From Wilderness to Promised Land: Remember, Don’t Forget

By: Rev. Emily Joye Mcgaughy

FCCBC, Koinonia

November 20, 2011

Deuteronomy 8:1-20

I’m not going home this year for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but lots of my loved ones around here (and those I keep in contact with via phone) are preparing to head out, head home, go back, to return to the land of their ancestors. I’ve been listening to them about it all week. Many of them are experiencing a combination of excitement and anxiety, joy and dread, hope for peace & reconnection and ceaseless projections of potential drama. How many of you are or will go somewhere other than where you currently live during this holiday season at some point?

It’s amazing how before we even get on the plane, train or automobile to the place of our return, to the “home” that may or may not still feel like “home,” that place starts living in our psyche and talking to us about what’s to come. Before we even leave, that place has arrived within us. Perhaps American Novelist William Faulkner was right: the past is not the past. And our biblical text of this morning would have us believe that’s a good thing. But I’ve got to be honest…sometimes I don’t buy it.

Am I the only one who returns to the land of my ancestors and experiences instant psychological and spiritual regression? As soon as I cross the threshold of here/there, I turn into a teen-age ball of angsty yuck. When I “go back” somehow I am no longer a self-sufficient adult woman with a house, career and love life of my own. Instead all these insecurities rise up in me that I remember having when I was still dependent on my parents. And every time I forget that these feelings happen every time, and so: I eat too much; I’m offended too easily; I cry at the slightest provocation. It’s crazy. Further: it seems that every fight or awkward silence or total avoidance or dysfunctional dance my family has ever engaged in seems to get re-ignited at the very times of year when Hallmark tells us we should be delighting and devoting and merry merry dancing with one another. I just have to talk about the neo-colonial ideology of Thanksgiving and the Holocaust of First Nations people in America which spoils everyone’s appetite. And my mom’s husband just has to talk about how essential gender roles are for the proper functioning of society which makes the lone queer in the room go suddenly silent and sulky. And my mom just has to make peace between all of us which makes her feel hopelessly anxious and all of us hopelessly annoyed by her anxiety. It’s like clock-work.  

And yet…

And yet…

I also return, or go back to these slices of life, these ghosts of times gone by that connect me to the very things that have formed my body, formed my psyche, formed my world-view and passions and politics and positions for the good. Things that knock me over with thanksgiving, like my mother’s ability to turn a dining room table into an altar with her eye for harmonious color and candle light and the way she opens her arms when people arrive at the door, exhibiting the kind of hospitality joy that only God could inspire. Things that propel me into Thanksgiving wonder, like returning to the place where we spread my father’s ashes 17 years ago and being reminded of the ways he burned a love of political dissent, progressive theology and critical thinking into me as a young child. Things that soothe my heart into the Spirit of Thanksgiving, like hearing familiar music coming from the family speakers or seeing familiar works of art on the walls and realizing how shaped my aesthetics have been by these artifacts of beauty from the past. When I encounter these good things, sometimes I lose my breath because of how much I miss it all, how much I love it all. And then when it’s time to leave, I get lodged with overwhelming nostalgia, wondering if I can live away from these people, these memories, this landscape, these loves of my life.

Returning. Going back. No small endeavor. Ever. Brings out the good, the bad, the ugly and the unrelenting beauty of who we are as people, families, and community.

To return is to unravel the string of memory. And so our biblical text from Deuteronomy has something to share with all of us this holiday season, whether we are the ones returning or whether we are the ones hosting the returned. Deuteronomy 8 is a sermon in itself. It’s a sermon about the sin of forgetfulness and the salvation of memory. The timing of this passage is significant. The Hebrews have escaped slavery under pharaoh, have been led out of the wilderness and driven out all those who previously inhabited the promised land. They have settled in Canaan and are living in a time of security, wealth and peace. The authors of this passage, a crew of priests that have the nation of Israel’s future welfare in mind, warn the peaceful Hebrews: you may have it good now, but don’t forget where you came from. Verse 2: “Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you…” Verse 11: “Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God…”

Remember. Don’t forget.   

