Remember to Remember
Deuteronomy 8:7-18
November 22, 2020
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found at this link: https://youtu.be/MJojsrmOKPs
Every Tuesday, I get together with some pastors for Bible study and conversation. We’ve been doing this for 3 or 4 years now. We’ve learned each other’s stories. When John the Baptist comes up in the lectionary, a certain one of us is undoubtedly going to mention a particularly compelling statue of him in Italy. When we talk about the wedding at Cana, another one is going to remember a funny incident at a wedding in a former church. I used to get impatient with hearing the same stories over and over again. Until the day I offered what I thought was a rather insightful comment and one of my colleagues looked at me and said, “I’ve heard you say that before.” That was when I realized that I had become one of those preachers who repeats herself and doesn’t even realize it. We all remember certain things and what we remember, we remind ourselves about on a regular basis. That’s not a bad thing, especially if we remember important stuff.
The book of Deuteronomy is concerned with remembering to remember the important stuff. As the people enter the land, as they leave behind the hardship of wilderness, Moses wants them to make sure they do not forget the Lord who brought them to where they are.
There’s a story about an old man, who every week, walked from his house down to the ocean, carrying a bucket of shrimp. He would walk to the end of the pier, reach in his bucket, and feed the seagulls. Slowly, silently, he distributed the contents of his bucket, every Friday evening, while the sun slipped over the horizon.
His name was Eddie Rickenbacker, the most decorated WWI fighter pilot. In 1942, during WWII, President Roosevelt dispatched Eddie with a special message to General MacArthur in the Pacific theatre. The B-17 in which Captain Rickenbacker was flying got lost, ran out of fuel and ditched in the sea.
The crew of eight made it into life rafts and began a long and desperate fight to survive the sun, sharks banging on the bottom of the raft, waves, but most of all hunger. They ran out of food on day three.
On day eight, when it seemed the end had come and there was no hope, and they had prayed what they thought were their last prayers together, Captain Rickenbacker, in the raft, was dozing with his cap over his eyes. He felt something. A bird had landed on his head. He thought if he could catch it, they might survive. He caught it. And they ate it. And used its intestines for bait and caught fish. The capture of that seagull gave them enough hope and strength and fortitude that seven of the eight men survived the 24 days adrift in their rafts.
The story of old Eddie Rickenbacker feeding the seagulls in his neighborhood every Friday has been told countless times. While there is some disputing whether Rickenbacker actually fed gulls every Friday, the story of the plane being ditched in the Pacific, the seagull alighting on his head, and his capture, Rickenbacker himself recounted in his autobiography. [1]
It is a story of gratitude. It is a story of careful, intentional remembering. Feeding the seagulls is a ritual way to say thank you, to remember and not to take life for granted.
The book of Deuteronomy is so concerned with remembering that it describes several rituals, which when performed correctly, would keep the faith memories alive. After harvest each year, each farmer was to bring a certain portion of the harvest and offer it to God. And every time, he was to tell the story, “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. Then Pharoah treated us harshly. We cried out to God who delivered us with a mighty hand and brought us to this good place.” You brought the offering and you told the story. It was a ritual of remembering and thanksgiving.
We have a national ritual of remembering. More than one actually, because if you are native, you tell the story differently. But the story of those descended from immigrants recalls that 102 pilgrims set out from England in 1620. Sixty-five days later, after storms and sea-sickness and miserably cramped quarters and a burial at sea and a birth on board and the rescue of a man swept overboard, they sighted land. The winter in New England was more harsh than anything they had ever experienced. Every family lost someone; a child, a parent, a grandparent. Thanks to friendly native Americans, they learned to plant and fertilize. By harvest time, they knew they could survive another winter on the corn, squash, beans, peas, and barley. And so, still grieving their losses, they set aside a day for thanksgiving. Every year, in schools and churches, on greeting cards and commercials, their story is told and we remember.
