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What’s in Your Memory?
A
sermon by Dr. Jesse Fletcher
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, November 18, 2007
I
Samuel 7:3-12
Our
text this morning is found in 1 Samuel - early in the stories of the Old
Testament that defined the nation Israel. This is the prophet role of Samuel.
This is a story, so listen to the story. “And Samuel spake unto all the house
of Israel, saying, if ye do return unto the LORD with all your hearts, put away
the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the
LORD, and serve him only: and he will deliver you out of the hand of the
Philistines. Then the children of Israel did put away Baalim and Ashtaroth, and
served the LORD only. And Samuel said, Gather all Israel to Mizpeh, and I will
pray for you unto the LORD. And they gathered together to Mizpeh, and drew
water, and poured it out before the LORD, and fasted on that day, and said, we
have sinned against the LORD. And Samuel judged the children of Israel in Mizpeh.
And when the Philistines heard that the children of Israel were gathered
together to Mizpeh, the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel. And
when the children of Israel heard it, they were afraid of the Philistines. And
the children of Israel said to Samuel, Cease not to cry unto the LORD our God
for us, that he will save us out of the hand of the Philistines. And Samuel
took a sucking lamb, and offered it for a burnt offering wholly unto the LORD:
and Samuel cried unto the LORD for Israel; and the LORD heard him. And as Samuel
was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against
Israel: but the LORD thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the
Philistines, and discomfited them; and they were smitten before Israel. And the
men of Israel went out of Mizpeh, and pursued the Philistines, and smote them,
until they came under Bethcar. Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between
Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto hath the
LORD helped us.” May God add His blessing to the reading of his word.
Because it’s repeated so often, you’ll probably remember the rather inane ad for
an unnamed credit card company. I remember the name; I’m just not going to
mention it. Where a bunch of people out of pre-medieval times, the Visigoths,
come charging in to some modern scene and after enough havoc is wreaked, one of
them turns and says, “And what’s in your wallet?” You remember that. Took me a
long time to get to where I finally turned it off in my head, but I can still
remember it.
After
reading this story I found myself wanting to say, “What’s in your memory?”
Because that was the reason for the stone—to create a memory that Samuel didn’t
want Israel to forget.
Memory is our definition, it’s who we are. Our memory, others’ memory of us. The
few footprints, artifacts and facts we may have left around. That’s it. Our
memory is, to a certain extent our identity. An identity thief, and we’ve been
hearing a lot about these, can take your social security number, your drivers
license number, maybe your credit card numbers—maybe get a check number and do
some violent to us. He can take our name, but he can’t take our identity. Our
identity is within it’s our experience.
I
know memory is sometimes divided into three categories, the habit form it’s what
we remember to do when we breathe and we eat and we walk and play golf and other
important things like that. Perceptual memories—what we reason with, but
experiential memories is what we’re talking about here. It’s the stuff that has
taken place during our lifetime and collectively defines our lives just like
there stories in the Old Testament help define the history of Israel. That’s
what makes is so tough when we lose memory. That’s what makes amnesia so scary,
the movies have made I don’t know how many different plots out of losing your
memory. You can still breath, can still talk, can still act, still drive, but
you can’t remember people events, places defining experiences. It makes dementia
tough—makes Alzheimers especially scary.
After
I finished the early service this morning a man came to me and said, “My wife
has just had that kind of diagnosis.” And he knew what he was in for in terms of
caring for her as she slowly slipped away.
We
just lost a good friend in Abilene. Betty Rey, was the city counsel woman. She
was well loved and contributed as much to the community as anyone I have every
known. Dot and I took a trip with Glen and Betty one time where I was the Bible
teacher on a Caribbean cruise and enjoyed it immensely. And I can remember how
absolutely sharp and intelligent this woman was, how quick and receptive and
gracious. I can remember the first time when we were out to dinner one night and
I realized something wasn’t quite right. And over the all too few years, I
watched her lose that memory and I felt keenly her loss, felt with Glen as he
absorbed that loss. Why? Because memory is so precious. And in a sense it’s a
little bit of a use it or lose it. I realize there are things we can’t control,
but too many of us done remember the things we need to remember. And this, at
that point, can be an act of the will.
