Healed Memory

Healed Memory, A Fourth Step Toward Desiring to Embrace an Enemy
(Isaiah 65.17-25)
A message by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 30^th Sunday in Ordinary Time: October 23, 2011

The fifth in a series of messages addressing the question, “How does what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount call us to walk in the way of the Living Christ?” The inspiration for this series comes from Miroslav Volf, Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Abingdon Press, 1996.

In a recent New Yorker cartoon, a sixty-something year old man says to his wife, “My memory isn’t getting worse. I’m just choosing to live in the now.”

I think this world would be a lot more loving and just if more of us chose to live in the now. Instead of giving so much power to past wrongs and past wounds. Which can trap us in unhealed memories, and keep God from using us to give birth to something new.

You know the old saying. A cat who sits on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again. But he’ll never sit on a cold stove either. He’s trapped by the memory of a past wound. His unhealed memory will forever convince him that all stoves are dangerous.

There was a man in his 80s at University Congregational United Church of Christ I’ll call Henry. Henry thought my partner Peter and I were about the worst pastors in the history of the world. He freely shared that opinion with anyone who would listen. Two days before he died, Peter visited Henry in the nursing home. Where Henry told Peter he’d fought in World War II. Henry said one of his fellow soldiers made a pass at him. For the next 50 years, Henry’s unhealed memory convinced him the only thing gay men want to do is have sex with straight men. Now, two days before he died, Henry apologized to Peter. He said, “I said all those awful things about you and Dave when I didn’t even know you.”

That is healed memory. That is letting God heal our memory of past wrongs and past wounds. So God can use us to give birth to something new.

In the 1990s, the former Yugoslavia was breaking up. Power-hungry people knew they could turn people’s unhealed memory into a weapon. They kept saying, Remember when…?, and they’d finish the question by reminding people of something horrible the “enemy” did to 20 or 50, or in one case, even 500 years before. Unhealed memory still longs for revenge. So these power-hungry people drew on the poison of unhealed memory. And the result was genocide.

I fear leaders in this country will continue to take advantage of our nation’s unhealed memory surrounding the events of September 11, 2001. Our unhealed memory convinces us our only choice is to carry out a perpetual “war on terror” against whoever our government tells us is our “enemy”. And because “we” are the victims, and “they” are the evil ones, our nation’s unhealed memory convinces us God blesses whatever “we” do to “them”.

Today I’m talking about the last of four steps we can take to be peacemakers. Four steps we can take to nurture a desire to embrace someone who has hurt us deeply. The last three weeks we’ve looked at the steps of repentance, forgiveness, and letting Christ hold us in an embrace alongside someone who has hurt us. Today we look at the fourth step. The step of healed memory. Healed memory frees us from the poison that convinces us our only choice in life is to hurt others…or hurt ourselves.

I’m not talking about forgetting. I don’t think it’s possible to completely forget times when we’ve been deeply wounded.

But I believe the memory of even the deepest wounds can and must be healed. And I believe healed memory is the only thing that will finally heal us. Former enemies embracing each other is the only path to true peace in this world.
Which is why God’s vision for a new, healed creation begins with healed memory.

Listen for a word from God.

[God said to the people,]
“Pay close attention now: I'm creating new heavens and a new earth.
All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain are things of the past, to be forgotten
Look ahead with joy.
Anticipate what I'm creating: I'll create Jerusalem as sheer joy, create my people as pure delight.
I'll take joy in Jerusalem, take delight in my people:
No more sounds of weeping in the city, no cries of anguish;
No more babies dying in the cradle, or old people who don't enjoy a full lifetime;
One-hundredth birthdays will be considered normal—anything less will seem like a cheat.
They'll build houses and move in.
They'll plant fields and eat what they grow.
No more building a house that some outsider takes over,
No more planting fields that some enemy confiscates,
For my people will be as long-lived as trees,
my chosen ones will have satisfaction in their work.
They won't work and have nothing come of it,
they won't have children snatched out from under them.
For they themselves are plantings blessed by God,
with their children and grandchildren likewise God-blessed.
Before they call out, I'll answer.
Before they've finished speaking, I'll have heard.
Wolf and lamb will graze the same meadow,
lion and ox eat straw from the same trough, but snakes—they'll get a diet of dirt!
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill anywhere on my Holy Mountain," says God.
(Isaiah 65.17-25, The Message ReMix © 2003 Eugene Peterson)

What a picture of peace. No weeping. No violence. Long, full lives for all. A just order where everyone has enough. And where former enemies are healed. A joyful creation in love with God.