Biblical mandate.

Remember. Don’t forget.

This particular warning about forgetfulness is targeted at a prosperous people. These priests seemed to understand, like many wise spiritual writers from all the world religions throughout the ages, that humans are capable, most particularly when they are flourishing, of forgetting who and what they are. But most importantly, people in prosperity are most likely to forget God, to operate under the illusion that they are self-made, self-sustained and in no need of divine life or love. It’s not a sin that’s hard to understand. If you are capable of securing work, food, shelter, security and lots of material toys, when you’ve got it made, got it good and plenty—what is there to remind you of your utter dependency on things outside of yourself? The greatest danger of material wealth is the idolatrous notion of self-sufficiency that often accompanies it.

So here are the Hebrews, in a land of flowing streams, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, of olive trees and honey, a land were they may eat bread without scarcity, where they lack nothing. But instead of glorifying the Hebrews for this prosperity, the priests warn them: remember slavery in Egypt, remember starvation and drought in the desert, remember wandering in the wilderness. And when you remember those things and compare them to the glory you’re currently living in, do not say “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.”

You know what happens when we return? When we go back? When we allow the string of memory to unravel us? We rid ourselves of the dangers of forgetfulness.  

Entering the spaces of the past, whether through cognitive memory or geographic travel, affords us the opportunity to remember just how much power outside of us and how many hands not our own have shaped us. Such experiences annihilate this idea that we have created anything by our own power or by the might of our own hand. And that’s exactly what the biblical authors want.

Going back: we remember what gave us life, that we did not give birth to or raise ourselves. Returning: we remember what influenced us in the early part of our lives, that we did not shape our own world-views, spiritualities, behaviors and habits. Going back: we remember the landscape of our triumphs and terrible mess ups, the external contexts and social feed-back loops that either fostered self-esteem or stripped us of confidence. Returning: we recognize that much of who & what we are today comes from what we learned about ourselves back then. For better and worse. All that stuff we loathe, that drama, those regressive, coping behaviors we learned in the wilderness: that’s in us. All that stuff we love, that beauty and spirit of connection to our relatives that sustains us: that’s in us. Both are right here and memory unravels it all. And that’s exactly what the biblical authors want.

But here’s the kicker: it’s not memory for the sake of getting stuck in what was. It’s memory for the sake of being present—spiritually—to what is. What is now. What is present today. What occupies this moment. And the spiritual lesson in all of this is that God is. God is here. God is now. God is present today and occupies this moment with us. When we go back and return, it’s easy to see how God was with us and brought us through in the past. The gift of those memories is that they can, if we allow them to, illuminate the Divine life in the present. And this illumination can, if we allow it to, change the way we see and handle our current circumstances.

God brought the Israelites through exploitation, made water burst forth from a rock and made bread rain down from heaven, provided sustenance and mercy even in the worst of times; so surely it is that same benevolent spirit that provided in Canaan. Problem is, the Israelites considered the prosperity their own, like it belonged to them just because they were special/good/deserving/hard-working/chosen, whatever. No, no, the priestly authors warn: anything giving you life, anything sustaining your spirit, anything feeding/satiating your needs is from God and God alone. So treat it as gift. Let the memory of God’s goodness in the past inspire you to recognize God’s goodness in the present.   

So beloved faithful: as you return, as you go back in these next weeks, in this holiday season: seize the opportunity to unravel, seize the opportunity to remember and to recognize. Seize the opportunity to treat everything that gives you life, everything that has sustained your spirit, everything that has fed/satiated your needs, seize the opportunity to enact your thanksgiving by treating these things like the gifts from God that they are. Listen to them deeply. Love them fiercely. Touch them tenderly. Gifts from God: remember, don’t forget. Amen.