Following is an edited transcript of the message by Bishop Sandra Steiner Ball at the 2023 Susquehanna Annual Conference Celebration of Ministry Service held on Friday, May 19. You can view a video of the service here. Her message begins at 50:50.
Scripture: Deuteronomy 6:1-12 and Ephesians 2:19-22
Oh Holy Spirit, you have been moving mightily in this space and in us and through us... As we come together and celebrate we give witness to the movement of your spirit through years and years and years of ministry represented by the persons gathered in this place and gathered with us online. Oh Lord, continue to pour out your Holy Spirit upon us. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts together be acceptable in thy sight, oh Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Ever wonder why we and the church do what we do? Well, if you don’t wonder, I can tell you that our children wonder about it. They watch us. They listen to us. Sometimes they imitate us. Just the other day, I caught my little granddaughter, Sloan; she was in the room and she started clapping and making noise. Why? Because there was a game show on TV and they were clapping and screaming and she was imitating exactly what she was hearing.
Children are very curious and they ask questions about all kinds of things. Now, as a pastor you know it can get pretty tricky, those children’s messages! Right? And sometimes those questions strike fear in your heart, like that question, “Do you know what Mommy did last night?” Ooooh! [You usher them over quickly] and say, “Come over here and whisper it in my ear.”
As a pastor I’ve gotten questions about God and about Jesus, I’ve gotten questions about the Bible and the cross and the flag, and about the cup and the bread and the juice, and the songs, and the prayers, and the robes and stoles, and people... and the list just goes on and on. Lots of these questions lend themselves to answers that draw upon sacred memory.
Remembering.
It is an important practice for the church and for followers of Christ. For the persons gathered in this Celebration of Ministry and who are looking forward to retirement, this remembrance seems important. I heard at the tables at dinner people remembering their first church, their first baptism, their first wedding, the first mission project they did together. Memory is important. It must be important, not just for us but for the whole of the church, because those words “Remember”, “In Remembrance” appear on our altars, and on our communion tables and in our liturgy.
Remember.
Why is it so important to remember? What is so crucial about recounting what God has done for us in the past?
Now when I talk about remembering and the importance of remembering I’m not just talking about knowing the facts and the figures of early historical moments. Although those historical moments are important. Certainly, some of the retirees remember well and celebrate their day of ordination, the day of moving into their first appointment, or giving their first sermon as the pastor of a congregation. Those of you being commissioned, you’ve spent a great deal of time trying to get the facts right—the facts around our founder John Wesley, his brother Charles, learning about the Holy Club. Getting your facts and dates rights around the importance of Francis Asbury, Thomas Coke, Harry Hosier, Richard Allen. The history of the jurisdictions; the history of EUB and the evangelical association; the history of that central jurisdiction…
These historical facts are important to our identity as United Methodists and this history is something that we should know, and it should be appreciated, and it should be taught. It is part of our identity. It’s a part of us that we need to wrestle with, because as we deal with those historical facts and our identity, we discover that we need to do some confession. We need to ask for some forgiveness. And even today, we are still about the work of redeeming some things in our past.
This kind of remembering is important, part of our identity. But we also need memory that leads to our spiritual growth and formation; a remembering that is a total and truly re-membering—intertwining us with the movement of God’s Spirit here and now.
Why remember?
Certainly not for nostalgia’s sake. The church is pretty good at practicing nostalgia. In our minds eye—which by the way is sometimes accurate and many times is not—we can remember the sanctuary being packed and the sermons that brought people to their knees and the old gospel hymns that perhaps if we would just sing them again today at every service, the church would be full and happy and just like it was in the good old days. No, this kind of remembering doesn’t help us. In fact, this kind of nostalgia can put us in a place where we become stuck. The things in the past can appear larger that they really are, resulting in our blindness to the needs and the hopes and dreams of the world today.
So as we celebrate ministry this evening why remember? And what do we mean as we point to remembering as part of what we are called to do in the church?
Remembering is a sacred practice of remembering what God has and is and will do with us and through us. Why remember? Because it brings to life our relationship with God and Christ. That is something known and something new. It recognizes that something was planted and is now in the process of both growing and blooming and becoming new and improved.
Remembering.
It is a sacred practice that deepens trust and gives hope for what God will do in the future. One of the best examples of sacred remembering is to be found in the book of Deuteronomy. In fact, the subtitle to Deuteronomy could probably be, ‘Remember to Re-member.’
Remember to re-member.
As the book of Deuteronomy begins, we see that the children of Israel are about to cross over into the promised land. They reach the border of this land and they are afraid to cross, even though they know and have experienced how God brought them out of Egypt. In their hearts and in their minds and in their spirits they became disengaged. Their membering with God, forgotten. And they believed that after all that God had done to save them, if they walked into this strange new land, they would be destroyed. So they refused to cross.
