Memory and Hope

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

 

Nehemiah 8:1-15

Matthew 22:34-40

“Este es el libro de memoria y . . ?” This is the book of memory and . . ?”

Is it esperanza/hope? Is it promesa/promise? Or is it simply memoria/memory, with nothing more to say? Those of us involved in the worship planning at Madison Square have engaged in an ongoing conversation over this question—bordering on debate—over the past year.

I think I might be winning! ;-)

I have been the one advocating esperanza/hope. Why? Because, quite frankly, I need it. A reason for hope in my life. I need that “thing with feathers,” as Emily Dickinson calls it, “that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.” I need that thing that keeps us going when we think we have no “going” left to “go.” I need that thing that inspires us to greatness, on the one hand, and puts us back together again when we are shattered, on the other.

I am guessing I am not the only one. I am guessing almost all of us have an experience of holding onto hope when even hope seems hopeless. The question is, do we find that thing called “hope” in the Bible?

The answer is yes. And then if we’re honest, maybe no. And then finally and emphatically . . . yes!

Take Nehemiah, for example.

As a book of memory—recounting a story that is in some mystical way also our story—Nehemiah takes place as the people of God return to the land of Judah from a long and tumultuous exile in Babylon, about five hundred years before the birth of Christ. The lives of this community have been shattered to the core. The liberating miracle of the Exodus from Egypt is an ancient memory. The glory days of King David and Solomon ring bitter and hollow for a people who can never hope to attain such greatness. Instead they know only war and deportation, their house of worship destroyed, their leaders vanquished, their children cut off from their culture. They have every reason to give up on hope.

But they don’t.

God raises up a new generation of leaders from within the exiled community, teaching them to sing the old songs in a strange land, to adapt the old rituals to a new worship home, to tell the old stories toward a new hope for a new day. And now that day has come. It is time to return and rebuild. And they do!

By the time we get to chapter 8 of the book of Nehemiah, two new leaders—Ezra the scribe and Nehemiah the governor—have stepped up to steer the community through this rebuilding. They have led the people in fierce debate over the direction they wish to go as a community of faith. Some of it has been bitter. All of it has been heartfelt. But they have finally come to a place of decision, and they have coalesced around a new vision, and they have pooled their resources together to rebuild the foundation of the temple. And they are ready to move forward together.

So what does Ezra, their new leader, do to get them started? He gathers the people to study the Bible! Or at least what exists of the Bible to-date. And he includes ALL of the people. Men and women. And children, too. As many as have the capacity to understand what they are hearing. And—get this—Ezra reads to them from early morning until midday, day after day, until the entire Bible as they know it has been read aloud. Now how’s THAT for a really long worship service?

As a new day is dawning for them, they come to this Bible for a word of memory and hope, listening for a Word of God speaking directly to them through the words of their Scripture. Just as we do every time we gather in worship to be formed and re-formed, according to the Word of God.

So what do they hear God saying through these words of ancient Scripture? The same thing we do? “Do not weep. Do not mourn. This day is holy to your God. Eat. Drink. As one community. And if you have something to share give it to those who need more than they have. And rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice! This is the Word of our God! As Ezra and Nehemiah sum up the entire Bible as they know it in just a few sentences, this is what they come to: This is the day that our God has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Eat. Drink. Be Merry. And SHARE!!! Period!

(That’s actually a really good Stewardship Slogan!)

Now if you are anything like me you’d like to just close the book here. Right?

But we can’t. The problem is, as much as Ezra and Nehemiah get it right in chapter eight, they get it awfully wrong if you keep on reading to chapter thirteen. In the very legitimate interest of protecting the integrity of their community’s identity in resistance to outside oppression, they give in to the temptations of xenophobia, interpreting their Scriptures as a code of purity, rather than a code of justice. They go so far as to demand that the men of Israel who have married foreign women must divorce them and leave them destitute. To the point of sending their children packing. It is one of the most shameful parts of the Bible, as far as I am concerned. It sounds an awful lot like the ways our current U.S. immigration policies separate undocumented parents from their documented children. And, in fact, there is much in the way of violence and xenophobia in both testaments that should rightly make us cringe today. And may very well have been used as a weapon of oppression against us. I know I have been on the receiving end of this.

But the truth is that any one of us can use the Bible as a proof-text for just about any position we want to hold, whether it is advocating divorce (as Nehemiah does) or prohibiting it. Whether it is demanding the oppression of women or celebrating women as the bearers of the tradition. Whether it is justifying the hatred of same-sex partners or proclaiming an ethic of fidelity and partnership, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. I had one professor in seminary who went so far as to warn us that the Bible can be hazardous to our health, pointing to the history of biblical justification for slavery as evidence.

John Calvin may be right in arguing that humanity needs Scripture to serve as a kind of “spectacles” because our inherent knowledge of God is stifled inevitably by human sin. But in light of our history as biblical people, I would add that our reading of Scripture is also stifled inevitably by human sin. It is far too easy for any one of us to take liberties with Scripture in order to justify our particular preconceived agenda. Yours truly included.

So what do we do with the Bible?

I have two words of guidance from our Reformed/Presbyterian tradition. First, we believe that Jesus Christ is the Living Word of God made flesh, full of grace and truth. And we interpret all of Scripture—every chapter and every verse—through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And lo and behold, Jesus himself, gives us the very tools for this interpretation! Coming directly from the Bible as it existed in his own time. Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. The same words Ezra and Nehemiah were teaching the people five hundred years earlier.

“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” Jesus says. “And you must love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hand all the law and the prophets.” This is the key for interpreting the entire thing. To paraphrase the great 4^th century bishop St. Augustine, “if you read any part of the Bible and it teaches you to do anything other than love God and love your neighbor, then read it again; you didn’t get it right the first time.” This is the first rule of biblical interpretation, according to the Presbyterian tradition.

The second is like it. We interpret all of Scripture in community, rather than in isolation. Trusting that together we may discern God’s Living Word more faithfully than we can separately. Trusting that others will point out when our interpretations fail to live up to the command to love God and neighbor. Trusting that others will give insight into the cultural and social limitations of our own perspectives so that we may more faithfully bear witness to God’s love for the entire world. In this way, as feminist theologian Dawn DeVries argues, the Bible becomes “the means of grace through which God’s Word is ever and anew received in the Christian community.” Whether we need a memory to remind us who we really are. Or if we come desperate for a word of hope to get us through the day.

The bottom line in the Presbyterian tradition is that our hope really is ultimately in the God to whom the book points but whom the book is emphatically not. The Bible itself tells us that the Word of God has been made flesh among us. The Word of God is a person—Jesus—and everything else must be interpreted through him. And we come to know this Living Word of God through the memories recorded in the words we read and study together in the Scriptures. The memories of real people seeking a word of hope, just like us.

So we gather on yet another Sunday around this book of “memory and hope,” sharing the stories of those who came before us. Because their story is, in a very real sense, our story. And their hope is our hope. That the Living Word of God will comfort our affliction. And afflict our comfort. And shape us even today as God’s beloved community. Both now and yet to come.

I pray it may be so.

Amen.