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most of the time when we think about memories were thinking about things that happened in the past. Sometimes these memories are beautiful events, stories that are shared by multiple people and told again and again. What

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kind of stories do you have in your life that are most important? I have a lot of stories like that. There's the story of the ducks that shrank the first time it rained and then there's the

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story about my brother scott worrying about whether he would blow up into a blueberry. Guess what movie he had watched at the wrong age. Then there's another story that Bill, my husband likes to tell about

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being missionaries in the Philippines and being on a boat and someone on the boat once told us about the prior missionary who had come and was on the same boat and went underneath the, into the ocean and

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never came back, nope. Not even a year later. There was one time I unlocked my gold Nissan Sentra when I was in seminary and saw a pyramid of stuffing in the back seat. A mouse

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had decided to move into my car for the winter . These stories are all pretty good even when I run by them in passing. But believe me, they're even better than that when you hear the whole

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version and if you were me, you would love them and appreciate them even more. That's because they are part of my family's treasure trove. They are the memories that unite us, the stories we love

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to tell and argue about the details they bring us together every time we gather. Of course there are bad memories. Two, I was kind of surprised this past week to see uh, to see a

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kind of silver lining. I hate to admit it , but there was a kind of silver lining to the vulgar, sexist, misogynist, abusive comments that donald trump consistently and unrepentantly makes about fellow human beings

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. Also commonly known as women. The new york times on saturday was full of stories of women who had swallowed memories of harassment and abuse, who are now remembering out loud to those who love them sometimes

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to those who are listening to them publicly on television shows in the street. It's a little overwhelming frankly , all of these stories trump's transparency has finally cracked the dam, holding back a sea of bad memories

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that are now spilling out this remembering those scary and dangerous for all of us, I hope and believe is going to restore us to some kind of wholeness as women, as men, as those in relationship

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to one another, as communities comprised of men and of women who live work and worship in partnership, reflecting together the image of God Are we ready as ministers and future ministers to help people remember even the

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hard things so that they can behold again. Saint Augustine is famous for celebrating memory. He marvels at its power, which he thinks is even more awesome than quote, the heights of the mountains, the

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huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the extent of the ocean and the courses of the stars. He writes in his confessions . The power of memory, he says, is

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an inner chamber, large and boundless. And yet he marvels. We do not stop to wonder at its expanse to admire it. To be astonished by it. He complains in a nutshell Augustine marvels about

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what memory tells us because what it tells us, he says is too narrow for the mind to contain . He says, the mind is too narrow even to contain itself not great. The mind is too

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narrow to contain itself. That's kind of an amazing statement I think built within it, is an awareness of the big story of wholeness, but within us as an awareness of our participation in that which is

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eternal. It's by way of memory. Augustine thinks that we can escape the confines of the present moment , remembering the past and anticipating the future through our remembering and our pre meme bring, as for some

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reason, I decided to call it in this sermon experimentally, were able to be present with each other in each particular moment in time, without being constrained by the limits of time itself, jurgen molten associates

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the awareness of eternity that makes memory possible with christian hope. Hope, he suggests is remembering forward to what God has promised. It is our hope, he says, that enables us to be wholly present

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in the here and now. Because pre meme bring snatches us in quote the midst of time from the transient and annihilating workings of time and it does this woman thinks in a way that doesn't remove us from

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the present moment, but actually allows us to participate more fully in it. Amazing isn't it? The memories we have of where we come from and where we are going free us to be fully present right

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now in this place because they remind us that this time, this world and these mortal bodies participate in something greater than themselves and are therefore not only made of dust, which they are but are also of

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critical importance and value. Martha knows this, I think We often give Mary all the credit for understanding the big picture for choosing what is better Luke. Chapter 10 we sent Martha back to the kitchen for

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another platter of food. But john Levin shows us that Martha very well gets this eternity thing. See She's The one, it doesn't surprise us who coordinates the meals, the servants, the household so that