The spiritual leader Joan Chittister says that Thanksgiving was instituted only after the pilgrims had withstood great sacrifice and difficult living. She writes, “it was not a feast of baubles. It was a recognition of the glory of survival.” And then she asks a question that I find particularly poignant. She says, “What have you survived this year that is worth your gratitude? Forget all the fixtures and gadgets and extras in which you’re steeped. Give thanks for the real riches of life, the things that make you what you are deep down.”[2]
“What have you survived this year that is worth your gratitude?” When 2020 is over, when, please God, pandemic is over, what do you want to remember to remember? What is worth your gratitude?
That video that we saw during the children’s time was made by David Steindl-Rast. He is an American Benedictine monk who was born in Austria. At 94, after a deeply intensive spiritual life, he knows a few things about gratitude. He said, “The root of joy is gratefulness… it is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.”[3] That might sound backwards. We might think that something happens to make us joyful and then gratitude follows. But I think there is a truth here. It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful. The more we remember with gratitude, the more thankful we will feel, which will lead to more contentment and more joy in our lives.
Deuteronomy reminds the people, when your life gets easier, do not forget the Lord. Do not take things for granted. Some of us tell ourselves that often – count your blessings, don’t take them for granted. But we forget, don’t we? We take electricity for granted, until we lose power for a day or four. We take for granted, being able to come and go freely, gathering for worship and for holidays, hugging those we love, until the threat of disease takes away those possibilities. Sometimes we realize what we have only when it is threatened or absent. Deuteronomy says to avoid that, set out to remember, remember on purpose, remember with ritual. Or as our own Hannah said, “Know what you have and be glad about it.”
We have rituals to help us remember and be grateful. An annual Thanksgiving celebration is one. So is sharing communion every month and weekly worship and singing. Many people know more theology from their hymnals than from their Bibles. Songs get into our heads and hearts and stay there. This is a singing congregation – even on Zoom. We sing and remember and are grateful every week. Every year at this time, we engage in the rituals of making a budget and offering our pledges. I suppose that some of us may do that out of a sense of duty or maybe even guilt, but how much more joyful it is, when it comes from a place of gratitude.
Many years ago, Joan Chittister attended an international conference in Asia on the status of women. Most of the participants were women she describes as “well-funded activist types or official observers. They were all there to professionally analyze various women’s issues around the world, especially of the needs of women in developing countries. At the gathering, these professional women called for more education for girls, more equality through government legislation, more birth control training, better health-care programs, and most importantly more participation of women at all levels of the political process.
As the conference was drawing to a close, a leader of one of the small group workshops, passed a piece of paper around and asked everyone to share her e-mail address so that they could all stay in contact and support one another in their work. One of the participants; a woman named Rose, was a Kenyan pastor of a Presbyterian church in Africa. When the sheet of paper came to her, she simply filled in her name and passed it on. The woman next to Rose passed the paper back to her and pointed out that she had neglected to put her email address on the form. Rose answered quietly: “I don’t have email where I am. It is too expensive for us.”
When Sister Joan and her colleague were getting into a cab to leave, her colleague said that she couldn’t leave without first seeing Rose. She asked Sister Joan to wait and rushed back into the hotel saying that she had promised to give something to Rose. Later as they were waiting to check in for their flight, Sister Joan asked her colleague, what she had given to Rose. Her friend answered that she had given Rose her credit card.
“Your credit card? Why in heaven’s name would you give Rose your credit card?”
Her friend answered quietly, “So she can pay for her email every month.” [4]
E-mail is another thing we might take for granted. And generosity is another way to act out gratitude.
Beloved ones, may we remember the Lord our God who is gracious and loving and abounding in kindness. May we remember on purpose, may we remember with gratitude, the kind of gratitude that expresses it self with joy and generosity. Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] The Rev. Don Lincoln in his sermon How Are You? November 24,2019 at Westminster Presbyterian Church, West Chester, PA
[2] Joan D. Chittister, The Psalms: Meditations for Every Day of the Year (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1996), p. 126.
[3] Brother David Stenidl-Rast, OSB, http://www.gratefulness.org
[4] Rowan Williams and Joan Chittister, For All That Has Been, Thanks (Norwich, UK: Canterbury Press, 2010) pp. 20-22