After five months away, here we are, back again in this familiar place. It’s good to be back, but at the same time, like those returning home after a long journey it feels a little awkward and
funny as reacquaint and reorient ourselves to worship here in the sanctuary. Creatures of habit that we are, we’ve grown accustomed to being in the Parish Hall—the informality and intimacy of being seated more closely
together, the rattling of the air conditioner filter during the sermon and the rustling of paper as the children created art masterpieces at the back of the room, not to mention the air of spontaneity, like that Sunday in mid
June when five people felt moved to offer their heartfelt intercessions during the prayers of the church. So, I would for the next few weeks we’ll just have to bear with one another as we find our way around once again—to the
feeling of a cushioned pew instead of a chair, to the different ways that sounds carry, to having to come all the way around the altar for communion and how to get back to our seat. It’s surprising sometimes how rapidly old
habits can slip away, how quickly we cease to remember what was once second nature.
But we can rest assured that when it comes to forgetfulness, we’re not alone. See, there are apparently times when even the good Lord Himself suffers from lapses in memory. Speaking through the
Prophet Jeremiah about the house of Israel God declares “I will remember no more their sin.” “I will remember no more. I will forget.” The notion is a strange one, especially if we believe that God is all powerful, all
seeing, all knowing. We may not be talking about the “where did I put the car keys” or “why did you forget the soda when you were at the store” or even “how is that we come up to altar rail for Communion again” kind of
absentmindedness we all suffer from to some degree. But still God is talking about “not remembering”. So, what are we to make of what such divine forgetfulness, of a God who would choose not to remember”?
Everyone knows it’s not a good thing to forget. If you don’t remember to turn your clock back at the end of daylight savings time you’ll really be confused when you arrive at church an hour early
and no one but the preacher is there. Better now though than in six months when everyone will watch you make your grand entrance as the assisting minister calls out “Go in peace. Serve the Lord.” Note to newly wed
husbands—a forgotten anniversary or birthday will get you in the doghouse for sure. Not remembering your homework will earn you an automatic ten point deduction. Forgetting that important meeting at work might get everyone
mad at you including the boss.
And of course forgetfulness can have very serious consequences too. An athlete forgets to drink enough water and becomes seriously dehydrated. A young, inexperienced driver doesn’t remember to
fasten his seatbelt and is seriously injured in an automobile accident. We’ve all heard the tragic stories of elderly Alzheimer’s patients wandering away from home, into the woods or some other remote area and die because no
one knows where they are and they just can’t find their way home again.
A failure to remember isn’t just an individual problem, but a problem that can beset whole groups of people, even an entire nation. The nineteenth and twentieth century philosopher
George Santayana once said that “those who forget the past are destined to repeat it.” I have a Jewish friend whose
father and uncle escaped the advancing Nazis in the early nineteen forties. Some years ago my friend’s dad, Tibor was invited to share his story on videotape with a foundation in California committed to creating a permanent
record of the stories told by those who survived the Holocaust. It’s an organization that wants to make sure that people will always have a way of knowing just what happened so that hopefully the world will never witness such
horrors again.
But while we all recognize the pitfalls of not remembering I think we also know that there are times when we’d just as soon forget, but we simply aren’t able to do so—the unkind remark unleashed
in a moment of rage, the thoughtless behavior we’ve shown towards someone we love, maybe even a past indiscretion that burns in our conscience and weighs heavily upon our hearts. Or maybe we find ourselves on the receiving
end of the deep hurt and want to forget and let go, but somehow the pain is so intense, the wounds so deep that we can’t forget let alone forgive.
God’s people to whom Jeremiah spoke could hardly be accused of not remembering. It took them a while to get there, but finally, at long last they had come to see that they had only themselves to
blame for the mess they were in. There in a far away, foreign land, having lost everything they were paying the price for their continued unfaithfulness to Yahweh. They’d had their chance and they blew it and all that was
left was a dispirited, defeated, broken hearted people who wondered if finally God had had enough and simply wasn’t going to have anything to do with them anymore. And based on the covenant God had made with them, God was
certainly within God’s right to say like a jilted lover, “That’s it! I’m through with you forever.”
And really if we dare to examine our own hearts today, we see that we’re no different than God’s people twenty five hundred years ago! We too have forgotten that our life is from God. We too
have failed to remember the God of the Promise. We have neither sought nor done God’s will. We haven’t been truthful in our hearts, in our words, in our lives. Be it one another or the one who is our neighbor, we haven’t
loved as we ought to have loved. We’ve put our own self interest above the well being of others, the poor, the hungry, the weak and most vulnerable. In every way we have made a mockery of God’s Law and for that, there is
surely a price to be paid. St. Paul reminds us that “now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.”
So, what’s the answer? Maybe we ought to resolve to do better and try harder. Seek out the moral equivalent of the quick fix for ourselves, for others and for our world. Buck up. Behave. Get
with the program. Like the bumper sticker says, “No God, no peace. Know God, know peace.” The trouble with such a strategy though is that eventually we’re right back where we were before, no better off than when we
started. Try as we might, we have no hope of getting things right. There is no earthly prescription for broken sin-hardened hearts.
The only effective prescription for what ails us is the one written for us by God. “This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my
law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people…for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” The astonishing word for you and for me today is
this. “Our only hope lies in God’s forgetfulness.” We’ve all heard the message “forgive and forget” which sounds like a great idea that is until we try to put it into practice. Forgive, okay, but forget, no way! So we hold onto our grudges like money in an
interest bearing bank account that we can draw on whenever we feel like we need it. Have you ever wondered though? What if God did the same thing? I dare say that no bank could contain such a vast sum! But that’s not how
God works. See, not only does God forgive. God forgets, really, truly!
For that reason, we don’t have to live in fear and despair anymore because we never get our lives straightened out. God comes to us to make us his own, to bring us home again so that now we can
live under the new covenant God establishes with all His people. In his song Graceland, Singer songwriter Paul Simon imagines a place where “maybe there’s no obligation.” God calls, invites us into a land, a place of grace
where all obligations cease, where resistance, refusal disobedience no longer hold sway, a place where broken sin-hardened hearts like mine and yours find hope and healing, a place where God shapes and forms a new people who
know Him not as some kind of abstract idea or absentee landlord, but as a real presence, incarnate, in the flesh whose name is Jesus. We follow Jesus not because we have to but because now on account of what he’s done
for us we get to. It’s who we are, a part of our very DNA as God’s children.
And yet, while God doesn’t remember our sin, he certainly remembers us, knows us from the top of our heads to the tips of our toes, the deep hurts, the overwhelming grief, the
intense pain that seem too much to bear. More fully than we can ever know ourselves, God knows us and will stop at nothing in making us new each and every day. Rejoice and be glad my friends, for the gift of life that God
gives us today. Amen.
Pastor Brian Peterson
