Have you ever just forgotten something? Not something little, but something… big?
Like last month, I was supposed to give the invocation at the Special Olympics. It is one of my most favorite days. I’ve been giving the invocation for years. But it never crossed my mind. I never showed up. It was just after Easter, that’s my excuse. I was more foggy headed than usual. Gloria Byrd says I have been forgiven.
Have you ever forgotten something…big?
Like who you are?
You probably know and love someone who is losing their memories to some form of dementia.
Or someone who has forgotten who they are because of addiction, or mental illness, or abuse.
Violence and abuse can literally beat our memory of who we are all to hell.
P.T.S.D. Post traumatic stress syndrome. One of my great uncles came back from WW II, he left something behind. He never found it. He killed himself years later. My father found his body. The casualties of war keep piling up years and years after the fact.
You know the movies and stories of those who have forgotten their identity through some sort accident or torture and the main characters come back to themselves somehow.
Amnesia and oblivion: the two great thieves of our humanity.
John’s Gospel talks about something called “the world”. He uses it in a negative sense. Like in the gospel lesson today: the disciples came from the world, Jesus guards them from the world, the world hates them, they do not belong to the world, they are sent into the world.
In this case, the world is a forgetful place. The world has forgotten who it is.
And Jesus arrives as the one who restores memory, who reestablishes identity.
There is cascading memory as the world begins to come to itself.
Jesus begins with the disciples, they were lost in the forgetfulness of the world, he calls them out and reminds them, they wake up, they come to themselves, and in turn they are sent to spread the cascading memory, restoring the identities of all who are lost in the oblivion of the world.
The memory that is cascading through the world, is that God is love, and that we are creatures of love, who live in fellowship and communion with the Creator of all, and with all of Creation. We have forgotten this and forgotten who we are, and have turned against God, against one another and against our selves. The world lives in a frenzied panic that devours everything. The cross of Christ is the world’s attempt to devour God, and the resurrection and ascension of Christ are the awakening of creation from the dark nightmare.
We, the Church, are those who have been called from, pulled out of the blood frenzy of the world. We are those who are sent back into the world, not to become forgetful again, but to remind and restore the world into our true identity as creatures of love in love with the God of all that is.
Jesus speaks of being sanctified in the truth. Being sanctified is being set apart from the world, pulled out of forgetfulness. And the truth that sanctifies is the person of Jesus, he is identity of creation returning to itself.
So as agents of God’s rescue mission, the questions always before us are: How do we restore the world in the person of Jesus? How do we remember? How do we remind? What does it look like to be creatures of love in love with God? The image set before us is Jesus. It always comes back to Jesus. He is where everything comes back together.
It is the graduation season and wedding season. A time of significant transitions for individuals and families. This parish is sending forth four graduating high school seniors today.
When I graduated from high school my grandmother sent me off to college with these words, “Jack , remember who you are.” The almighty hath spoken.
Those words are for all of us. Our graduates are signs reminding all of us to remember who we are, creatures of love who are in love with the God who is crazy in love with us.
Remember, don’t forget, remind, be that memory cascading back into the world.
Have you ever remembered something? Something really important?
Like who you are?