This
story helps me appreciate that. Israel had strayed from the Lord and Samuel was
calling them back to the Lord. Now, that’s what prophets do and evidently that’s
what people do. We stray and the prophets call us back. But in this case the
people had responded. And they had agreed to try to turn away from things that
had corrupted their common life. And they agreed to start over again and to let
the Lord be the center of their existence again. And just about the time they
resolved that and they begin to give thanks and make sacrifices to seal the
deal, the Philistines, their perpetual enemies who were always there on the
edges, moved to attack them.
Now,
that is so common an experience that not to relate it to where we live would be
wrong. How many times have you made up your mind to turn something around. To
start doing it right. To get is straight. And then come under some kind of an
attack. You decide to go on a diet. You’re going tackle that waist problem. I
don’t really have one, it’s this radio they put here on my hip that causes that
problem I’ve got right there. But, every time I start a diet, one of my friends
gives a banquet. He’s the Philistine in the deal. Or you’ll start to exercise.
You’ll say tomorrow morning I’m going to get up and I’m going to walk. I’m going
to use these two legs I have, I’m going to throw my shoulders back and I’m going
to stride into the day. Then it rains. Can you call rain Philistine? There’s
always something to get in the way of those kinds of moves. You decide to get
your budget in order. You’re going to really establish a meaningful relationship
between your income and your outgo. Very few of us have had one of those. And
all of a sudden a couple of those expenses, those budget busters, that there is
no way to avoid and there was no way to predict, they are there and they are
Philistines of the situation. Well, there are a lot more serious ones, as you
know. Places where you make good resolves and all of a sudden there are friends
all around you who are playing the Philistine role. Taking you in directions you
really shouldn’t have gone and you knew you shouldn’t.
So,
this experience that Israel had right in the midst of their good intentions
being threatened by their old enemies is not that uncommon and they asked Samuel
for his prayers. And they turned to prayer. As the Philistines approached there
was some kind supernatural experience or some kind of natural experience with a
supernatural effect, and the Philistines were blown completely out of order.
Israel was able to defeat them and free itself up.
But
that was the point of greatest danger: after the victory. Because they were in
danger of forgetting it. The danger was they could take that blessing—that
momentous event, that defining experience—and let it just move into the
background and Samuel says, “No. We’re going to put a stone here, we’re going to
call it Ebenezer, we’re going to say, ‘Hither to that the Lord helped us.’” In
other words, we’re going to remember it.
One
of the things is that Samuel realized was how quickly things to recede into the
background.
I
have a good friend who was a congressman for twenty-four years and he would
probably still be there if the opposite party hadn’t gotten control and
restructured everything so that he didn’t have his votes anymore and he’s not in
congress anymore. But he told me one of these wonderful electioneering stories
that I’ve not forgotten and it seems to apply to a lot of things. Charlie said
he was out in the cotton fields one time and ran into a cotton farmer out there,
we’ll call him John and he said, “John, I hope you’re going to support me this
year.” And John stopped and said, “Well Charlie, why should I do that? What have
you done for me?” And Charlie was kind of taken aback. John had been one of the
most consistent people on his door step, on his telephone, on his email, in his
mailbox asking for things and he started reciting a few of them. And John
stopped him and said, “No, no, no, Charlie, I mean what have you done lately.”
Do
you think we’ve ever said that to God? “What have you done for me lately?”
What’d I want to remember something that happened 30 years ago for? What have
you done for me recently?
Samuel is saying that 30 years ago may be a better clue to who you are now and
what you ought to be tomorrow than anything that’s happened in recent days.
Because those things can define us—carve us out, shape us and they can also be
something we can bring to the forum and draw strength from it. It’s not just
about memory, it’s about thanksgiving. He wants them to be thankful. He realizes
the power of thanksgiving.
I
imagine there are a few things that we learned earlier or at least our parents
tried to teach us earlier was to say thank you. Look back into your childhood
just a moment. You were standing there, somebody gave you something and this
giant of a woman standing behind you says, “Say thank you.” Remember that? I can
remember when I was that giant of a man saying, “SAY THANK YOU.” Trying to teach
him something. It was important to say, “Thank you.” In fact when I realized
that I’m not very good at writing thank you notes and I try to figure out some
other way to say thank you to these people who are getting me to church in the
morning or taking me out for lunch and that are taking care of my needs here as
I come week-after-week. I can hear mother saying, “Did you say thank you?”
