February 8, 2009

Dad wrote lots of poetry in his life that reflected his struggles and celebrations in ministry and in life. He wrote poems for my 21^st birthday, our wedding, and at other significant events in our lives. They are moving and poignant and still difficult to read after all these years. But it's the poems that he wrote when he was hospitalized at various times in the three years of his illness that I find haunting; I've had some of the poems for a while but haven't read some of them until the last few weeks. I have to confess that I had some issues in those years after Dad's death, which coincided with my attendance at seminary. I had issues with the talk of Jesus' healing ministry. "Why not my Dad," I'd wonder. "Why not the many people who are sick and dying?" Of all the questions about Jesus' ministry this question of healing was the one I was mute about. Today's reading from Mark's gospel about the healing of Simon Peter's mother-in-law and other healings mentioned are still a challenge to me. I sometimes wonder about the ones that didn't work, where there was no cure.

And while I understand more intellectually about what healing meant in Jesus' day and age and what it means today, emotionally I still struggle with the question "why." In Jesus' day and age, healing and disease was far more of a social problem. Organic diseases were often seen as illnesses of the soul and people were treated as outcasts; healing, therefore, was about restoring to community, to family and removing the spiritual stigma. This was a lot of what Jesus did in healings, i.e. remove the stigma of dis-ease. In today's era we talk about healing in terms of wholeness and acceptance; we don't talk about healing in terms of cure. But as I said, while I know this intellectually, it doesn't always connect emotionally and in the heart. I guess this, then, is also about my own healing.

I also know that Dad did have moments of clarity and healing. On the same page as the "Speechless" poem, Dad wrote "The Miracle." In part it reads:

...a full sentence emerged.
It was beautiful:
clearly spoken,
understood,
by the one who came,
to observe,
to stand by,
to give support.
Is it a miracle?
Another breakthrough?
That hard bedrock
of fear is giving way
to faith,
which says relax
God is in our midst.

Even though Dad didn't make a full recovery, healing took place. In part, that healing occurred because of memory. Dad remembered the God who gives life and who is an intimate part of our lives.

Memory is a powerful thing; it is one of the qualities that defines us as human beings. Memory helps to give shape to our culture and meaning to our lives. Memory connects us to others, both those who are living and those who have died. Memory connects us to God as the source of our lives.

But our memories are also fickle. Beyond trying to remember people's names, and dates, and other information, we sometimes fail to remember the God who gives life... until calamity strikes. We remember God well enough when difficulty arises. But maybe we intentionally forget because we've felt betrayed by God or by religion or by spirituality. Maybe we don't want to remember because it means that we'll have to be shaken out of our comfortable ways of viewing the world and life.

The controversy with the ads on the buses in Toronto and Vancouver is about collective memory loss, I think; they read, "There probably isn't a God, so stop worrying and get on with your life." I don't find them offensive particularly. I find them more sad than anything. And I think the United Church is right to take a fairly low-key approach to these; the ad that the United Church is putting out reads, "There probably is a God, so stop worrying and get on with your life." As a society, what alarms me, isn't so much that we've forgotten the Christian God of Jesus or Adonai of Moses and Miriam, that we've forgotten about a sectarian God; what alarms me is that we've forgotten about connections to things more than just merely us. It alarms me that we've forgotten that we aren't the end all and be all of this created world. It alarms me that we forget what animates all of life.

And this is why, 2500 years ago, the second prophet named Isaiah, spoke what he did in the wonderfully inspiring poem of the 40th chapter. "Have you not heard," he asked. "Have you not seen? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?" Isaiah was prompting the collective memory of the Jews who were in captivity in Babylon, their country in ruins and their homes and communities destroyed. "Have you forgotten the One who created the heavens and sits above the circle, who stretched the heavens like a curtain? Have you forgotten that we are like grasshoppers and that God is God?" Part of what Isaiah was saying is that even though you are suffering here in Babylon, we must remember our identity and the One who gave us life; for if we forget, or if we choose to forget, we are lost.

Notice that in reminding the people of who God is, Isaiah reminds them of who they are. They are God's; they are named by God and precious in God's sight. And what is more, "God will give power to the faint, and strengthen the powerless; God will renew our strength, we will mount up with wings like eagles, we will run and not be weary, and we will walk and not faint."

But memory, as any neurologist, or neuropsychologist, or as Linda has been telling us as par of her work with Alzheimer's Society, takes effort. We have to work at remembering and exercise our brains. We have to work at remembering God; we have to work at the relationship we have with God and with one another. We have to take the time to pray as Jesus did, to worship and learn, to ponder God's creative gifts, to be part of the healing and mending of the world. And by how we live and what we say as much as intentionally speaking about the God in whom we believe, we prompt the collective memory of our society to remember that we are not the pinnacle of creation, that we are not all there is, that life is deep and wondrous and life-sustaining. We help our society remember that the roots that go deep into life are the roots that go deep into that amorphous entity that we call spirituality and God. Our history as a human species is full of amnesia and the perils that come with that don't lead to healing. Time and again, we forget about God and God's gifting to the world, and holocausts result, or crusades, or genocide, or exploitation, or oppression.

As Dad remembered and discovered healing, as the Jews remembered and discovered healing in Babylon, and as we, in our own ways remember and discover healing, so this world can know healing. We need to remember more clearly and more loudly whose we are and who we are. The Church and people of faith the world over can help the world remember the One who gives life, the One who lifts the weak out of dust, placing them with the mighty, the One who enables us to run and not be weary, to walk and not faint. We can remember the One who brings the princes of the world to naught and who sets the lights in the day and night skies. We can remember the One who is wholly Compassion.

When we remember, nothing is ever the same. When we remember the One who gives life, we remember that life is a web of relationships, each vital and life giving. When we remember, more will know freedom, more will no peace, and this world will know harmony and joy.

May it be so, dear God, may it be so.

Amen.