On Remembering

(Memorial Weekend)

Remembering has consequences. Sometimes celebration and praise.  Sometimes anger or grief. Sometimes honoring which births new commitment.

Some don’t want to remember. It’s too painful and anesthesia may be sought in addictions; and worse suicide. Images, sounds and smells dredge up fears, sadness, regret or shame. Memory may feel like a trap; no escape generating resignation. I suppose hell is hellish because it enshrines sorrow perpetually. Ugliness ever before the eyes of the soul.  We are distressed when loved ones know the death of memory in Alzheimer’s; we see them straining to recollect names and faces only to be frustrated or confused in their oblivion. It’s a disease that denies personal sacred story.

Memory also breeds joy and partially slakes our thirst for liberty. In this sense memory breaks down the prison walls of failure and disappointment; staking her claim in ground watered by grace, mercy and love. Birthdays, anniversaries, family and class reunions serve as Ebenezer stones; mile markers of God’s compassion and covenant faithfulness. “Till now the LORD has helped us.” (1 Samuel 7:12, ESV)

Remembering links generations in traditions, values, hopes and dreams. In remembrance families, citizens, parishioners and even strangers form strands anchored in the past, threaded through the present and extending into the future. For some, into eternity. Remembrance excavates our lives to foundations resting on promises. Remembrance gathers up the pieces of our experience and reconstitutes our sense of purpose. Integrity depends on this work of remembering; individual, congregational, societal.

Slain before the foundation of the world

Redemptive memory is bought with blood. Cemeteries across our land are silent testimony to the sacrifice and selflessness which seal our national identity. The fallen know that America is about one fundamental value – Liberty. Our common bond in liberty transcends race, ethnicity, creed or class. In a larger sphere, students and followers of the Lamb know that heaven’s glory radiates in part due to memory of the Cross. Eternal wounds will forever provoke resurrected remembrances of life-sustaining love. In heaven the angels will reverently puzzle what Grand Memory could possess the Redeemed?

See you at the Potter's wheel!

G.K. Sexton

Healed Memories vs. Cleansed Consciences 

“I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins."

Isaiah 43:25

On Bitterness

My scoutmaster walked with me through the forest teaching me how to identify trees by their leaves, bark, crown and fruit. We came upon one that stumped me. He plucked a small green bean-like pod and directed me to slowly bite into it. Immediately my lips began to shrivel into a pout, a mild numbness set in and an ugly taste set in. He chuckled saying, “I bet you’ll never forget how to identify a persimmon tree.” Mr. Kelly was right. To this day I have the persimmon fixed in my memory. There is a direct connection between bitterness and memory

The acid of bitterness corrodes our spirits when we give way to envy, jealousy, covetousness, resentment or regret. Bitterness can also be a fever that belies a broken heart.  If our hopes and dreams are frustrated by others’ actions or various obstinate circumstances, we can too easily lapse into a season of seething and slow-boiling anger. The disease of bitterness contaminates every area of our lives; our relationships (even with our Lord), our decisions, our health, our worldview.

Cynicism is merely bitterness taking on the air of sophistication. One need only hangout in Facebook land with the wrong crowd to be awash in cynicism. Most of the time it shows up in “conversations” about politics and opinions about pop culture. So many Monday morning quarterbacks reveal their “dark sides” when opining, their bravado often revealing their bluffs. When called on it, they confirm the presence of withering bitterness. In the aftermath of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords there was a groundswell call for more civility in public discourse; the judgment made that there was far too much vitriol in public discourse. The pundits diagnosed that political passions had become packaged in bitter diatribes leveled between various factions.

Hope deferred serves as a litmus test for where we are putting our ultimate confidence. If we find ourselves disappointed in our spouse or children, we may need to inquire “what is the source of my joy? What is robbing me of genuine gratitude? What idol(s) has bitterly disappointed me?  (After all, it’s not  as if they can actually see, hear or understand us.)  Biblical hope is a confident expectation about the future. This confidence is best placed in the character of God demonstrated in living promises. “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

When we “vote against our guts” choosing to believe God’s faithfulness we know something of what Moses experienced at Marah:

"And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, what shall we drink? And he cried unto the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet." (Exodus 15:23-25)

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Christ upon the cross is that Branch which the Father tossed into the bitter waters of our sin and misery, our disappointments in ourselves, others (and even God). In becoming sin for us he took our sin replacing it with the “oil of gladness.” In that great transaction of grace, embraced in childlike trust we realize “the joy of the Lord is our strength.” (Nehemiah 8:10)

See you at the Potter's wheel!

G.K. Sexton

“See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled;”  Hebrews 12:15 (ESV)

On Informed Passion

Jesus' Passion for His Father's house

Two polar attitudes have shown up in the Church; neither one adorns the Gospel.  Anti-intellectualism and anti-emotionalism fail to do justice to Biblical teaching concerning the appropriate balance between the mind and the heart. Both tend to leave the seeker believing that the Christian life is wooden or mushy. Neither satisfies our basic instincts about life as it was designed to be lived.

Recent participation in a Michael Card “Biblical Imagination” workshop enriched my understanding of Informed Imagination. Creativity that is distinctly Christian flows from an imagination that is honed on the whetstone of Scripture. Redeemed imagination demonstrates that all of our faculties can express the beauty of Truth as revealed in Scripture. This approach recognizes that our brokenness by the Fall  yields vain imaginations, many which are grotesque or which express futility or despair.

For the past several years the notion of Informed Passion has been center-stage in my reflections. The aegis of this preoccupation with passion was reading John Piper’s  Desiring God, Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. Fundamentally our desires are part of our hard-wiring by Design.  In the fallen world exploitation of passions moves merchandise, incites addictive lusts, craves anything that numbs pain. The operative question is “what does it mean to have emotional integrity?”

Acknowledging the presence of passion is rudimentary to emotional integrity. Psychologist may propose that passion is a function of a brain structure; i.e. the amygdala. Evolutionists posit that it is inherent in the survival mechanism, “fight or flight.” Sadly this perspective leads to a kind of determinism or raw materialistic view of life.

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord,

 and our heart is restless until it rests in you."

Augustine of Hippo

Alternatively I believe that passion is on board as a consequence of the Imago Dei  (Image of God).  Within the Triune Godhead there must be a passionate relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This passion is a component of the self-existence of the Trinity. Thus the Creator has crafted the creature in this passionate likeness. Thus passion shows up in every human interaction in marriage, parenting, leadership, business, etc.

Without passion relationships grow cold, lifeless if you will. In the leadership domain,  leaders without passion fail to hold their followers commitment to their cause.  Overplayed, passion can also ruin a relationship, burning it out for lack of pacing another’s emotional investment. Hence my tentative conclusion that passion is like a nuclear reactor.  The intense potential of the atomic reactions are regulated by the control rods.

In the Christians life, we gratefully acknowledge the gift of passion, wisely allow it to energize our faith and love of God and our neighbor, and even release it in worship under the influence of the Holy Spirit by the Word of God. My prayer is that the Lord would make me desperate for Himself.

See you at the Potter’s wheel!

G.K. Sexton

More Pondering on Passion 

“His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

John 2:17