The
late Mac Pitt is a name that you may recognize here from coaching days, years
ago. Mac Pitt, according to Meredith House, said that gratitude was the
aristocrat of all emotions. Fine statement. But worse, a failure to be grateful
is at the top of the list of sins.
If
you read the first chapter of Romans, you see Paul get into a listing of the
things that we’ve done to separate ourselves from God. And that list gets really
ugly, it gets really nasty, but at very top of it after recognizing God himself
and giving glory to God himself, is failure to be thankful. Our parents knew
what they were doing.
A
failure to be thankful may be at the heart of most of the things wrong with us.
It may be at the heart of our problems, attitude-wise. It may be at the heart of
our problems relational-wise. It may be at the heart of our problems that we
have with ourselves in our own understanding.
So
Samuel says, not only are you going to put this stone down here so you won’t
forget, so you’ll have something you can reach back to remember, but when you do
so you can be grateful, so you can be thankful.
We’re
moving into the Thanksgiving season, of course. It has a kind of a national
dimension for us. There’s probably been similar kinds of things in other parts
of the world, in other cultures but it has a unique relationship to those of us
in the United States of America. First of all, it is source of never ending
argument as to where the first one was, whether is was at Plymouth Rock with the
Mayflower crowd or whether it was at Jamestown or whether, as some of you told
me after the 8:30, no question, it was at Berkley. Where ever it was, it was an
effort nationally to say we are going to be a thankful people. We’re grateful
for this land. We’re grateful for the provisions we have. We’re grateful for
loved ones. We’re grateful for a caring God.
Thanksgiving’s special to us. Washington, during the Revolution, when these 13
struggling, loosely related colonies were trying to gather around a Declaration
of Independence and defend themselves against what they felt was a tyrannical,
overseas King, said we need a day of thanksgiving and he called for one. Lincoln
did the same thing when again we were threatened and again the issue was unity.
How can we call our people together? How can we be thankful? And so he declared
and had a National Day of Thanksgiving approved on the forth Thursday of
November.
Now
Roosevelt during the depression, tried to get it moved up to the third Thursday
of November because he felt like if we had a few more shopping days we could
generate a little more energy to get out of the depression. But it soon moved
back to its real purpose, to be thankful. And so this Thursday, even though it
seems early, it’s actually your forth Thursday and we’re going to have a
National Day of Thanksgiving.
The
problem is, for too many people, it’s about food, family and football. Folks,
it’s really about Thanksgiving. It’s really a day when we ought to go back and
resurrect our own Ebenezer stones. It’s a day when we ought to talk about the
things we have to be grateful for and the things that have helped define us.
Sure, you can go back and talk about all the problem times, all the heart aches,
all the difficulties. But I call on you to remember those things and remember
that use it or lose it principle, to remember those things for which you can be
grateful, for which you can thank God.
The
Jews used to have, at their Passover, their Seder Meal, and they still do, a
time where they recall God’s blessings on Israel. My family and I haven’t
absorbed the Passover, but one of our Thanksgiving procedures has been to recall
those things for which we, as a family, can be grateful. They define us. Not
only do they define Israel, they define a nation.
One
of you Ethel Meers gave me a recent book called Bound Away. It’s a
history of the, a beautiful history, in fact Jim Kelly’s one of the co-others
from the Virginia Museum here. And it talks about the migrations that came into
Virginia and then left Virginia, moved out from Virginia. It could have been
titled How Virginia Settled America, at least from the perspective it’s
written from and because I was a part of that settlement I can appreciate that.
But really the thing I think hooked me most about that book is that history is
told in terms of individual stories, the stories of particular lives and
families that made the history.
Well
folks, our individual histories are told in terms of those individual moments,
where you can place an Ebenezer stone. You can find that it’s in integrating
factory in your whole life, it’s a wholeness factor in your own life.
