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How far back can you remember? I asked that question because our faculty members who take turns preaching across this fall semester are considering every Tuesday in this chapel , the theme which has been assigned to us for

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the fall. The theme of memory. The old and new testaments are both in so many ways. Books of Sacred memory and the life of the Church is a series of footnotes on that memory. And

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you were here tonight, those of you who are here for the first time because of a specific relationship with that sacred memory that has formed you and prepared you for this very moment. So on this occasion

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when I'm the first batter up for this series on memory, Mhm. I want to start with that question. How far back can you remember? I've been thinking about that question myself and I think that

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I can remember as far back to a moment when I was just a toddler, maybe two years old . I was wearing a little pair of shorts and a striped T shirt and I was outside in our

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backyard in Orangeburg south Carolina. And I remember hearing some popping noises from somewhere beyond my yard. And my mother and my older brother, who was probably about 12, came running out of the house and

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pointed up at electric wires beyond our yard that seemed to be dancing back and forth. And I wanted to laugh at the site of wires dancing, but they scooped me up with great urgency and they carried

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me inside. Had a transformer blown up? Had a truck hit a pole? Was there a storm brewing that threatened to blow all those wires down? I don't remember any of that, but I remember

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that incident that may be as far back as I remember. How far back can you remember? I've talked to a person or two who have sworn to me that they can remember their baptism as infants,

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two or three months old being held there at the font while someone pours water over them. They can remember it. They say, I don't know about that. I do know that a faithful memory learning

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it and being shaped by it over time puts us in touch with a story and a purpose that is grander than we are. Some of the ways we capture that memory or a matter of mystery, frankly

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, that's for sure. Maybe without any purposeful formation at all in your family or in your community, something nonetheless happened by which you encountered the impulse to know deeper this God of the ages. But working

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that memory is also in great measure. I believe , a matter of discipline, which is what we try to practice here in our curriculum in the rhythm of these seasons and years together, We try our

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best to cultivate the story of this God and our place in that story by remembering back as diligently and completely and faithfully as we possibly can. I love the way that the reverend brian McLaren has put it

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, he's a christian pastor who was named a while back by Time magazine As one of the 25 most influential evangelical pastors in America. He laments though, how are religions often stand for the very opposite of

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what their founders stood for? We feel, he says as if our founder, he's speaking of jesus , has been kidnapped and held hostage by extremists. His captors parade him in front of cameras to say

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under duress things that he obviously doesn't believe as their blank faced puppet. He often comes across as anti poor, anti environment, anti gay, anti intellectual , anti immigrant and anti science and that's not the

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jesus. We meet in the gospels, he says , and I believe he's on to something. I predict that if your theological education here is successful, it will be in great measure because we will jog

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your memory a bit of who this jesus is, as diligently and as faithfully and as completely as we possibly can. If you're entering seminary as I entered seminary, quite frankly with the general memory that jesus

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is more likely than not to be a well mannered white Euro, american presbyterian, then maybe we'll point you toward a larger, better memory of him. If you're coming here suspecting maybe that joan of Arc

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was Noah's wife or if the epistles were female apostles , then maybe we have a lot to do, to enhance your memory of the new testament or of church history. The faith after all, is altogether

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harder to grasp without remembering. Well, that whole story starting in the book of genesis and winding through this long journey with the patriarchs and the people of Israel and the prophets and of course the life and

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death and resurrection of jesus christ and then the disciples and the saints across history and all the way out unto this very moment. It won't just be memory work, not in the strictest sense, it will

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be by the grace of God, an immersion into the deep life giving waters of memory until in hearing , for example, about Abraham or sarah or judas or ST Augustine or saint Teresa or john Calvin or

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martin Luther or martin Luther king, you finally light up and say, aha, that's my story too . Yeah, I'm interested in are cultivating together here a rich and deep memory of a big god,

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a memory that goes back as far and as diligently and it's completely and it's faithfully as possible because for too long, people of faith have been divided by memories which aren't big enough and don't go back foreigner

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. If you're black or brown or female or gay , you may remember the indignities that you and your communities have suffered to the point that it is hard sometimes to go beneath those narratives and thus to encounter

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the one story, the one story deeply grounded enough to include all of us as brothers and sisters who through jesus, christ our Lord or members of the same family. But I invite you to bring those

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narratives and those commitments and those contributions to a larger vision of who and whose we are and are yet to become bring those narratives. It does not require that any of us submerge or abandon our particularly particular

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memories, but it gathers all those memories and includes them in the larger memory of the Kingdom of God . It helps us looking back, look back across the eons and it puts us in touch with a

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story and a purpose that is grander than we are . And it does more than that. It also helps us remember that. Which is not yet true in our new testament text that you've just heard,

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which is luke's version of the resurrection story, luke writes of these women in the cemetery. They are there to do what women in that culture in time always did with the dead. Darkness had fallen the

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day before too soon, and they had not had time to complete what their culture required of them to do. Now they are they're not out of any sense of confidence or triumph for expectation of a miracle

