Preaching as Reminding

Stirring Memory in an Age of Forgetfulness

Jeffrey D. Arthurs

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780830889167
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christlicher Dienst

Christianity Today 2019 Book of the Year Award, The Church/Pastoral LeadershipWe know of the preacher's roles as both teacher and proclaimer, but Jeffrey Arthurs adds another assignment: the Lord's remembrancer. The remembrancer stirs the memory of Christ-followers, reminding them of the truths they once heard and fanning the flames of faith.We live in an age of forgetfulness, so when knowledge fades and conviction cools, the church needs to be reminded of the great truths of the faith. When done well, preaching as reminding is not empty, perfunctory repetition. Rather, it is the work of soul-watchers. Preaching as Reminding describes the dynamic role of the remembrancer, who prompts thankfulness and repentance, raises hope, fosters humility and wisdom, exhorts obedience, and encourages community.With decades of preaching experience, Arthurs explains how to stir memory through vivid language, story, delivery, and ceremony. He urges preachers to take up this task with buoyancy and hope because the Lord God has commissioned and equipped them to serve as the Lord's remembrancers.

GOD REMEMBERS (AND FORGETS)

Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

LUKE 23:42

Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?

Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.

Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.

ISAIAH 49:15-16

MEMORY IS ONE OF THE principle themes of The Silver Chair, the fourth book in C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series.1 In it Lewis tells the tale of Jill and Eustace who undertake a mission from Aslan to free Prince Rilian, who is held captive by the evil queen of Underland, a subterranean world of caves and shadows. The queen has Rilian under a spell so that he does not remember Overworld, the land of Narnia, the sun, or Aslan himself. But every night Rilian has a moment of lucidity when the spell fades and memories flash. During those moments—his only moments of true sanity—the queen binds him to the silver chair so that his memories torment him but he cannot act on them.

One night the brave trio of Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle manage to free the prince from the chair before the spell takes hold again. Rilian sees clearly and longs to return to Overworld to feel again the bracing air of Narnia, but the queen has more tricks up her sleeve. She befuddles the four subjects of Aslan by throwing green powder on a fire, producing “a sweet and drowsy smell.” Thrumming hypnotically on a mandolin, she coos, “Narnia? Narnia? I have often heard your Lordship utter that name in your ravings. Dear Prince, you are very sick. There is no land called Narnia.”

Puddleglum and the others gamely argue with her: they have been in Narnia! They have seen it! She counters, “Tell me, I pray you, where that country is?” The only response the muddled Marsh-wiggle can offer is, “Up there, I don’t know exactly where.”

“Is there a country up among the stones and mortar of the roof?” the queen purrs.

“I’ve seen the sky full of stars,” the stout Marsh-wiggle contends. “I’ve seen the sun coming up out of the sea of a morning and sinking behind the mountains at night. And I’ve seen him up in the midday sky when I couldn’t look at him for brightness.”

This rouses the others. How could they have forgotten? Of course! They had all seen the sun.

The queen feels the tide of the argument turning against her but explains that the “sun” is merely a projection of Underworld’s “lamp”: “Your sun is a dream, and there is nothing in that dream that was not copied from the lamp.”

She says the same of Aslan. The so-called lion is like a huge cat, nothing more. Thrumming her instrument, she states, “You can put nothing into your make-believe without copying it from the real world, this world of mine, which is the only world.”

The queen has regained the upper hand and is about to declare victory, but suddenly, gathering all his strength, Puddleglum stamps out the fire and rouses his memories. They are so strong that even if those things were made up—trees, grass, sun, moon, stars, and Aslan himself—then the “made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones.”

“I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia,” he declares.

The children and the prince snap out of the spell—“Hurrah! Good old Puddleglum!”—and overthrow the queen.

That’s what memory can do. It makes the past present and charts a course for the future.