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everyone else can gather at her place to remember in pre member and contemplate eternity with Jesus, you know the type. And if we play a trick and begin with the end of John 11, the end

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of the story that was red, we see perfectly clearly that Martha is outstanding at the work of christian hope ATP remembering what has been promised when Jesus asks her following the death of Lazarus, if she believes

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she comes back with nothing short of an apostolic confession . Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the messiah, the son of God, the one coming into the world even in the moment of her

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grief. Even at this point where she is expressing profound disappointment that Jesus did not show up in time to heal her brother. Martha refuses to forget that this present moment participates in an eternal reality, so

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she refuses to cease hoping even in these anguishing circumstances . I know that my brother Lazarus will rise again in the resurrection on the last day, Martha assures Jesus, who seems a bit concerned, I think

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that his delay has in some sense weakened her faith , humorous dynamic. I think in an otherwise very serious story, is that Jesus seems to be asking Martha if she believes he can raise Lazarus today,

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not at some time in the future. I say it's humorous because we know of course that jesus is all about to jesus is about to call Lazarus out of the tomb, but Martha acknowledging the fact that

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Jesus timeline is apparently different than she had hoped resorts to remembering only ahead on the last day, she affirms my brother Lazarus will rise. All will be well, not today, but at some point,

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I still believe, even though you didn't come when I called you, this is what we say, isn't it? We christian E types, we ministerial types. This is what we say when God doesn't

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seem to come through, isn't it? So what we do is people of hope For, I know the plans I have for you. God tells Jeremiah , plans for your welfare and not for harm,

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plans to give you hope in the future, but I'm not going to really show you what those are for 70 years or so. Mhm. We don't know when exactly those plans will kick into place.

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We remind each other Clearly later than all of us might have wished. So we'll keep on keeping on , we say, we'll just keep on praying that prayer, we've been praying for over 2000 years,

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asking for God's kingdom to come to earth as it is in heaven, pledging ourselves to keep seeking God's will. It will be done with Martha. We've had to shift into the kind of long view of

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how God works in order to remain hopeful in order to continue believing. On the last day, I believe Lazarus will rise, Martha confesses and this seems faithful enough for goodness sake. Given the circumstances,

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I mean, how much more can we expect further to say, given that Lazarus has already been in the tomb for four days and Jesus has as my father used to put it, dragged his heels in

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, making his way there. What's a bit humorous is that Jesus seems a bit impatient with Martha's answer . I think he wants Martha to believe he will heal Lazarus right now. Martha a few days ago

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did actively believe that Jesus could heal her brother in the here and now, because she is hoping what God will do in the future. Martha believed that God would do something for her brother in the present

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. She believed God would help Lazarus by way of her friend and her Lord Jesus himself. She believes that, she says that jesus is the messiah and she starts off in this story believing that this means

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something not only for the future, but also for the here and now. This is precisely why she sends word to jesus, calling on him to come and lay his healing hands on her brother's body.

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Day after day, she waits by that window, her hope for this world fading as Lazarus becomes more and more ill, he becomes sicker and sicker and finally dies, Jesus does not come through. And

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so Martha nimbly shifts to a more futuristic lee oriented hope. When jesus tells her that her brother will rise, she interprets this to be about resurrection, that will occur at the end of time, but

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this seems to frustrate Jesus. Come on Jesus, what can you expect? You're the one who didn't show up, we believed, but you didn't come when we believed you would. So we shifted to

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the long view of how you operate in the world and now you want us to believe you are acting in this world at this very moment. You want us to think of the promise of resurrection as being

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applicable to the here and now, frankly, Jesus , it would have been a lot easier to believe this if you had just come when we called you as you seem to have promised. I think Jesus

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doesn't want Martha to lose her conviction that what sheep remembers about the future also has bearing on the present moment and our present circumstances. Perhaps he was concerned that she had given up on hope when he saw

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her running out to meet him. When he was still two miles away from the house, she greeted him breathlessly with the honest grief build pronouncement, Lord , If you had been here, my brother would

