Of Memorials and Forgetting

John 17:1-11

May 28, 2017

The reading from John this morning comes from what is known as the Priestly Prayer – the prayer that Jesus offers around the table in the upper room where he shared the Last Supper, when he knows his is about to be betrayed, when he knows what his disciples will soon know. He offers this prayer for them, for his disciples – of his time and for all time.

It’s an interesting fact of Christian life and practice that almost all followers of Jesus come to memorize the Lord’s Prayer and that almost none of us remember the words Jesus prayed at the Last Supper.

What we choose to remember says something about us; as does what we choose to forget.

Jesus prays, “protect them … that they may be as one.” Keep them together. Keep them whole, even though the world would tear them apart.

Perhaps we choose to remember, “give us this day our daily bread” because bread at least sounds easy. We know that unity, on the other hand, is difficult. It may sound as nice as bread, but we know how hard it is to achieve. We know this truth because we know ourselves.

We are fractious. We are disputatious. We are proud. And that’s the best of us … sometimes even at our best.

Unity rarely comes easily, and sometimes we humans are at our worst when we are unified. “Mob mentality” is only a well-known term because it is a well-known phenomenon, and a dangerous one. Cults are known for their unity, for “being as one,” but that’s about the only positive thing that can be said for them.

Listening to reporting on the terrorists responsible for last week’s bombing in Manchester, I was struck by the observation that young men are drawn into terror cells because they want a sense of belonging, of community, of unity. Obviously, there is a shadow side.

On the other hand, life is a long journey and, as the proverb puts it, if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. Together, we can accomplish so much more than any one of us can manage alone. We can create more. We can nourish more. We can protect more.

The whole of the gospel narrative is about creating a new kind of community in the world. The richly metaphorical writing in John’s gospel is crucial on this point, especially in the Priestly Prayer. A few verses further along than this morning’s text, Jesus continues in the part of the prayer that I call the “goo goo g’joob” section (you know: “I am the egg man; they are the egg men; I am the walrus” … anyway):

20 ‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, ²¹that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 

The community that Christ founds – the church – will be marked by this spiritual unity, this unity of spirit. Just as Jesus is one with the Divine, so shall we be one with him. If, as the apostle Paul put it, the church is the body of Christ in the world, then the only way that followers of Jesus can have “a personal relationship” with Jesus is through the church. The only way to “know Jesus” in the world is by knowing the community gathered in his name as it tries to follow his way in the world.

The whole thing gets tricky as we try to follow that way. Jesus prays for protection for his followers because they remain “in the world.” He understands that the world will no more welcome those who try to live as he lived than it welcomed him.

He understands the opposition that has arisen against him, and he knows the only options left to him that night are to run away or confront an overwhelming power that seeks to crush him. He knows that his followers will soon know this, as well.

Jesus prays, “Now they know … protect them.” Now they know the truth, and, while the truth will set them free, the promise of liberation in this world is always fraught.

This prayer is about living liberating community in a world where freedom is a dangerous thing and authentic community a rare one.

The whole long struggle over how to remember the American Civil War testifies to that danger, and underscores, as well, the timely importance of what we remember and what we choose to forget. In the remarkable speech given when monuments to leaders of “the Lost Cause” were removed from their pedestals in New Orleans, that city’s mayor, Mitch Landrieu, asked,

“why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks; nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame … all of it happening on the soil of New Orleans.”

Those markers were removed in New Orleans because the city recognized, at long last, that what we choose to remember about the past shapes how we act in the present and informs how we create the future.

The weekend of Memorial Day seems like a good time to acknowledge that truth. There are memories that we hold onto that hold onto us. There are pasts we cannot get past until we put them in their proper place.

Individually, every one who grows into adulthood recognizes this truth, and the entire profession of psychological counseling rests on it. But we are not in group therapy today; we are the church of Jesus Christ gathered in worship. Thus, for the moment, I am less interested in personal stories than I am in community histories.

And I am wondering, what stories of the past do we need to reconsider? What monuments do we need to remove? What forgotten stories do we need to memorialize properly?

I’m thinking about this on several levels. We’ve been talking this year about the Reformation, and as we think about reforming the church again and anew, what monuments do we need to remove? What forgotten stories do we need to resurrect?

How about on the broader community level here in Arlington and the metro area?

What about at the state and the national level?

*****

Let us pray: God of our time and of all time, teach us how to use well the time we have been given. Give us the wisdom to honor the stories of our forebears and to learn well from them, and open our hearts to your spirit calling us to create the future you imagine. Guard and protect us as we walk you way in your world, and, as together, we try to build the Beloved Community. Amen.

John 17:1-11

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

”I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.

And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.