“Remember / Do Not Remember”

Lent 5, Sun, April 5, 2025, FBC Amherst, JG White

The final session of a Church Study group happened last week, sitting together up in the Archives. We told some of the story of First Baptist Amherst. All eight of us, really, told the story, which is more than 215 years. We spoke of Rev. Tupper, Dr. Steele, Harold Lusby, Miss Loggie. We talked of steeples and dance halls and stained glass. We remembered The Diary of Anne Frank, the Mother’s Association, and __________ Exgtravaganzas.

It is so natural to tell the stories, to remember the past fondly and deeply. This can inspire and guide a group now and into the future. 😊 Our past can also control and limit us now and into the future! :o

I remember Harry Gardner giving a sermon from Isaiah, preaching about remembering and about forgetting. Remember Harry Gardener? Former Executive Minister of the Baptist Convention; former Principal of Acadia Divinity College? His sermon, that day, came from some texts in Isaiah. One, I think, from chapter 46 (8-9).

Remember this and consider;

    recall it to mind, you transgressors;

remember the former things of old,

for I am God, and there is no other…

But, alongside this, Dr. Gardner used Isaiah 43 (18-19).

Do not remember the former things

    or consider the things of old.

I am about to do a new thing;

    now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?

When and how do we remember our past, and when shall we forget? Other wisdom in the First Testament says, (Ecc 3)

For everything there is a season 

and a time for every matter under heaven:

…a time to keep and a time to throw away…

a time to keep silent and a time to speak…

There is a time to remember, to remember deeply. And there is a time not to remember the former things, be free and open. 

Today’s Isaiah poetry begins with the God of the Exodus, God of the people’s past: spoken by the ‘the LORD who makes a way in the sea.’ Yet this God of the past declares: forget! Let go of the past! Look, I do a new thing! It will be like a stream in the desert.

How does a faith community, a group, not remember? Let go of the past so we can grasp the future? And perhaps the first question actually is: when is it time to forget things of the past and move on?

The historic moment of Isaiah 43 appears to be that transition from the Jews in exile up in Babylon, to their freedom to go back down to the land that had been theirs for generations before. This text is a word from God when a new era is to begin. And it was promised as big changes, wonderful things… but don’t remember what was before. Things won’t be the same, the same as your great days of the past. ‘Behold, I do a new thing. Don’t you see it?’

As people of Faith, we see the key. Maybe there are two keys to it, here. One, it is a moment of big change. Two, God takes the initiative; God acts. 

We might well be in a huge change moment in human history. The era we have been living our lives in - momentous change. And as Christians within Christianity, it is a revolutionary moment. These seem to come along about every five hundred years. 

As Church gets to a low ebb in the West, we wonder what is next. I have been hearing this all my adult life. The Church that goes on will not be like what has been; we just can’t predict what form Christianity will take. It is being born. 

So, perhaps our lifetime is a time for hearing this word again: ‘Behold, I do a new thing! Streams in the desert! So, don’t cling to what used to be. You may think you are going back to your glory days. No; get ready to forget. This will be new.’

It is a matter of hearing from our Master. What is the Spirit saying to the Churches? Do we hear? Can we listen? Or is the word of the LORD rare in our days?

In our context now, our Church memory and attachments to the past can foster a ‘survival mentality.’ A shared mindset, a culture of conserving what we have and longing for the good ole days. I know as well as any churchgoer what it is to be living in the past, be resistant to changes and to different ways. 

I can fall into the temptation of blaming those who are not here, blaming sports on Sundays, or maybe Sunday shopping (tho I don’t see much sabbath keeping any more.) I can feel ‘woe is me’ and think how we are in the right. We end up playing the victim. 

I remember how I can have an attachment to a building or a pipe organ. But then the structure takes control of the congregation; it guides what we do and give and spend and keep.

In an era of change - of decay and of growth - it takes attention to release the old and grasp the new. We turn our attention to things of the Spirit, and realize what is of God. The Provider and Guider can inspire beautiful things. We have blessed remembering and blessed forgetting.

Together, we keep up our relationship to the Divine. In the name of Jesus the Christ we stay in fellowship. And so, we are guided, united, inspired, hope-filled, healed. We get to grieve what we’ve lost and be ready for new work of faith and goodness in a dark time. 

I see here how you value what we’ve had and are also ready for whatever on earth might be next! We don’t forget our Church history - we value it and learn from it and get prepared for the next chapters. We don’t dismiss our amazing building - we recognize the amazing and holy asset that it is, to make excellent use of it. We don’t neglect those who have gone before us or forget that we stand on the shoulders of these giants. But we get to do different things that our elders never accomplished. 

Along with the corporate forgetting and remembering is the personal side. The early Christian leader, Paul, gives his example today, in the Letter to the Philippians. The Apostle can list all his achievements, in Judaism and the Roman world. All these qualifications he counts as nothing, since he has new goals under a new Leader, in a new life. Yet, we know well, that all Paul’s education and experience and story made him who he was as an effective Christian Apostle. 

It takes work, real spiritual work, to learn to remember and to forget. By the grace of God we will take our next steps, and take them together. We are in a moment that is new. New in the same place. New with the same Saviour. New with our same old selves. But new every morning is the Love of God among us. 

Dear siblings, …one thing I have laid hold of: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. (P 3:13-14)