Exhortation, Second Sunday of Lent

Churches, families, and nations have memories, just as much as individuals. But while individual memory tends to be more or less automatic unless there is some physiological problem, group memories need to be cultivated. Over the course of generations, groups don’t maintain their memory without conscious effort.

Groups maintain memories by teaching – older members pass on the memory of the group to the younger. Groups maintain memories by ceremonies and holidays – everyone recalls the events of the past at a designated time.

What if a group doesn’t cultivate memory? Then the group is as disoriented, confused, aimless as an individual with amnesia, unable to know where it came from and where it is going. A group without memory is a group without identity.

I am going to apply some of these thoughts to family life in the sermon today, but this also applies to the life of the church. The church cultivates memory of the great events of redemption through teaching, through reading the Scriptures, through celebration of the Eucharist, through observing holidays and seasons.

This is the condition of the modern church. Many churches never read or hear large portions of the Bible; they celebrate the Supper only a couple of times a year; they ignore the church year. Is it any wonder that the modern church suffers amnesia? Is it any wonder we’ve lost our way?