How does God bring this about? It starts with healed memory. Look at the first thing God does. God says, All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain are things of the past, to be forgotten. Creation can only become a place of true peace and joy when all memory has been healed. So no one wants revenge. And everyone has a desire to embrace their enemy.

For our closing hymn this morning (“I Will Change Your Name,” D.J. Butler, © 1987 Mercy Publishing), we will sing some names others have given us. And names we’ve given ourselves:
Wounded
Outcast
Lonely
Afraid

Every moment of our lives, I believe God is searching for us (Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets, Volume II, Harper & Row, 1962, p. 218). God wants to find us. And break us open. And help heal our memories. So we can hear God say, The names you call yourself are a lie. Let me change your name. So you see yourself the way I see you:
Confidence
Joyfulness
Overcoming One
Faithfulness
Friend of God
One Who Seeks My Face

Four years ago I sat in a support group at Recovery Café, where my other job is. There was a woman in the group I’ll call Vicki. Vicki had been abused the first 30 years of her life. Then she heard God speak to her. She felt God’s arms around her. God’s love became the most real thing in the world for her. She began to heal.

In the support group that day, a man talked about all the names people have been calling him from the time he was a kid right up to now. Trash. Worthless. Victim. God’s Mistake. He said, “This is who I am. This is who I’ll always be.”

Vicki looked at him. Then she said, “I’ve stopped responding to the names others give me. I only respond to the name I’ve been given. God’s Beloved.”

Vicki has done the hard work of healing her memory. She hasn’t forgotten the abuse. She’s let God and the people who love her heal her memory. Her memory no longer has power to make her hate herself or the people who hurt her. She no longer lets false names define her. God is using her to do something new. She embraces every wounded soul she meets with the love of the God whose embrace saves her.

Sometimes the memory of our past wounds is so powerful we let those wounds define us. Healing our memory terrifies us because that means we have to grieve all the loss that has resulted from letting our wounds define us. Facing all that loss can keep us from wanting our memory to heal.

When I worked as a family therapist on the South Side of Chicago, I had a client I’ll call Shirley. Shirley had been abused for many, many years. While I was counseling her, she began dating a really nice man. I was sure that would help lift her despair. But the longer she dated him, the more depressed she seemed to get. So I went to my supervisor, Sandy, and said, “I don’t get it. Why isn’t Shirley thrilled she’s finally met someone who treats her like she deserves?”

Sandy said something I’ll always remember. She said, “For 40 years, Shirley’s been living a story that says ‘I don’t deserve to be loved.’ It’s a deep part of her identity. It’s helped the world make sense to her. Now, all of the sudden, this guy treats her like a human being. Part of her feels really good. But another part of her says, ‘Wait. If I’m not junk, if I deserve to be loved, then the past could have been different. And that would be too depressing to admit.’ My supervisor said, “Dave, if Shirley starts to see herself as someone who deserved to be loved her whole life, she’s going to have to grieve all those years when she wasn’t loved. How would you feel if you suddenly realized you were cheated out of 40 years of love?” For Shirley to heal her memory, for her to believe her true name is Lovable instead of Junk, she would have to grieve all that love she lost. Healed memory would force her to change how she’s always seen herself and made sense of her place in the world. And that can feel impossible.

What’s a memory you have that still has the power to trap you in a desire to hurt others or yourself? What’s an unhealed memory that your family, your church, your workplace, your ethnic group, your country keeps alive? What would help heal one of those memories…so you can strip it of its power to keep you trapped in brokenness, bitterness, victimhood, or a desire for revenge? What unhealed memory keeps you and another separated by a seemingly unbridgeable dividing line between “us” and “them”?

Look ahead with joy [at] what I'm creating….:
No more sounds of weeping in the city, no cries of anguish;
No more babies dying in the cradle, or old people who don't enjoy a full lifetime;…
They'll build houses and move in. They'll plant fields and eat what they grow.
No more building a house that some outsider takes over,
No more planting fields that some enemy confiscates,
For my people will be as long-lived as trees,
my chosen ones will have satisfaction in their work.
They won't work and have nothing come of it,
they won't have children snatched out from under them….
Before they call out, I'll answer.
Before they've finished speaking, I'll have heard.
Wolf and lamb will graze the same meadow,
lion and ox eat straw from the same trough…;
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill anywhere on my Holy Mountain.

It’s a vision of the peace Jesus calls us to help create right here and right now. And what’s the first step toward making it real?

All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain are things of the past, to be forgotten.
Peace. A Spirit of Peace. It can only come with healed memory.

Amen.