Recently I landed here. The plane taxied as it does, and I thought I could see,
while it was still light, a hanger on the right where Hawthorne Aviation used to
be. Now when I lived here I flew out of Hawthorne Aviation. I was part of a
little operating team with a light twin-engine Beach craft. That little old
plane and I went coast-to-coast and all over this United States doing my job. I
enjoyed the plane and I enjoyed the ability to see our country from the air. But
I remembered on this day one particular event. I’d gone to Nashville; I’d been
through a series of meetings there that week. That’s back when Baptists always
went to Nashville and went through series of meetings all the time. And it was
over and I had accepted an opportunity to go down and preach at Lafayette,
Louisiana. Remember Perry Sanders? I was going to teach at Perry’s church in
Lafayette and so I had flown to Nashville in the plane and I got ready that
Saturday to fly on down to Lafayette, but the weather did not look good. So, I
kind of delayed myself around there waiting for what I felt would be a clearance
on to Memphis and then on down to Lafayette and the weather got worse, but that
wasn’t the real problem. Texas and Arkansas were playing each other on TV in
what was billed as the national championship game, came out 15 to 14 (I remember
the score for lots of reasons). Texas won, of course, but I do remember the
score. Well, the problem was I should have been in the air, long before that
game was over. Any kind of sensible pilot—seeing the weather deteriorate the way
I was able to see it through the posting around there in the pilots briefing
room said get on your way. I was watching the game. So when I finally got on my
way, when I finally filed, the weather had deteriorated south of Memphis so bad
that there’s no way I could get to Lafayette. I was going to fly to Memphis and
then go commercial down to Lafayette. But when I got in the air, established on
the airway to Memphis it was dark, it was raining, and the thunderstorms, that
were supposed to stay north of me, were in my route. Pretty soon the thunder,
the lightening was scary and the turbulence made it very difficult to maintain
my heading, to keep altitude and to make that flight with any sense of wellbeing
so I did what any sensible pilot would, I go on the radio to ask them to get me
out of there. And, by the way, ATC and those people you never see are like
angels when you get in moments like that. The only trouble is when I kept keying
the radio, it didn’t make any noise. No click, no sound, no matter what I said,
there was nothing coming back. It was a scary moment. I double checked my
navigation instruments again and sure enough the best I could tell I still had a
reading on Memphis, but no sound. There’s a procedure for that. You have
something called the transponder, you dial in the number and it lets the people
know, watching you on radar, identifying your plane through that transponder, it
lets them know that you have lost communication and that you’re going to follow
procedures, which is follow that last flight plan you had and then make your
approach.
By
the way, that’s been an analogy for my life in Christ for years. To go with the
last clearance I had. I may not be getting the current word but I’ll go with the
last clearance I had.
So, I
begin to make my way. The trouble was weather got worse and worse. I was being
tossed all over the sky from my perspective and about that time there was a huge
flash of lightening around and somehow it lit up my cockpit in such a way that I
saw my own image in the Plexiglas in front of me and it occurred to me who was
flying that airplane. Scared me to death! I was by myself. I remember it was
just a few moments after that that I had the strongest sense calm come over me
and I settled in and did what I’d been trained to do. I followed through with
the flight plan as I knew to fly it. I hit the outer marker, hit the middle
marker, I saw the lights, I touched down and I taxied in. I couldn’t even get
permission to taxi, I had to go with the last clearance I had.
When
I got there a line boy came running out and opened the door and he said, “The
people in the tower want to talk to you.” I figured they did and I figured I was
in trouble. So, I went into the FBO (the fixed base operator) there and I got on
the phone, I called him and he said, “Mr. Fletcher?” I said, “Yes, sir. Thanks
for the help.” He said, “Welcome to Memphis, hope you have a good weekend.” I
thought what a nice, nice greeting. He could’ve said, “You survived didn’t ya?”
About
that moment when I saw that flash of lightening and my own image and said I’m
all by myself. And Perry said in his preacher-y way, “No, you weren’t.” And in
that instant, when he said that, I knew he was right. No I wasn’t. All of a
sudden I understood the calm that had come and the sense of confidence in doing
what I’d been trained to do. I wasn’t alone.
I
can’t tell you how often that’s sustained me in my life. It’s an Ebenezer stone.
How tragic it would if I would let that stone sit back there and not pull that
memory forward and say, “Thank you, God.” But every one of you have a lot of
those stones gathered across your life. And this Thanksgiving, I want you to
pull them up and say thank you. What’s in your memory?
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