The failure of people to be membered with God, and to remember the promises and actions of God who brought them out of bondage resulted in the people of Israel wondering in the wilderness for 40 years. I think we know something about the wilderness. They wondered for forty years and in this time a new generation was born and the old generation passed away.
Now, the children of Israel were on the border of the promised land once again and they were preparing to cross into this new, strange, but promised land. Here they are, in the midst of transition. Leadership was being passed from Moses to Joshua, for Moses the ‘known leader’ would not be crossing with them. They were in for something new and the people were fearful. They did not trust that their lives would be improved. Moses knew. Moses knew it was time, time to remember, and so what we hear in chapters 6, 7, and 8 are Moses’ final instructions and wisdoms. The key, Moses says, “Remember”
Remember!
Moses tells them things are going to be different in this new land. The people will be different, they will not know the one true God, and they may be worshiping different things. I think we know about that too.
So here is the key to making the way in this new opportunity that has been promised you, Moses says, “Hear this. The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words...in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home, and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise up. Bind them as a sign on your hand, wear these words on your forehead and write these words on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” In the land promised to you by God, you are going to prosper, Moses tells them, your life and experience will be improved. But in your prosperity, Moses reminds them, do not forget.
If you look ahead in Deuteronomy chapter 8, Moses says, remember—do not forget who brought you to the promised land. Do not forget who improves life. It is not you, yourselves, your own doing. Do not forget that the Lord brought you and it is the Lord who prospers you. Teach this to your children. Teach them to remember. Tell your stories. And the Jewish community put into place the practice of sacred memory and remembering. Many Jews wear boxes on their foreheads with the scroll that keeps the words that remind them that they are both remembered and membered with—counted as one with—the Lord. A mezuza is affixed to the doorpost of many a [Jewish] house and there is the sacred practice of touching this container that contains the words, “The Lord is our God.” In touching it, going in or coming out, in the knowing of these words, people are reminded of who and whose they are.
What is it that we can do to remember day in and day out that the Lord is our God? The Passover meal is the sacred practice of remembering, and a time of telling the story of the escape from Egypt and the eventual crossing over to the promised land. A time of remembering what is known and what is new as they commit and dedicate themselves to another year of walking with and being led by God into the future. A future that they do not know, but a future that they can surely trust, for the Lord is God and they are God’s people.
And now we, as followers of Christ, have the same promise. The same God is our God. A we have a meal that goes along with a most powerful story of a God who became incarnate, who lived and walked on this earth, who lived our life, and died our death, and rose again to new life. A most powerful story that we partake in often, participate in often, to remember the night in which Jesus gave himself up for us, to remember a night when Jesus took bread, and to remember that just as there is one loaf, we are one body in Christ. We remember and are re-membered at that sacred table as the body of Christ in the sacred meal. It is a process of re-membering.
So, what more can we do to participate in the sacred act of remembering? One of my favorite parts of the Passover meal is when a child asks this question, “How is this night different from any other night?” At the asking of that question, all the adults get to tell the story of freedom, and their stories of how the Lord has and is delivering them, celebrating what was known and celebrating what is new. And each year what is shared and heard, a part of the story at least, is different. It is not the same testimony. For God has, is, and continues to act in every person’s life.
Those celebrating retirement, those celebrating commissioning, clergy and laity celebrating God’s continued call on their lives, maybe we need to think a bit more deeply about how we teach these things to our children—all of God’s children, children of all nations, ages, and races. How do we best imprint the life-giving, life-improving story of the Lord our God and his Son, Jesus Christ, on all those who God puts in our paths?
We again stand at the border of the promised land. All of us. God promised to us long ago, that God would bless, protect, and be with all God’s children. We are being asked today to cross over into a new future, a future with hope, a future with life, a future where we will prosper and grow, become new and improved— as long as we remember.
So remember.
Share the story. It is something known and yet something new, something life-giving. Bring your best gifts, and the best of who you are to imprint the story, God’s great story, the known of sacrifice and love that makes way for resurrection and new life today and for the future. Teach and inspire. Together we can, we are called to, lift up a whole new generation who know, believe, and yes, swallow, the story of Jesus Christ and teach their own children to remember. Together we can grow up a whole new generation who will celebrate with us what is known and what can be improved and new in the life-giving power of Jesus Christ. We can. And if we don’t who will?
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You must understand after the ascension of Jesus; the people were spellbound at the preaching of Peter. And in response to his preaching, they wanted to know, “What shall we do?” For the first time those who listened to Peter believed they could change. Maybe they believed they could live transformed lives in meaningful ways.
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