Isa.43: 18-25; Mark 2:1-12                             Radical Relationship 3:

       The Art of Creative Remembering!                 E/GR   Feb.19/06

1. Radical Relationship.  The people of Israel are excellent at helping us look at that - especially today?s art of creative remembering.  Isaiah is speaking to people who are slaves ? backs and spirits broken.  His concern is they?re walking facing backwards all the time.  If they?re walking like that, what?s likely to happen?  They?ll fall flat on something!  They can?t get the past out of their minds.  The verses just before tell of the Exodus.  It was huge in the lives of Israel, told at the great holidays, to remind the people of how God acted to save them in incredible odds.  This story is told to remind them what God has done - so they?ll look for God at work in their lives right now and into the future.  But in their looking back, they?ve forgotten the second part, the looking for God at work now.

2. So God says, ?Do not remember,? and repeats ?Do not consider.?  Consider has the meaning of ruminate here.  Great word.  You know the times we chew something over and over and over till the flavour?s all gone.  We?ve no intention to move on but to go over and over it till we get exhausted and so does everyone listening.  The people of Israel are going over and over the past and how great things used to be.  They can?t see that God wants to do a new thing.  And this new thing is so spectacular it?s like a river running through a desert, or a path cut through a dense wilderness forest.  But they?re stuck yearning for the past, longing for a happier and simpler time, when they didn?t need to worry about their children?s future, didn?t need to work such long hours, when life wasn?t so confusing and lonely.  The good old days.  Until they can let go of that, they?ll never see the new thing God is doing.

3. Another reason God might want them to not remember is our selective remembering!  How many of you have listened to 2 different versions of the same event and gone ? whoa were they both there?  Especially around broken relationships.  They?re not lying, it?s how they remember and interpreted what was happening.  Well the people of Israel are no different.  They thought of the Egyptians as their evil slave master.  But later when Israel fought Babylon, Egypt was her ally.  The lives of the prophet Jeremiah, Mary, Joseph and Jesus were saved as refugees in Egypt.  People or nations are not evil, though they sometimes make evil choices.  We need to let God move behind us to break up the old patterns of our remembering and allow us to begin anew.

4. It?s hard, isn?t it for people, communities and even nations to let go of our past and painful memories?  Isaiah offers us the antidote.  Do not remember.  Let go of the past.  Most of us have had difficult times that could be destroying our present lives.  We need to let go of all that has the power to hurt us.  That?s what forgiveness is about, letting go of the power of something or someone to hurt us.  In order that we can participate with God to do a new thing.  What new thing could God create in and through you and me if we could bless the past, say a prayer over it and release it to God - just let it fly away!

5. Letting go often requires creative forgetting!  I went into one of the learning circles with great trepidation.  The learning facilitator was someone I had a difficult relationship with in the past.  How would that affect our week together, and my grade at the end of it?  I decided to bite the bullet and speak to him on the first evening.  I asked him if there were things from our past we needed to talk about in order to work together this week.  He smiled quietly and said, ?I find in things like this, I have a very short memory!?  And the past was indeed gone.

6. There?s a great scene in the movie ?When a Man Loves a Woman? that shows that letting go.  Meg Ryan?s alcoholism and abusive anger have left her family devastated.  Meg lets an incident where she hits her little girl be the wake up call that enables her to participate fully in AA.  In the scene where she tells her story six months after her sobriety, she takes responsibility for her actions.  She tells of her love of her husband and children and her hope to have a second chance.  As a surprise, her husband came back to hear her and together they admit the mistakes they?ve both made.  Because they are willing to change old patterns and let go of the many hurts they?ve both received, there is now a chance for their marriage.

7. Forgetting, letting go is very hard.  One of the reasons it?s so hard for the Israelites to do that letting go is that they?ve stopped letting God help.  They?re no longer giving thanks to God or living with wonder because they?re not even seeing the things to give thanks for.  They?re not looking for the new thing God wants to do.  They?re not letting the healing of the past happen, because they?ve built this barrier to healing love and newness.  They?ve grown weary with God, even though God?s not making demands on them.  Simply wanting to be involved in their lives, to help them to bring newness and life and to deal well with change.

8. Because change life does!  All we have to do is look at a family album.  That fresh-faced young man is now a great uncle!  That tricycle rider is driving to her first job.  What is a faithful attitude to change?  Isaiah encourages us with these words.  ?Cease to dwell on the days gone by and to brood over past history.  Here and now I will do a new thing: this moment it will open like a beautiful rose.  Can you not see it??  The old events of God are to be celebrated, not worshipped.  The past had some great moments, yet the present is to be even better.  The prophet is asking the people of God to turn from memory to hope.

9. Hope ? how could the people of Israel, enslaved in a far off land, dare to hope? How can we slaves to a culture that tells us if we just buy the right thing we?ll be happy, trapped in a world of fear and violence, dare to hope?  Because it is our choice to hope or despair.  The opposite of depression is not happiness, but ability to hope.  I?ve met people who told me they could no longer hope.  It?s one of most tragic statements I ever hear.  Because if they?ve lost that ability, they?ve lost their own power to shape their lives.  What we believe about the world, the place of God in it, our ability to make choices, to trust, and to change affects radically how we respond to life, to each other.  Which of course affects how others respond to us!  Opening up or closing down.  When we?re expecting positive things to happen we will see them.  If we?re looking for the places where God is at work, we will find them.  If we believe we can choose how we react in any situation, we will shape our lives.  Dare we hope?  Dare we not hope?

10. Is there a healthy looking back?  Of course.  History is about looking back in order not to repeat mistakes in the future.  That?s the difference, isn?t it, looking back in order to change the future.  And our personal lives can be the same.  A man whose wife died on Dec. 24, 1998 had every reason to dread and hate Christmas.  On the first anniversary of her death he brought a check for $1224.98 into his minister.  ?Please use this to help people.?  Each year he brings the amount that commemorates the date of her death.  To remember and to know that the money can do what she no longer can do.  Bringing hope to many lives.

11. But the most incredible part of creative remembering - God?s part.  No matter what new thing God does, Israel seems ungrateful.  God seems to grow weary and somewhat annoyed.  Can God really be expected to not remember their sins?  Then the most amazing statement in the Bible.  God says, ?I will not remember - for my sake!?  God?s desire to be in relationship with us is so strong that God will let nothing get in the way.  It?s like God is saying, ?If I remember I?d likely be angry!?  This is great advice! God stubbornly chooses to love, to not remember our sin and to bring healing and hope.  I will not remember, says God.  I read a Hasidic parable this week that further expands our parable from last week about how God relates to us in love - choosing not to remember our turning away.  A wayward son ended up in another country.  Finally after many months, his father sent a family friend to ask him to return.  The remorseful son could only reply, ?Tell him? tell him I cannot return home.  To this message the father responded through the friend. ?Come as far as you can, and I will meet you for the rest of the way.?  God?s very good at creative remembering, and says to us, ?Come as far as you can.   I will meet you for the rest of the way.?  Can we do any less?