MEMORY IN THE BIBLE

In the Bible, “remembering” is more than mental recall. It involves emotion and volition as well as cognition.2 It not only touches the past; it also articulates with the present and the future, helping a person connect previously acquired wisdom to current and future decisions. In the words of Old Testament scholar Robert Cosand, “Remembrance is an understanding of the reality of the past in such a way that the events of the past become a force in the present, producing some activity of will or of body or both.”3 Bruce Waltke says simply, “Remembrance equals participation.”4 When God remembers, he blesses. His mind, emotions, and actions favor the object of his attention. Or phrased in a more Hebraic way, his face is toward us, his eye is on us, and his hand is with us.

That’s what we hear when the thief on the cross asks the Lord to remember him (Lk 23:42). He means, of course, “Please extend your grace to me in the hour of death and especially in the hour following death.” We’ve lost much of this rich connotation of the word “remember” in modern English, but even today we hear an echo of the biblical emphasis when the child at the party sees the host passing out treats. Bobbing in her seat and waving her hand, she pleads, “Remember me!” Look on me with favor. Similarly, we say, “The company always remembers its employees at Christmas.”

Not only does memory in the Bible equal participation and blessing, it also “re-members” disconnected things. At times this life seems inchoate, a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing, but reminders of God’s power in the past, his presence in the present, and his promises for the future help God’s children believe in the unseen hand that guides the affairs of their lives. Memory reunites us mentally, emotionally, and volitionally to the God who watches over us.

Even though our modern concept of memory is thinner than the biblical concept, our ceremonies and monuments maintain the robust sense. Perhaps you’ve been to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, descending along its two walls sunk into the ground. As of May 2014, 58,300 names were etched into the reflective black rock. Perhaps you have found the experience, as I have, to be somber and sobering. Cognitive recall of the past is brought into the present so that the visitor participates vicariously in the tragedy of the war.

If you visit Kings Domain Park in Melbourne, Australia, you may have a similar experience at the Shrine of Remembrance. It commemorates soldiers from the state of Victoria who died in World War I. Paving stones outside the shrine state, “We will remember them,” and one of the interior walls bears this exhortation: “Let all men know that this is holy ground. This shrine, established in the hearts of men as on the solid earth, commemorates a people’s fortitude and sacrifice. Ye therefore that come after, give remembrance.” In the center of the shrine is the Stone of Remembrance on which is inscribed, “Greater love hath no man,” and on November 11 at 11 a.m. (Remembrance Day), the sun shines through a small aperture in the roof to illumine the word “love.”

Is it worth the time and expense to build and maintain those memorials and the thousands of others like them around the world? We believe it is. The Pearl Harbor Memorial in Honolulu, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, Virginia, the Kigali Genocide Memorial, and the site of the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving at Plimoth Plantation, Massachusetts, give testimony to our conviction that the past should not be allowed to fade from consciousness. To ensure that this does not happen we need reminders.

Perhaps the most sobering of all memorials in the United States is the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. When you enter you are given a “passport” that presents brief biographical facts about an actual Holocaust victim, and you then walk through the museum, which is laid out chronologically, noting what happened to your character each year. The museum is intended to help visitors remember the past through more than simple cognition. It creates a vicarious experience. When I visited the museum I received the passport of a cobbler in Warsaw in 1936. I first experienced the cobbler’s joys of family and community, but then in 1939 the story turned dark as we were walled into the ghetto. Eventually the story reached its nadir when we were sent to Buchenwald in the early forties. Nothing is known about the cobbler after that.

Why build such a museum? Is it to lament the past? Yes. Is it to make the abstract concrete? Yes. But the primary purpose is to keep memory alive, honoring the dead and warning the living. After the Battle of Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln dedicated another memorial with these words: “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Memorials cause us to look back but also to look forward.

BIBLICAL TERMS FOR “REMEMBER”

In the Old Testament the Hebrew word zakar is the primary term for “remember.” It is used more than two hundred times in various forms and, as we have se...