I HAD Marguerite for homiletics.
God bless her !
Marguerite Shuster
"Recollection"
Program #4010
First air date December 8, 1996Biography
Dr. Marguerite Shuster is Associate Professor of Preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Marguerite is ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and served for 12 years as a pastor before joining the faculty of Fuller Seminary full-time in 1992. Her sermons have been published as examples of how to preach on basic Christian beliefs, and she's a frequent guest preacher. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]
Biography
Dr. Marguerite Shuster is Associate Professor of Preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Marguerite is ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and served for 12 years as a pastor before joining the faculty of Fuller Seminary full-time in 1992. Her sermons have been published as examples of how to preach on basic Christian beliefs, and she's a frequent guest preacher. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]
"Recollection"
Elie Wiesel begins his book Souls on Fire, a retelling of old Hasidic stories, with a particularly moving tale of the great rabbi, the Baal Shem Tov. Impatient with the ordeal of the Diaspora, the exile of his day that continues to ours, the Baal Shem longed to force the Creator's hand, as the Jews believed was possible, that he might send the Messiah whom they had awaited so long. He had tried many times and failed, but this time he seemed to be close to achieving success. Close, but not close enough. He failed once again. For his impudence, for his premature gesture, he and his faithful scribe were deported to a distant, uncharted island, where they were promptly taken prisoners by a band of pirates. Never before had the great Master been so submissive and resigned. His scribe pleaded with him to do something, say something. But he replied that he could not; his powers were gone. "What about your secret knowledge, your divine gifts? What happened to them?" asked the scribe.
"Forgotten," said the Master. "Disappeared, vanished. All my knowledge has been taken away; I remember nothing." Part of his punishment was the loss of his memory. He was in despair, for in our ability to remember is hidden our ability to hope. Without a memory, without a past, without a history with which we identify, we lack all ability to look forward or to shape a future.
If we do not or will not or cannot remember, that is, we will utterly lose our bearings. And it will, if anything, be worse yet if we fail to remember the right things, the key things, the basic things, the things that let us know what God is like. Isaiah knew that when he wrote the words of my text, words written not in conditions of security and comfort, but in exile, for the instruction of a people in exile. He said in Isaiah 63:7-9:
"I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, because of all that the Lord has done for us, and the great favor to the house of Israel that he has shown them according to his mercy, according to the abundance of his steadfast love. For he said, 'Surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely;’ and he became their Savior in all their distress. It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old."
I will recount it all, said Isaiah. I will tell of it. I will remember it. I will remember it and tell it again, and again. Because especially in exile, especially when the present is hard and the future looks bleak, especially when long years have elapsed and memories fade, it is essential that we not forget. Without recollecting what the Lord has done in days gone by, how could we know what to anticipate today, or tomorrow? The story tells us who we are and where we are going.
Forget the Exodus?, says the faithful Jew. The deliverance from Egypt that prefigures the anticipated deliverance from the exile, and now from the Diaspora? Impossible! Forget Christmas and Easter? says the Christian. Forget the events that bring our salvation? Impossible! Nothing could make us forget these! We respond indignantly, and perhaps just a little too confidently. I fear we may be a lot like the little daughter of an acquaintance of mine, who had put her bright orange church school collection box, already containing a few quarters, in the pew rack in front of her. When her father got up to leave, he reminded her not to forget the box, and she responded, "Oh, Dad, how can I forget it? It's orange!" How could anyone possibly forget something that is so obvious, that is bright orange?
Her father later wrote, "I wanted to stop and give her a brief sermon. I wanted to tell her about the basketball I had left at the playground once and about the time I came home from the market without the fruit that was at the top of my shopping list. I could fill a room with the orange things I have forgotten over the past 43 years. Kingdoms have been lost because people have forgotten things that were orange."
The obvious, the basic, the essential slip inexplicably from our minds. The impossible happens all the time. "So I will recount," says Isaiah. "I will recount what we know. So that we won't forget. So that the kingdom will not be lost to us."
Memory is a great mystery, of course. We curse it more often than we bless it, when we recall what we wish we could forget and forget what we wish we could recall. Most of the time, though, memory works remarkably well behind the scenes, without our even noticing it. Without it we couldn't recognize our parents or children or spouse. Without it we wouldn't know whether an apple tasted better or worse than a hammer. Without it we would have neither regret nor anticipation. And if we would gladly enough give up the regret, we need to recall that without a memory, without a recognizable past, we would not really be human.
Living strictly in the present, you see, is not all it's cracked up to be, as you can see readily enough in observing Alzheimer's patients. A minister who at one time had drunk deeply from that psychological well whose waters are supposed to help one block out the failures of yesterday and the fears of tomorrow, reports that in his case—alas, he thought then—the past and the future kept slithering into consciousness despite his best efforts; but in his mother's case, they are simply gone. A victim of Alzheimer's Disease, she is in good physical health, and lives solely in a blissful but absolutely meaningless "now." No childhood memories intrude. The picture of her husband on the wall might just as well be that of a stranger. Her conversation is animated but utterly nonsensical. And while she seems to be able to experience being loved in the moment, the experience is gone as soon as her son's visit ends. That makes her son sad. He wishes she could know that he loves her not only at 2 p.m. when they embrace, but also at 2:05 when he has driven off and, out of sight, is out of mind.
Sometimes I suspect God feels sad that way about us, especially since, unlike an Alzheimer's patient, we do have the capacity to remember. If it's terrible when we cannot do something basic to our humanity, is it not even more terrible when we can but don't? I suspect God feels sad that we sense his love so intermittently, that we are so inclined to acknowledge it only when we experience it in the present moment, or when we have a pressing need. All relationships depend upon memory; and the Lord slips from our mind so easily.
