In times of transition, as we have observed, one can sometimes go wistful in an unhelpful sort of way. We may hear ourselves say, “But in the good old days….” Or, “Well, back in the day….” Or maybe, “We just don’t do things that way around here….” This is no good at all. Transition times – transition times, especially – need to be lived in forward gear, or the entire promising process may go straight off the rails.
So what is the value of remembering at all?
Some years ago (I’ve got a pretty good memory) I came across an article by the famous American poet, Robert Pinsky. It was an article about remembering. “Deciding to remember, and what to remember, is how we decide who we are,” Pinsky affirms. And not in some purely abstract sort of way. In the act of remembering we discover our meaning as persons, our sense of purpose as communities and individuals – “even our mission and place among the world’s nations.” “A people is defined and unified not by blood but by shared memory.” 1
It is not only poets who feel this way. Preachers and prophets call us sometimes to remember (cf. Jeremiah 6:16, etc.). So do missiologists.
That great missiologist and historian, Andrew Walls, wrote recently: “We need [memory], not only to understand where we have come from, but also where we are. It enables us to negotiate our relationships, to recognise dangers, pitfalls and opportunities. To be without memory… renders one incapable of forming assured relationships…. In other words, memory is the key to identity. It is not just that our own sense of identity is determined ultimately by memory…. [Memory] is necessary if we care to understand other people or to understand a community.” 2 And elsewhere: “The work of salvation is cross-generational, and never completed in one generation. And the generations – two millennia of them since the incarnation – are parts of a single body, and that body needs them all.” 3
Our collective memory places us within a wonderful collective story. Organizations like ours will have developed policies through the years: yet we are not defined by our policies. We have created structures, called together committees, taken decisions of one sort and another: our structures and committees do not define us either. We “negotiate our relationships,” “recognise dangers, pitfalls and opportunities,” discover our “mission and place among the world’s nations” – we “decide who we are” – in context of an underlying, ongoing, gospel-fueled story. It is not a story that we are telling ourselves, exactly: we are not its authors. We are inserted into a story authored by Another. God is telling a story in the world. God writes us into its pages.
By collective, purposeful memory, of course, we cannot learn this story in every important detail. We may remember failure: it is not about our failure. We may remember “successes”: these are not its theme. Yet we can hope to learn the genre of the story underlying our lives and our community. We will call to mind a few of its central characters. We will remember a glimpse or two of its underlying plot. We learn what sort of story we are become a part of.
We learn to identify God as “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”: what God was for them, God is for us (e.g. Genesis 50:24, Acts 7:32, etc.). We learn to identify ourselves with the likes of “Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets,” and so on. “Through acts of faith, they toppled kingdoms, made justice work, took the promises for themselves.” This is our sort of story: we are part of the same sweeping narrative (Hebrews 11:32ff., The Message).
We may identify with characters like dear old Sarah who “received power to conceive… since she considered him faithful who had promised” (Hebrews 11:11, RSV). We will meet people like Paul and, later, von Zinzendorf. “For to me to live is Christ,” said the Apostle (Galatians 2:20). “I have but one passion,” said the Count, “and it is He.” This is our sort of story, too – a story whose flaming center is simply and always Jesus.
We will call to mind characters like Luther and Skrefsrud. “The gospel wants to be preached,” said the Reformer, “in order that it may always appear above the horizon.” “To the poor [unbeliever] held captive in sin, I will cry: You have a friend in Jesus!'” proclaimed Skrefsrud. Ours is a story gripped by the gospel of Jesus Christ. It presses on to share it with the world.
We are introduced to a cast of thousands – Fran and Millie, Margaret and Paul, Dorothy, Edmundo, Leonard, Frank, Theodore, and many thousands more – ordinary people swept into the extraordinary mission of God. They are the truly saintly and the not-so-much. They are every sort of ragamuffin and every sort of celebrity – forgiven sinners, steadied doubters, the often fragile, the sometimes inspired – people like you and me. And together, we will remember, they are going somewhere. This is our kind of story. Its genre is grace; its plot is the mission of God.
Our collective remembering cannot predict the outcome of our many transitions, of course. Yet it reminds us what things are about. There is an Author. There are the promises. Ours is a story with future and purpose. Whatever else we may say, it will not be about retreat. We remember that we might press on.
2 Andrew Walls, “Documentation and Ecclesial Deficit: A Personal Plea to Churches,” in Christian Movements in Southeast Asia: A Theological Exploration, Michael Nai-Chiu Poon, ed. (Singapore: Armour Publishing, 2010), p.124.
3 Andrew Walls, The Cross Cultural Process in Christian History (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2002), p.75.
Other posts in this Transitions series: