about the choices that were made when the story was being put together.  I want to look at them all briefly, in turn, this morning, and then think about what they can teach us when considered as a whole.

The thing that prodded me in this direction in the first place is a bit of a mystery.  Did you notice, in the reading from Acts, how the narrator was using the words “they” and “them” at first, but then suddenly in verse 10, the words “we” and “us” take over without explanation?  This happens four times in the 28 chapters of Acts, and nobody really knows why.  The most obvious possibility, of course, is that the person who wrote Acts – whom we call Luke because he seems to have written that gospel as well ­– was present for the portions of the story that use first-person narration.  But there are also reasons why that doesn’t seem too likely, so we’re left with a mystery.  Regardless, the shifting back and forth reminds us that it’s impossible that one person witnessed everything that’s covered in the Book of Acts, so we have to assume that we’re always relying on stories that have been transmitted from one person to another, likely multiple times, before we heard them.  And we know what happens to stories during that process.

Given that, there’s something else that stands out in this passage.  Paul and his companions arrive in Macedonia, and they go out to the river on the Sabbath to find a place of prayer.  While they are there, the conversion of Lydia and her household takes place and is affirmed by Paul’s acceptance of her hospitality.  What is interesting here?  The woman has a name!  That doesn’t always happen.  But if we pay attention to patterns, we’ll notice that the writer of Luke and Acts often combines stories of men and women into pairs: A man is healed and then a woman is; a woman and her household are converted, and then a similar thing transpires with a man and his household, in this case, the jailer whose story follows the one we read today.  The people in these stories don’t always have names like Lydia does; indeed, the jailer doesn’t, but the pairings are impossible to ignore.  What was it about Luke’s perspective that made him choose to set up these gendered symmetries?  Who knows?  But it does remind us that not all first-century authors had the same priorities.

This brings us to one of the most obvious reminders in Christian scripture of the reality of our faith being shaped by multiple perspectives.  In those last verses from the 20^th chapter of John we heard, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.”  For me, this is an immediate reminder of all the stories that aren’t found in John, but that we can read about in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  The fact that our Bible has four gospels, which interweave and overlap and diverge and contradict one another, can be a source of confusion, or processed differently, a source of freedom and joy.  We had a wonderful picnic last week.  If you were to ask four of the people who were there to tell you the story of that picnic, they would most likely include some of the same details.  But each account would be different, and some might even contradict others.  When the story of that picnic was told during the prayers of the people in worship last Sunday, it was already being theologized, as we talked about the movement of the Holy Spirit among the friends new and old who had gathered at the Van Winkles’.  It is not hard to see how four (or more!) gospels arose from the events that gave birth to our faith.  And we can welcome them just as graciously as we hear each person’s story of the picnic.

There are a few other interesting hints of the multiplicity of perspectives that shape our faith in this passage from John.  In two weeks’ time, we will celebrate Pentecost, the arrival of the promised Holy Spirit with wind and fire and the speaking of many languages, as told in Acts 2.  But right here, in John 20:21-23, we have an alternate telling of Jesus giving the Holy Spirit to the disciples, right there in that room, Easter night, just by breathing on them.  It’s much more intimate and way less dramatic, but the Holy Spirit is no less present.  The many different ways the Spirit shows up, in these two versions, but also all throughout the Book of Acts – before baptism, after baptism, during baptism – is a reminder that something as mysterious and powerful as the Holy Spirit is never going to be fully documented or contained in writing.

And then, of course, there is the question of Thomas.  It’s clear he wasn’t the one writing the gospel of John, right?  I think it’s safe to say he would have told the story much differently.  Thomas isn’t asking for anything more than what the other disciples had already gotten.  It doesn’t say that they “saw the Lord” until after Jesus had showed them his hands and side.  Yet because Thomas’ witness and belief came a week later, he’s been saddled for centuries with the title “Doubting Thomas”.  And then there’s that final twist of the literary knife, put in the mouth of Jesus, no less: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  You’d better bet your last button that specific choices were made about the way this story was shaped!  And give thanks as well, for we are blessed at Thomas’ expense!

