You can’t take it with you. That’s what they say. The story is told of a man who was so attached to his wealth that he couldn’t imagine living without it. He was visited once by an angel and he asked the angel if there were some way that he could just have his money in heaven. The angel looked at him for a minute and then said, “Sure. Just convert it all into gold bars and you can bring it along if you really feel you have to.”
Well, the man was overjoyed. He went about liquidating all his assets and turning them into gold. So when he finally died he appeared at the gates of heaven and sure enough he had suitcases full of all the gold he had collected through his life. St. Peter said, “I’ll let you in but I’ll have to check your bags first.”
The man opened them up. St. Peter looked in. “You brought pavement?”
It’s Confirmation Sunday and I want to spend a few minutes today talking about the things we carry with us. What are you carrying with you and what do we need to carry – in this life and the next?
The lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures today tells us about Moses and the people of Israel as they are preparing to go into the Promised Land. The people had been wandering in the desert for forty years. They had been liberated from slavery to Pharaoh in Egypt. They had walked on dry ground through the Red Sea. They had grumbled in the desert about the lack of food and the lack of water. They had abandoned God by making a golden calf for themselves. They had allowed themselves to be led astray by foreign gods. Most of them had made God so angry that they had died in the wilderness and it was their children who were going in. And Moses himself was not going to be able to enter the land of promise.
Even so, they had made it to the Jordan River and Moses was giving the people some final instructions before they crossed over. That’s what the book of Deuteronomy is. It’s Moses’ farewell address.
What did the people have to take with them into the land? They had gold plundered from the Egyptians before they left but not much else. The thing that they carried that was more precious than anything was their memory.
This is what Moses points to – Remember. Remember that the commandment is simple and it goes like this: Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And when your children ask you why this is the commandment above all others, remember that you were slaves in Egypt. Remember where this journey began. It began with suffering and it began with meeting God in this suffering. In days to come, this will seem like a rather insignificant detail. In days to come, you Israelites will be living in a land flowing with milk and honey. You will live in houses that you didn’t build and drink from wells you didn’t dig. You will eat the fruit of vineyards you didn’t plan and life will seem very ordinary and easy. But you have a story that tells you who you are and your children need to hear this story.
You see, Moses knew these people. These were people who could see old Charlton Heston part the waters of the Red Sea and three days later grumble about the food. These were people who could watch Moses go up on Mt. Sinai in clouds and thunder and still find a way to create their own god while he was away. He knew that grand events had a way of slipping away from them unless they had a story to tell to remind them that they were God’s people, that God was not going to let them go, and because of that they had a distinctive way of being in the world with distinctive things to do. When times got ordinary they needed reminding that God wasn’t going to let them be just anybody.
Do you hear the word that’s here to be heard? The people didn’t have to carry their gold into the Promised Land. The people didn’t have to carry their wealth into Canaan. The people didn’t have to carry their security, their iPhone, their 401k plan, their wide-screen TV or any other thing across that river. In fact, Moses worried about what the people would do when they did have these things. He was worried that they would get too comfortable and forget where they came from and who had gotten them there. Their problem was not what they lacked materially. Their problem was their spiritual amnesia.
When we forget where we have come from, we get into trouble. As a culture we are always on the edge of forgetting and we fall into familiar old traps. We begin to get overconfident…that this generation is better than any generation before…that we have finally gotten it all figured out…we have the best technology…the best know how…the best systems…the best regulations…the best testing…the best computer simulations…what could possibly go wrong?
And then BP goes wrong and we realize we don’t have the technology we thought we had to control a deepwater disaster and millions of gallons of oil wash up on our beaches. And then our culture goes wrong and we spend our days on triviality and we make celebrities of the folks on the Jersey Shore. The foundations of our civilization are only a generation or two from being forgotten entirely.
So maybe the most important thing we can carry with us is the story. It is the story of who we are as a people, of what God has done with us, of what God is doing with us through Jesus Christ…this is the thing that we must carry with us. And it is the thing that we must tell.
“Never forget who you are,” Moses says. “You are claimed by God and you are God's people.”
Then he went on to say that the Israelites could never let their children forget who they were either. They were to tell the story over and over. "Recite these things to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." Never let them forget who they are.
Today we’ve got a holy thing going on in our midst. These youth here in the front of the church are taking a big step. Last night at our confirmation retreat we talked about how the step they are taking is their choice. They are now taking on for themselves something that they were born into. All of us walk into stories we didn’t begin. But when we claim them they become our stories. We take responsibility for our part in them. That’s what they are doing today. Taking it on.
But they are also remembering a story that is much larger than them. They are becoming part of a community that stretches back all the way to those Israelites crossing over the river into an unknown land. And the only way this community has survived is by people telling their children and their children’s children what God has done for us. At the same time we tell the world, which has forgotten how it was made and where its wonder and miracles are, what it is and we invite others to claim their true identity in Christ.
The title for this sermon is taken from a book by Tim O’Brien about the Vietnam War. It is a raw book filled with the graphic and horrible tales of war. But O’Brien writes it to find some healing space in the midst of the horror. So he tells these stories and he remembers the men he served with and what they carried with them that made them alive. A letter from home. A momento from a girlfriend. Now he tells their stories.
“Stories,” he says, “are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.”[i]
Don’t ever forget that you have a story. When you forget who you are. When you can’t remember how you go from where you were to where you are. Remember that you have a story. It’s a story that began before you did. It’s a story that claimed you before you claimed it. But it’s a story that won’t let you go because it’s about a love that won’t let you go. You are loved by the God of Jesus Christ and by all these people who gather in God’s name. You don’t need to carry anything more than that. Thanks be to God.
Deuteronomy 6:1-6 (NRSV)
Now this is the commandment-- the statutes and the ordinances-- that the LORD your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, so that you and your children and your children's children may fear the LORD your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has promised you.
Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.
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