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Resurrection Living: Teach and Remind From all over the world, people come to experience and enjoy the attractions of the area. Such experiences teach and remind many, though often people in the surrounding neighborhoods remain either unaware or unfamiliar. One of this congregation's programs, Friendship Days, invites people to explore sites and situations that are nearby and participants often admit that although they have been residents of the area for years, sometimes decades or even generations, they have not visited this conveniently located place. There will be time on another other day, perhaps when we are not so absorbed in our daily activities. It may be only after we move away and return as tourists that we "see" these sites. So it was with the Museum of Tolerance, until last Monday, when, as chaperone for a high school English class, the exhibits in the museum were first explored. Interactive displays teach about the Holocaust in Germany and remind about the importance of personal responsibility. Because the students had just finished studying Elie Wiesel's novel Night, they were acquainted with part of the story. But because we were led through the museum by an older woman with a number tattooed on her arm, they learned much more. As she spoke of her experience, there was silence and there were tears. Simon Wiesenthal, who spent years pursuing justice for the six million annihilated in the several concentration camps, declares in good biblical tradition: "Hope lives when people remember." Z'kor... remember. In John's gospel, as Jesus prepares his disciples for his death, he declares that God will send the Holy Spirit to teach and remind so that we will all live beyond troubling fear. Resurrection people are open to both movements of the Spirit and it is through teaching and reminding - through remembering - that our faith is shaped. Much of what we do together as a community of faith centers on both of these activities. Even today, the children remind us about the judge Deborah and of her responses to God's call to faith. As they do so, they teach about how such faith is possible. The baptism of Benjamin Lucas reminds all present of grace even as we teach about the God who offers such a relationship without condition. We are children of God because of God's Spirit revealed in life-giving water, children who are equipped sufficiently to participate in the purposes of God, perhaps even as Deborah did. The belief of the apostles and the letters that reveal their faith, the work of the followers of Christ and the Book of Acts that records some of these activities, even the opening verses of the mysterious Revelation of John and throughout his invitation to hope all testify to resurrection living that is built upon teaching and reminding. It is the intention of the Holy Spirit that both will occur, here in this place and in many others, on this morning and whenever we gather, in a variety of ways, through several events, even out of the mouths and through the lives of children. Thanks be to God. Amen. May 13, 2007 |
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