Proper 17B 2009

Proper 17B
St. Dunstan's
August 30, 2009
The Rev. Patricia Templeton

"Teach Your Children Well"

The Holocaust Museum in Washington DC bears witness to one of the greatest atrocities human beings have ever inflicted upon one another. A walk through the museum is a walk through the most shameful episode in modern human history.

It begins with a film on Hitler’s rise to power and continues until Allied troops liberate the death camps. And in between are the stories of the more than 6 million people – most of them Jews – who were murdered.

The last room of the museum is made of stone, and contains a flame that burns in eternal memory of those who died at the hands of Nazi Germany. Carved into the marble above the flames are these words:

“Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the things your eyes saw. And lest these things depart your heart all the days of your life.

“And you shall make them known to your children, and to your children’s children.”

These verses from the Book of Deuteronomy sum up the reason for the existence of the Holocaust Museum – so that the dark side of human history will not be forgotten. So that we and our children after us will remember the things our eyes saw there and work to prevent such evil from happening again.

The words inscribed at the Holocaust Museum are part of our Old Testament reading today. They were first spoken by Moses to the people of Israel as they were about to enter into the promised land after many years of wandering in the wilderness.

Moses knows that this is a crucial, pivotal moment for God’s people – poised on the brink of reaching their long elusive goal. He takes the moment to deliver what will be his final message to these people whom he led out of slavery in Egypt almost four decades earlier.

The message is a long one – in fact, it takes up most of the Book of Deuteronomy. Buts its essence can be boiled down to this: Remember what has happened to you. Remember who you are. Remember whose you are. And remember to teach these things to your children and your children’s children.

Moses pleads with the people not to let the memory of what God has done for them fade into oblivion – the escape from Egypt, the manna in the wilderness, the covenant God made with them in the Ten Commandments.

“Take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life,” Moses warns.

“Make them known to your children and your children’s children.”

Moses knows that once the people have crossed into the promised land, once they have built fine houses and have plenty of food and wealth, their tendency will be to forget what God has done for them, to believe that they are independent and have no need of God.

And he also knows that when God’s people forget what God has done for them, when they believe that they no longer need God, they inevitably wind up in big trouble.

Time and again throughout the Bible we see that tragic things happen when the people of God forget their history, forget who and whose they are.

And so he warns them, “Teach these things to your children and to your children’s children.” Each generation must pass on the faith and make it real to the next generation.

I cannot think of more appropriate words to hear as we prepare to begin a new year of Christian education. Two weeks from today we will begin Sunday School for all ages – listening again to the stories of God and God’s people, teaching them to ourselves and our children.

Until we know each other’s stories we cannot really be joined together as a family, a community, a church. That’s why part of the ritual of courtship is telling one another stories of our lives.

It’s why our children love to hear the stories of the day they were born, or became part of a family. And why they love to hear stories about their parents.

It’s why family lore and traditions are passed down from generation to generation. They give us a sense of identity and teach us values.

When we move to a new place, enter a new family or school or church there is always an awkward period when we don’t feel we belong – largely because we do not know the stories of this new group and they do not know ours.

When I went to college my goal was to work on the student newspaper. I still remember how intimidated I was and how awkward I felt those first weeks and months on the staff because I didn’t know the stories of that group of people, didn’t share in the experiences that shaped and formed them into such a closely-knit group of friends.

One of the favorite stories of the group was the time they decided on the spur of the moment to take a trip from Athens, Ga. to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. The exploits and adventures of that trip, of which there were many, were told over and over again.

I realized that I was fully a part of the staff when someone said something to me about “our” trip to New Orleans.

Now I had not been on that trip, had not even been in college at the time, but through the constant telling and retelling of that story I had become part of the experience, part of the story itself.

Through the telling of stories, we are incorporated into communities and cultures and common ways of life.

That is really the goal of Christian education. Teaching the stories of God is more than just a recitation of facts and plotlines. It is a way of incorporating new generations into the ongoing work of God in the world.

Telling how people have encountered the living God throughout history becomes an invitation to us and to our children to enter into that history and make it our own.

The Bible is a storybook. Episcopal priest John Westerhoff notes that scripture is “a love story between God and humanity; a story of a covenant made, broken, and renewed, again and again.

“We need to enlarge our grasp of this love story,” Westerhoff says. “To learn it more completely, to understand it more deeply, to possess it more personally, and to live it more fully.

“This is a lifelong task,” he continues. “But the place to begin is always the same: We need to learn to tell the story as our story.”

Two weeks from today we will once again begin doing just that.

From Godly Play and the All Things New curriculum with our children, to conversations about faith and life with our youth, to adult classes on justice and living as a Christian – we will essentially all be doing the same thing.

That is sharing the story of God and God’s people, finding our own places in those stories, renewing our own faith and passing it on to new generations, making them known to our children and our children’s children.

Amen.

Readings

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9

Moses said: Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God with which I am charging you. You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!” For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today? But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children.

James 1:17-27

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures. You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing. If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”