Well, we may protest, you do have to take the present situation into account. The problem may not be forgetfulness, a sort of culpable spiritual Alzheimer's, so much as the assaults of the real world. What if the minister/son had left his mother in a wretched nursing home where one apparently unnecessary and rotten thing after another befell her? Wouldn't she then have had some reason—had she been able to reason at all—to doubt his love, since she was not in fact experiencing what you would expect from someone who really loved her? Did not the people of Israel whom Isaiah addressed, in bitter exile, have some reason to think that God couldn't care very much about them if he had abandoned them for so long? Don't we have reason, just considering the evil we have experienced, not to mention the evil we hear about every day—and the evil we refuse even to acknowledge lest we be undone—to doubt the goodness of God? Don't we risk deluding ourselves by remembering selectively and telling ourselves soothing stories?
Possibly; but consider this analogy offered by Robert McAfee Brown. Some of you mystery story fans may be familiar with Dorothy Sayers' novel Strong Poison. In the story, all the evidence pointed to the conclusion that defendant Harriet Vane had murdered her lover. Naturally, then, the prosecution argued that she must have done the deed. However, the protagonist, gentleman detective Lord Peter Wimsey, had fallen in love with Harriet Vane. He was certain that she had not done the deed. Morally certain, as we sometimes say, on the basis of what he thought he knew about her. Therefore, he reasoned, "all the evidence in hand" could not possibly be all the evidence there was. There must be further evidence, which he determined to find 5. And which, of course, as in a proper mystery novel, he did, fully vindicating Harriet's honor.
For those of us who love the Lord, what the Lord has done historically for his people—delivering them from Egypt, sending his Son to save them—is what makes us morally certain that the troubles we experience and see around us cannot be the only evidence there is of what God is like or of what this world and our lives will come to in the end. These great, pivotal events in the history of God's work on our behalf are normative for us. These events reveal to us what God is like, in both his goodness and his power. That's why we recount them again and again, throughout the cycle of the year. If they are lost to our consciousness, we are lost to despair.
The Baal Shem Tov, you recall, had forgotten, forgotten everything. But when he saw his scribe's despair, he pitied him and tried to find some source of hope.
"Don't give up," he said, "we still have one chance. You are here, and that is good. For you can save us. There must be one thing I taught you that you remember. Anything ... a parable, a prayer. Anything will do."
Unfortunately, the scribe too had forgotten everything. Like his Master, he was a man without memory.
"You really remember nothing," the Master asked again, "nothing at all?"
"Nothing, Master. Except..."
"...except what?"
"... the aleph, beth." [The Hebrew alphabet, that is.]
"Then what are you waiting for?" shouted the Master, suddenly excited. "Start reciting! Right now!"
Obedient as always, the scribe proceeded to recite slowly, painfully, the first of the sacred letters which together contain all the mysteries of the entire universe: "Aleph, beth, gimel, daleth..."
And the Master, impatiently, repeated after him: "Aleph, beth, gimel, daleth..."
Then they started all over again, from the beginning. And their voices became stronger and clearer: "Aleph, beth, gimel, daleth..."
A, B, C, D... From recollecting the basics, all the rest could be rebuilt. They must say them, say them again, say them to one another, say them together, and say them aloud.
Aleph, beth, gimel, daleth. A, B, C, D. I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord. I will recount all that the Lord has done for us. I will recount his great goodness to the house of Israel. I will recount his mercy. I will tell of the abundance of his steadfast love. I will remember that he has made us his people. I will remember that he has saved us. I will testify to how he was with us, how his own presence saved us. I will tell of his love and of his pity. I will proclaim how he lifted us up and carried us in the days of old. God has delivered us before. He will deliver us again. Let us say these things. Let us say them again. Let us say them to one another, say them together, and say them aloud. Affirm them. Recount them. Recollect them. Tell them over and over again, so that neither we nor our children nor our children's children will ever forget the basic things that give their life meaning. Aleph, beith, gimmel, daleth. A, B, C, D. God has delivered us before. He will deliver us again. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
Amen.
Interview with Marguerite Shuster
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot
Lydia Talbot: Marguerite, your earlier message on recollection is a commanding statement on faith and culture, the compelling and important assignment we have to retell, remember, the story in a secular society. How do you manage to do that with your five nieces and nephews?
Marguerite Shuster: Well, I think the emphasis that I keep coming back to is all of these basic things that help to put in perspective all of the competing voices. As for anyone, the competing voices in my life can take me away from the things that I really believe, that I really need to keep counting on and thinking about in order to undergird my life.
Talbot: Now, we're talking about the importance of God's assurance and retelling that message, that story. What about people who just don't get it?
Shuster: I believe in the power of God's word. I was just reading on my way here yesterday afternoon about a young woman in a university setting, a secular high-powered university setting, who had always mocked Christians, and suddenly somebody challenged her to read the Bible, and she did, and her life was transformed.
Talbot: Who challenged you in your pilgrimage to the ministry?
Shuster: You know, it didn't exactly come as a challenge. I was reared in a Christian home. I came to a seminary setting, expecting only to do clinical psychology, and it was in a preaching class when I sat down to write my first sermon with a bad attitude. That changed my life.
Talbot: And who was your prof.?
Shuster: Dr. James Dane, now gone.
Talbot: And your father was a Presbyterian minister, too.
Shuster: That's correct.
Talbot: You have to give some credit there. It's a delight to have you on the program, Marguerite.
Shuster: Thank you.