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not have died. Martha, the one who hopes the one who believes, the one who remembers and pre members, doesn't mince words when it comes to communicating what she feels and what she expects. This

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woman, among her many gifts of leadership, knows how to pray as Calvin instructed us, out of quote, an urgent sense of want and desperate need . It is a prayer of lament that she offers

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. Jesus lament is the form hope takes, I think when what has been promised has not yet been delivered. Far from giving up on hope, Martha's cry to jesus is the strongest possible affirmation of it

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. If she had given up, she shouldn't have run out to me, she wouldn't have run out to meet him. She would have been waiting in the kitchen till they arrived, maybe humming the old

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him. Trust and obey for there's no other way . Mhm. There's an interesting medieval tradition of painting ST Martha with a dragon. I'm no expert on medieval art, but I've seen lots of pictures and

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museums of Saints with dragons. Look at my colleague , Ellen, Galinsky, nodding to talk to you about this. Gotta get under this. Most of the Saints are men and they are dressed in armor

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, holding blood dripping weapons with dead dragon carcasses lying around. The. Pictures of Martha with the dragon are different. Marsa is never wearing armor and is usually in bare feet or maybe wearing some dainty sandals

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inappropriate for the task of dragon slain. She is clothed in flowy white garments, her long hair curly and loose blowing in the wind, which I think probably is meant to symbolize Ruak the spirit of God

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. There is no weapon and no blood, but only the maternal scolding finger just like that. That's how she looks, that fish. And underneath the finger, the serpent, the dragon's face is turned

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up, looking at her the way a puppy might look at her mistress after being scolded for getting on the good chair. Yeah, if you had been here, if you had been here, my brother

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would not have died Now, I won't go so far as to say that the dragon is jesus, but what I think the dragon might be. Mhm . As we look at this text and consider the

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story and then look at the painting through the story , good protestant tradition, right? Look, we look at things through scripture, I think what might be going on is that Martha is refusing to give

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what is happening in the present moment over to the confines of time. He's resisting, she's resisting giving up on hope, mhm resisting. There's something more that we participate in she knows because eternity surrounds us

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and we have access to it because we remember and we remember and thereby are able to lay claim to the present moment and circumstances as a moment that really matters in the whole scheme of things and of course

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what we remember and remember as christian people of hope has everything to do with Jesus, what God has promised us in and threw him, his life abundant , is healing from sin, is victory over death

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is forgiveness and resurrection. What Jesus himself has promised is that he will never leave us or forsake us . What he promises that he will come again and take us to himself. What he promises is that

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even though he has delayed, it is not too late to raise Lazarus from the dead in this life , in this world and on this day, this is quite a thing to hope for given that it

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hasn't happened yet for the healing of this land of this world, of our lives for the whole and complete end to the racism. Sexism, Classism, Hetero sexism, Hetero sexism, jealousy, narcissism and

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self deprecation that emerged at the root of our Brokenness for lions and lambs to lie down together and everyone to join in hands and unity around the table and all to be fed and each to be fed by

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the hand of the other. Do we believe this ? If we do we'd better remember to stand in the wind of the spirit and to get out our scold the finger because there are going to be a

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lot of dragons to ward off. They are the voices that tell us we have to settle for a hope that it is only about the future because Lazarus is already dead and it's too late. They are

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the Principalities and powers that try to convince us that what we believe will cash out in the world to come, but not in this one. These are the dragons that encourage us to forget, cooperate,

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smile and survive rather than to remember insist lament and thrive like the servant in the garden who was so convincing to eve. These dragons lure us into a space where we can forget God's promises, lower our

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expectations and minimize our disappointment. These sin filled spaces are much safer for us than dealing with the expanse of memory, super abundant grace and unconditional love. The characterized eternity Sin is relatively manageable. It's hope

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that will take you out. Yes, Lord says Martha. Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the messiah, the son of God, the one coming into the world. Can we say this

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with Martha while honestly facing the disappointments and griefs of this time of this world? If we can ward off the dragons make this claim, we may well