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, but only to do their job to disguise as best they can. The finality of death, the death of jesus with the temporary aroma of flowers and spices. All they have on their minds is the

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narrative of defeat and humiliation, a narrative that has taken over their entire bandwidth. And if it's possible to be nourished by such an incomplete narrative, then as best as they can, they are giving in

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at least in this moment to that sad nourishment, but then something happens to activate a deeper memory. Angels come and say he is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you while he

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was still in galilee that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified. And on the third day rise again, remember how they told you how he told you? They said this

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is the only resurrection narrative in scripture in which you find associated with the news of resurrection. The admonition to remember it then they remembered his words, writes luke and returning from the Tomb, they told all

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of this to the 11 and to all the rest in luke's gospel, resurrection is the event that triggers faithful memory for luke. It is the risen jesus who empowers disciples, not just to recall accurately a

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storyline that covers the past all the way back and all the way down to the beginning of things, but also to go forward, expecting in a world enchanted by Resurrection power to encounter even that, which

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is not yet true, but someday will be in this sense, faithful memory does not just look backward . It also looks forward, remember how, how he told you, say those angels to the women

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in the cemetery as they encourage them to return from the tomb to the arena of life and then to tell everyone everything for resurrection is not just the validation of the past, it is also the enchantment of

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all that has not yet happened and thus of all that is not yet true for through jesus christ our Lord, the one who has died prison and will come again memory and hope are bound together now more

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tightly. So finally the question is not just how far back can you remember? But it's also how far forward can you hope? Month or so ago I flew out to Denver to begin a trip that

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I've been looking forward to all summer. My older daughter shall be, who for the last couple of years has been living in Colorado was moving from there to new york city where she started a graduate degree

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program today and I went to Colorado to help her pack a U. Haul with all of her possessions , u haul truck. No shock absorbers apparently. And then we drove for 3.5 days across two thirds

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of the country to Brooklyn, where we unloaded her stuff into an apartment. And then I got the chance to hang out with her and our younger daughter Claire, who also lives in Brooklyn for the weekend

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. It was a great trip time for conversation time for sharing music. A time when I introduced charge of the three best guitar solos in the history of the planet. A time for dreaming out loud and

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having serious conversations just two Sundays ago. And I'm telling you this because she gave me permission to tell you. She called and told me with great excitement that she thinks she's found a church. 1st Presbyterian

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Church in Brooklyn as she described it to me. She began with the architecture. She knows what an architecture geek I am. And so she started with that an old historic Presbyterian Church from the early 19th

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century. Stately and handsome with its cut stone exterior and its gothic architecture. Inside, she said, the pulpit is high and lifted up with a carved wooden stairway on either side to get up to it

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, and on the opposite side from the pulpit wall is that is the part where the organ pipes are visible for all to see. And the windows are tall and colorful, she said. And the pews

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and the fun and the table are carved ornately with images of the stories and the heroes of the faith . And as she described it all, I was imagining that church as its founders might have imagined it

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, reflecting the sturdy presbyterian ism of Scotland, respectable , proper dignified in its restraint and maybe a tad too solemn. But then her voice got more animated as she described that sunday's congregation. Dad, she

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said the people, they are wonderful and joyful and on top of that it's so diverse. There are people of every color in all ages. It's a presbyterian order of worship but it's lively. Mhm.

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The minister is an african american woman. Brand new there and she's a former actor. There are L G B T. Q people, there are african americans, there are Hispanics and asians and caucasians and

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hipsters. There are there are artists and Children and babies and grandmothers and homeless people and musicians. They sing so loudly out of the presbyterian hymnal. And sometimes dad, they clap. Yeah, they've got

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a rainbow flag, They march for black lives matter . And next sunday is protein sunday. So I've got to take something with protein for the food pantry . I listened to her go on and on,

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I realized, but she was not just remembering the church we once were in the final analysis. She was also beholding an s scatological vision, not equally obvious and just every congregation but already becoming true in

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that church. There in Brooklyn. If you really want a picture of what the church of the future looks like, if you really want to see that church up close, then pay attention tonight to the

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newest among us as they come forward shortly to sign the book. And if you want to see people coming from north and south and from east and west to sit at a table in the Kingdom of God

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, then watch who comes to the table here tonight . You'll see what Eucharist really is. It's not a memorial reenacting the last supper. It's a meal of the kingdom celebrating with thanks who we will be

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when we have fully remembered who we really are. And it's all of us coming to the table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Sarah and leah and Rachel and the Ethiopian eunuch and and James and john

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and mary Magdalene and mary the mother of jesus and Martha who wouldn't leave the kitchen to sit at the feet of God when God came to her living room , all of them, all of them are here

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with all the nations gathered from around the world and back and forth through time. Here tonight to gather around the eternal enduring feast of God. Not to remember the church we used to be, but to

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remember instead and get a glimpse of the church we will be when God has finished with us when we have encountered and absorbed all that is not yet true in the name of God creator, christ and holy