Stories

Deuteronomy 26:1-11, Luke 4:1-13

February 25, 2007

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

If you ask most middle aged people what they are most afraid of happening to them as they age, I would guess the most common response would be: Alzheimer’s Disease. Although heart disease and cancer are frightening, I think most of us are even more frightened of losing our memories of everything about life we hold dear, especially in our relationships with those we love. My maternal grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s for many years before she died, and it was sheer agony for those of us who adored this woman to come visit her and realize she had no idea who we were. Toward the end, she had undergone such a personality change that those of us who loved her often said that this woman we saw who looked like our grandmother no longer was the Evelyn we knew, but some imposter who took over her body. The ability to remember shapes our identities in ways we have only begun to understand, and the loss of that ability is devastating not only to the one afflicted, but to everyone who cares for her or him.

In the last year of her life, my grandmother lived in a wonderful residence designed for people suffering from memory loss. The caregivers there encouraged families to bring lots of photographs as spurs to memory, to bring in tapes or CD’s of music that meant something. They also encouraged visitors to tell stories at every visit instead of simply asking the rather difficult question, “how are you?” Through pictures, music and stories, the hope was that my grandmother and those like her could hold on to important pieces of their identities that would help them through a difficult time in their lives. Stories, songs and pictures helped her remember who she was and claim the love that we so longed her to receive from us.

When the people of Israel came into the promised land, God called them to an annual festival of giving of their first fruits, literally the best of the harvest, at the temple. After they put down their offering, they were instructed to say, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” This wasn’t just a story that happened long ago to someone else, it was their story forever: slavery, freedom, wilderness wanderings, divine rescue, bounteous blessings. Over and over and over again for their people, as for us.

God did not ask them to go through this little ritual just because it was nice or it’s fun in worship to give testimony or tell stories. Once a year this particular recitation of their story was meant to be that jog to the memory to guard against the kind of forgetting that kept getting Israel in trouble, cast into exile, oppressed by their own corrupt kings or foreign despots. God’s hope was that by remembering this story, the people would be saved from spiritual Alzheimer’s disease, the kind of forgetting that breaks the central relationship in our lives, the one with our Creator, our Redeemer, our Sustainer, the kind of forgetting that leads to us thinking we are in control, all powerful, like gods, the kind of forgetting that could have lead Jesus into falling for the devil’s offers of power and glory. But Jesus remembered.

That is what all these little books, these stories, are meant to be for us. The Bible is a gift from God to us to be that spur to our memories that can help us keep our identities clear and keep us in relationship with not only God who loves us, but with each other. Like my grandmother’s photos and music and our family stories, the Bible urges us to connect to the deep memories of our people that can give us strength and courage to face the day and all the trials and temptations that may come our way without losing track of who, and whose, we are.

This is so important to remember, because there are folk who would have us look at this book very differently. As the story of the temptation in Luke shows us clearly, even the devil can use scripture for his own purposes. There are those who would have us use this book as a fence, a set of boundary markers to keep out some people and invite others in, and they are fond of looking for passages here and there taken out of context that support whatever point they are trying to make, and, by the way, this happens on both the conservative and liberal ends of the Christian spectrum. But remembering is not meant to be a tool to foster hatred, prejudice or self-righteousness

There are those who would have us use this solely as a rulebook: do this and don’t do that. There’s plenty here that could be used that way. If you look a few verses before the lovely piece we heard today from Deuteronomy, you get verse 11 in Chapter 25: “If men get into a fight with one another and the wife of one intervenes to rescue her husband from the grip of his opponent by reaching out and seizing his genitals, you shall cut off her hand; show no pity.” Bet you haven’t heard many sermons on that one! There are lots of rules in here, but remembering does not mean slavish imitation of a society that no longer exists in order to let humans do the rewarding and punishing Jesus reserves for God.

There are those who would use this book as a weapon to prove that each of us is hopeless and that God is waiting to catch us in our sin and throw us into eternal punishment. Of course the ones who do that most often are sure that they will not be so punished. As one of my favorite Austin Lounge Lizards’ songs puts it, “I know that Jesus loves me and I know he can’t stand you.” But the memories that make us afraid or ashamed are not meant to doom us. They are there to help us discern what is destructive so that we might also discern the path of life abundant that God opens before us by the words of this book.

This book is a gift, a family memoir that makes us cry and laugh and gives us strength from remembering how our large and varied family in God has come through the wilderness and deep waters for many generations. When Jesus, God in flesh, confronts his tempter in the wilderness, he does not say anything new. He does not use logic or philosophy or practical wisdom to refute the tempter’s claims. He does not use superior power or claim authority as he could have. Rather, Jesus turns to the book of Deuteronomy, to the formational words of his people to claim the strength of the greater family even when he is very much alone in the desert. Jesus outlasts the tempter on the power he takes from knowing his identity as part of a people with whom God had defeated many foes for many centuries. God had been with them; this Jesus learned in childhood. So he could be sure that God would be with him in the wilderness, too.

It was my grandmother Evelyn Yeager who is most responsible for introducing me to this book and these stories. Her little Methodist church and the words of the Bible were so important to her, indeed life sustaining, and she used to tell Bible stories to us when I was a child. Only when I was an adult and learned more of her story did I marvel that her faith remained intact after all she had gone through in her life. Her mother had died when she was a young child, and her father decided his 5 children were too great a burden for him. So without telling any of them what he was doing, he took them to the homes of friends and relatives, separating them from one another, and simply left them. Their youngest brother stayed home, but when their father remarried, his new wife so abused the child that he died. Although my grandmother’s aunt, with whom she had been left, loved her, her uncle mistreated her. She worked hard on their farm, and then on her own farm after her marriage to my wonderful grandfather, a man she saw as a gift from God. But the economy of small farms in northeastern Ohio turned against them, and in their forties, they lost everything and had to start from scratch. On the day I was born, they had the sale of the farm and everything on it, moved into town and got entry-level jobs to survive.

My grandmother could easily have been a bitter woman, cursing God for all the downturns in her life. Yet she did not. She praised God for helping her survive in order to receive blessings that came up for her in the most amazing ways, blessings she would have missed had she not been open to them. For her, the Bible had the Wonderful Words of Life, the Old, Old Stories of Jesus and His Love. They grounded her, reminding her of God’s presence and promise, especially in the wilderness. And even though in the end she forgot, I believe that at the moment of death, all the memories of blessing were restored to her.

Now I link the story of Evelyn Yeager with the stories of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar, Ruth and Naomi, Isaiah and Amos, Peter and John, Mary and Lydia, with the words of the prophets, the poets, and Jesus I find in the Bible, and all those words and songs and pictures remind me who I am. There is great pain here, and fear, and suffering, many times of wilderness trials and temptations, of failure and loss. There are words in here that cut me to the quick and remind me of all I am not. I need those words. There are also the words that so sustained my grandmother and many generations like her, the words of Blessed Assurance, that the One who heard the cry of the slaves in Egypt and answered that cry is still listening, and yes, still speaking. Receive these words as a gift this Lent, and remember, repent, and rejoice. Amen.