Remember Who You Are
Excerpts from Psalm 105
Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church
August 10, 2014
Sermon Hymn: “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past”
Prayer of Illumination
Pray with me.
O Lord ourGod,
Give us grace to receive your truth in faith and love,
that we may best follow your will
and live always for your glory;
through Jesus Christ our Savior.
Amen.
Scripture Reading
Excerpts taken fromPsalm 105 (5-6, 8-10, 17-20, 23-24, 26-27, 45b)
Listen for a word from God.
5Remember the wonderful works God has done,
his miracles, and the judgments he has uttered,
6O offspring of God’s servant Abraham,
children of Jacob, his chosen ones…
8God is mindful of his covenant forever,
of the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations,
9the covenant that he made with Abraham,
his sworn promise to Isaac,
10which he confirmed to Jacob as a statute,
to Israel as an everlasting covenant…
17 [For] God sent a man ahead of them,
Joseph, who was sold as a slave.
18His feet were hurt with fetters,
his neck was put in a collar of iron;
19until what he had said came to pass…
20And the king sent and released him;
the ruler of the peoples set him free…
23Then Israel came to Egypt,
and Jacob lived as an alien in the land of Ham.
24Yet the Lord made his people very fruitful,
and made them stronger than their foes…
26Then God sent his servant Moses,
and Aaron whom he had chosen.
27They performed God’s signs among them,
and miracles in the land of Ham…
45Praise the Lord!
The word of God for the people of God.
Thanks be to God.
Sermon
Introduction:
I am fearful that the sermon title today will forever date me as “the young pastor.”Truth be told, some of you here will probably not quite catch the cultural reference. In case that is true, I want to take just a moment to teach you something that I have found very useful as someone who sits right on the cusp of both the older and the younger generations in our church.
I call it the “generation gap.”This is how it works.
If someone older than you references some piece of pop culture that was before your time, simply draw between you the “generation gap.”(draw the generation gap in the air)
Or if someone younger than you mentions something that you don’t understand because it became popular after your time, simply draw the generation gap. (draw the generation gap in the air again)
Please feel free to do that now if you must, because our sermon title today has been inspired in part by Disney’s childhood classic, The Lion King. [pause...]
To give you a quick synopsis in case you haven’t seen it, the movie The Lion King is actually based upon Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In this rendition,Mufasa was the king of the lion pride, and he had a son, his heir, Simba. However, King Mufasa is murdered for his throne by his jealous brother, and Simba is sent into exile. Filled with guilt for his father’s death, Simba takes on a new identity, tries to forget his past, and vows to never return to his father's kingdom. However, in a climactic scene that leads to the movie’s dramatic conclusion, Mufasa’s spirit appears to Simba in some storm clouds over the Sahara, and he says to his son,
“Simba, you have forgotten me.”
Startled and confused, Simba asks: “No. How could I?”
Wisely, Mufasa'sspirit answers: "You have forgotten who you are and so have forgotten me. Look inside yourself, Simba. You are more than what you have become. Remember who you are…"
(I apologize. It sounds much more resonate when it is said in the deep, dramatic voice of James Earl Jones)
Remember who you are…
The Trouble in the Text:
Our text today rings with this reminder to remember:
5Remember the wonderful works God has done,
his miracles, and the judgments he has uttered,
6O offspring of God’s servant Abraham,
children of Jacob, his chosen ones…
The entire psalm is a long litany pleading with the people to remember: remember you are a child of Jacob and the offspring of Abraham; remember Joseph’s chains and his days of bondage in slavery; remember when Jacob walked as an alien in a foreign land; remember the miraculous faith and the leadership of Moses and Aaron;remember who you are.
You will notice this same theme echoed throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. The Hebrew people are continuously reminded that they worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This refrain is repeated over and over again. In fact, this is actually how God chooses to be introduced to Moses in the book of Exodus. As God himself declares to Moses from the burning bush,
“I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob…This is my name forever, and this will be my title for all generations.”[1]
Why? Why does this history matter?
If you read between the lines and you look behind the text, the answer is simple. God calls us to remember because it is so terribly easy to forget.
The Trouble in the World:
Humanity seems to suffer from a terrible case of amnesia. Our mortal minds are so consumed with our own lives that our universe seems centered around our own time and our own experiences. It is like that “generation gap.”There is no before. There is no after. There is just now. There is just us. O, how easily we forget.
It is too easy to forget the Abrahams, the Isaacs, and the Jacobs, as well as the Sarahs, the Rebeccas, and the Rachels, all of the many men and women who have held the faith and dared to hand it down to us. For example, in the comfort of our freedom and our security, where we can practice our faith openly and without fear, we can overlook the many martyrs who sacrificed everything and died simply for declaring that it was Jesus Christ, and not Caesar, who was truly Lord. Remember.
It is simply too easy to forget all of the men and women who have walked before us, all who fought so hard and struggled for so long for what we can now take for granted. For those men and women who stood and fought for our freedom in the face of tyranny. Remember. For the millions who marched and peacefully protested for our equality in the face of injustice. Remember.
This message is particularly poignant for me, as a woman, as I stand here today, speaking in church and proclaiming the Word from the pulpit. I know firsthand that it is too easy to forget the many women who came before me, who so bravely and so tirelessly spoke up even when others tried to silence them, so that the voices of all women could be heard. I remember.
I know that for some of you among us these moments are not from some distant past. Perhaps you were there, and perhaps you were among these men and women who stood for freedom, for equality, and for justice. We thank you.
The Hope in the Text and in the World:
Only when we remember the past, when we remember this legacy, when we remember who we truly are, can we find the strength to face the present moment. This is our hope. For then when we worship, we remember that we do not worship alone. No, even now, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, by our mothers and fathers in faith who came days, decades, centuries, even millennia before us.
And when we work to serve the world, we do not serve alone. Our hands reach out with the strength of many hands, because our hands are part of the Body Christ.
And when we stand for justice, we do not stand alone. For when we stand, we stand in the legacy of all who stood before us. We stand with all who stood for faith, for freedom, for equality, for peace, for mercy, and for love. Remember...
A Moment of Memory:
I want to take this moment to remember. In a minute, I would like us to take a quick moment of silence. And in this moment, I want you to choose one person whose memory that you would like to honor. It could be someone from the ancient past, like any of the great biblical leaders that are honored here in this psalm. It could be someone that you wish that you'd had the opportunity to know - a great hero like Martin Luther King Jr. or an inspiration like Mother Teresa. Or it could be someone who was close to you, who led you in your faith, who embodied justice in your eyes, or who reached out to you in love - a grandmother or grandfather, a mentor, a parent, a spouse, a friend.
Close your eyes....
Think of them now....
And in honor of their memory, simply say "thank you" and remember....
Does anyone have a memory that they would like to share?
......
Thank you.
Conclusion:
This is what I love most about this psalm. Because when it reminds us of all these great heroes and inspirational fathers of our faith, it at the same time reminds us that even these great leaders did not stand on their own. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel, the martyrs dying for faith, the soldiers standing for freedom, the protestors speaking against injustice - none of them stood alone. God was with them all, just as God was with each of these men and women that we have honored today. The psalm points to each of these witnesses as a testimony to God.
And though we may forget, the psalmist reminds us here that God will always remember us. As one of my favorite verses in Psalm 105 reads:
"God is mindful of his covenant forever,
of the word that he commanded,
for a thousand generations."
God remembers. While the center of our universe revolves only around our generation, our time, our experiences, God promises to care for one thousand generations.
So to conclude, it seems that the gaps between us are not so wide if we simply remember who we are.
[1] Exodus 3:6, 15-16.