Quite frankly, I would argue that there are those who haven’t seen who believe more easily precisely because this story of Thomas “doubting” is included in the testimony.  ‘I may not have been there, but someone who was just as demanding of solid evidence as I am was, so I guess I can sign on.’  No one will even require that we admit our similarities to Thomas in order to benefit from his embarrassment.  Did the writer of John understand how helpful this story could be better than Matthew and Mark and Luke?  Or did he just have more of a desire to call Thomas out than they did?  Regardless, the diversity of perspectives amongst our four gospels means more different sorts of potential believers are reached.

The final invitation to consider the importance of perspective prods us in another direction entirely, but one we must attend to regularly.  Right there in the first verse of the passage from John, we see an ugly, early animosity built in that grew in later years to become part of a shameful, violent side of Christianity.  I’m referring, of course, to how John tells us that “the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews.”  Because, you know, Jews are super scary.  Oh, the damage those few words have done!  We cannot responsibly claim to be examining the perspectives of our faith’s storytellers without including an exploration into why John would include such a notion and what has been done with it throughout the intervening centuries.  John’s gospel, you will recall, was written decades after the fact, as much as 60 years later, when the burgeoning movement that was becoming Christianity was finally beginning to separate itself from its Jewish origins.  It was not a process void of tension.  The animosity expressed in this phrase isn’t about what was happening at the time of Jesus’ appearance; it was about what was happening when John was telling the story 60 years later.  There may very well have been fear that caused the disciples to lock the doors.  But it wasn’t fear of “the Jews”, as John describes it; it would have been fear of specific Jewish leaders and likely non-Jewish authorities as well.  The people inside the room were Jews themselves!  And we do well to remember that and proclaim it, any time our Christian brothers and sisters try to indulge in prejudicial words or actions against our Jewish brothers and sisters and blame it on scripture.

There is so much going on in these two stories; we hardly even gotten into the narratives themselves.  I hope you will read them again at home later and think more about the stories.  But in combination, they offered such a good chance to explore the many reasons we need to step back occasionally and ponder how the stories of our faith are shaped.  It’s important to ask how we remember, especially since we’re so often prone to mindless nostalgia at times like this.  So what do we do with a faith that offers us a multiplicity of perspectives and so much to sort through?  When we’re not sure who is telling the story, or why this person got a name and that person didn’t–  When there are different versions of how things happened, some of which embarrass one person and elevate another–  When sometimes the way the story is told promotes an agenda that is anathema to our core faith values, what do we do?  I believe there are three tenets we must follow in this situation.

First of all, we must approach scripture with a very basic humility.  Not just because we’re trying to understand God when we read the Bible, but simply because we’re humans.  We must hold on to a clear awareness that we are prone to seeing things from our individual perspective, and reading things to our own advantage, and not noticing the parts that might inconvenience us.  We must confess our preferences and watch that we don’t privilege them.  We must concede that we’re far more likely to accept things at face value than we’d sometimes like to admit.  We need to come to the scriptures acknowledging that we’ve likely missed a lot of what is going on there.

Secondly and relatedly, we must come to scripture listening carefully, not just to what is there, but to what is not there.  We must notice what isn’t disclosed, who isn’t named, what isn’t explained, and wonder why.  And as we reflect on scripture, we must also listen for the voices we haven’t heard before who are also reflecting on it, the voice of those whose perspectives differ from ours and therefore can offer the gift of new insights we would never have come to on our own.

Thirdly, and growing out of this careful listening, we must approach scripture together.  No one of us is going to have the breadth of experience to fully apprehend what God can do with those words.  No one of us will notice all that is going on there or everything that is left out.  Without one another, the other parts of the Body of Christ, we are incomplete and our relationship with scripture is shallow and impoverished.  How do we remember?  We remember best together.  Alleluia and Amen.