remembering
Yes, it's Sunday and yes I've promised, and fairly well honored the commitment, to publish some semblance of bible study or comment that fills the gap, supplies for our Sunday School class gatherings. Our class sessions were memorable, and as I age beyond them and covid19 goes on and on, I see them added to my accumulation of what my aunt Evalyn called her "treasure chest of memories".
Treasures. I feel that way about my memories. Most of them, I think, are clear and fairly accurate. It's getting to the point in life that I've outlived almost anyone who Knew Bubba When and might contradict or correct me anyway.
Another one who treasures memories has been Frederick Buechner. Born 1926, age 94, he's nine years older than I am, but I remember him as the middle-aged Presbyterian pastor we read so much in seminary forty years ago. I recall the professor who, first assigning by title a Buechner book that we were to read, warned us, "We'll know if you don't read it". And, reading, it was obvious how they would "know" -> -> early on in one of his books, he explains his name, which we were saying "Boosh-ner". He pronounces it "Beek-ner". Saying his name wrong in class would have been a dead giveaway. I don't recall anyone messing up.
Anyway, Frederick Buechner's books, valued and read, I may have them all, are on a bookshelf in my office at the church. As covid19 shelter in place goes on, maybe I'll read some of them again. Buechner is truly, as Tim Suttle says in the linked article, a once in a generation author, a treasure whom it's a privilege and honor to have shared the world with.
My memories often stir. Sometimes move me. Sometimes to happy remembrance. Sometimes to anger. Mostly to smiles or a tear. Now and then to wince and regret that I didn't do a better job with the situation, especially if it's a memory of my hurting someone, whether someone dearly loved, or someone who trusted me, or even, as the liturgical confession acknowledges, "sins unknown". This week I came across the below-linked article, which hit me solid, and from which I copy-and-pasted the author's quote from Buechner. I didn't say it, and he always says it better than I can, but this says well how I think:
“I’m inclined to believe that God’s chief purpose in giving us memory is to enable us to go back in time so that if we didn’t play those roles right the first time around, we can still have another go at it now. We cannot undo our old mistakes or their consequences any more than we can erase old wounds that we have both suffered and inflicted, but through the power that memory gives us thinking, feeling, imagining our way back through time we can at long last finally finish with the past in the sense of removing its power to hurt us and other people and to stunt our growth as human beings… It is through memory that we are able to reclaim much of our lives that we have long since written off by finding that in everything that has happened to us over the years God was offering us possibilities of new life and healing which, though we may have missed them at the time, we can still choose and be brought to life by and healed by all these years later. Another way of saying it, perhaps, is that memory makes it possible for us both to bless the past, even those parts of it that we have always felt cursed by, and also to be blessed by it.”
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/paperbacktheology/2011/07/frederick-buechner-on-memory.html
That's where I am with life this morning as mentally I scan memories of when I was 6, and 12, and 17, and 18, and 21, and 26, and 36, and 39, and 45, and 48, and 57, and 63, and 75. Most of the year 2018, and that little bit of 2020 before covid19; and as I look hopefully forward to 85 and maybe a bit more.
Black Lives Matter.
Our Old Testament story for this morning is one of the most moving scenes in the Bible:
Genesis 45:1-15
Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, “Send everyone away from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.
Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay. You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. I will provide for you there—since there are five more years of famine to come—so that you and your household, and all that you have, will not come to poverty.’ And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father how greatly I am honored in Egypt, and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.” Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.
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It's not quite the end, there's more, go to your bible and read the rest of the story if you wish. Jacob/Israel's meaningfully ironic blessings of each of his sons, and of his grandsons Joseph's two sons, and which grandson he intentionally blesses first, and how there came to be two half-tribes of Israel (and why). And of Jacob's death, and Joseph's death.
Confirming what I've said many times, because of all these wonderful old Sunday School bible stories, Genesis continues to be my favorite book in the Hebrew bible (Mark and Revelation in the New Testament). Next Sunday, which I'll try to remember to post tomorrow in Monday's blogpost, I think we go on into Exodus and the story of Moses and God.
Having visited Freddy Buechner this morning, I may decide to move all my Buechner books over to our Sunday School bookshelf in the parish library, so anyone who cares to take one home to read it may do so.
Black Lives Matter.
RSF&PTL
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