Remember

I used to dread theology class.  I remember looking at the course schedule when I started at Columbia Seminary and being nervous that theology was one of the only classes in seminary that lasted an entire year instead of just a semester.  My brain works well with math, with rules, with concrete ideas.  I loved taking Greek and Hebrew and did well in both subjects.  Theology, on the other hand, was about abstract ideas, uncertainties, and small discrepancies that held worlds of different meanings.  I would read every page of the assigned theology reading and still not have a grasp on the subject.  I would sit in discussions with my peers and find that no matter how much we debated, we always left the room with no more answers, only more questions.  I dreaded taking my theology ordination exam, yet ended up with a higher grade on that ord than any of the other subjects…God’s humor astounds me.

I was thankful when I began hospital work because unlike being a parish pastor, I would finally be able to put theology behind me and get on with life.  Silly me.  What I found was just the opposite – theology comes to life in the hospital.  Theology is more important to me now than it ever has been before.  I now see its relation to every person, to every situation, to every day.  It is no longer just the theology of 16^th century theologians or feminist theologians or liberationist theologians.  It is the theology of each person’s story in the hospital.  It is seeing how Christ’s death and resurrection fit into people’s lives when they take their last breath on earth.  It is wondering where God’s comfort lies in the midst of human suffering, cancer, unexpected diagnoses, and death.  It is wondering what it means to worship a relational God and how we as people live in relationship both with God and one another.  For me, it is recognizing that it is only by the grace of God that I can wake up each day and gain energy from the things I experience at work.

Our deepest convictions and theologies come out of our stories and our lives.  These stories are sacred not despite our brokenness, but in our brokenness.  One of our supervisors taught us that our stories are sacred because we are created by God and God speaks to us through our life stories.  When we are able to share our stories, we are given a sense of community and commonality among all people.  Therefore it is crucial that we remember our story, that we claim our story, and that we tell our story.  No one’s life story is greater than another’s, even if we live in a culture that tells us otherwise.  The man selling newspapers on the side of the road has just as sacred of a story as the celebrities who make the front page of those newspapers.  The CEO of a company has just as important of a story to tell as the person who empties the trashcan in the CEO’s office each day.

So how do we continue to tell our story?  We have to start by remembering it and claiming it in our lives.  Through the Old Testament, God tells the Hebrew people over and over to remember.  Every time they started to lose hope and power, they needed to remember their story and from where they came.  Psalm 139 cries out in the suffering of the Israelites as they remembered Zion.  When Christ broke bread with his disciples, he told them, “Do this and remember me.”  Throughout our lives, we are told to remember our baptisms and the claim God has on each of our lives.  We are people who are called to remember.  Remember our stories; remember our joys and our sufferings; and remember that our lives are sacred as we continue to write them.  So remember the stories of the Bible and the gospel message – they will continue to play an important role throughout your life.  But just as importantly, I encourage you to remember your story and see that through the messiness and the hurt, the joy and the laughter, God has written a beautiful, unrepeatable story that continues to write itself each day.