Genesis 9.15 -- God's Remembrance

A sermon delivered in Christ Chapel on November 6, 2003, (as if All Saints' Day) by the Rev. Dr. William Seth Adams, Professor of Liturgics and Anglican Studies, with musical accompaniment by Dr. Russel Schulz, Associate Professor of Church Music and Seminary Organist and Choirmaster

Blessed be the Name of God

The way our current chapel lectionary is constructed, on Thursdays we have access to the readings from the previous Sunday. On this particular Thursday, our access gives us two sets of readings for All Saints', one set for All Souls', and the proper for the Sunday itself. Out of this broad array, for homiletical purposes, we take as our ground, the festival of All Saints'.

God said, "I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember…" So we read at the end of the Noah epic told in Genesis. A most striking text! A text that speaks almost casually about an extraordinary and wonderful disposition on the part of God -- God's disposition to remember. And by God's remembrance, the story tells us, creation itself is sustained. It's remarkable! Whereas, in order to remember, I write notes and pin them to myself, God hangs rainbows. How very like God!

That's the matter at hand, then. God's remembrance.

Come with me on a curious little journey, one that occurred to me as I let my mind and heart play with this lovely notion. God's remembering.

The first thing I thought of was a New Yorker cover I saw a few years ago. The artist was Roz Chast, whose work you would probably recognize if you saw it. The cover shows a cross section of an urban street, with street level at the top, marked off clearly by the sidewalk and parking meters. Below the meters and to the bottom of the page, the things concealed below the street were displayed-retained, remembered as it were, by the ground. In addition to strata devoted to predictable things -- gas lines, electrical conduits, telephone wires, water mains, steam pipes and the subway -- in addition to these, there is also a layer of mail that never got through, a layer of bell-bottoms, platform shoes and peace medallions, another layer for the pneumatic tubes through which department stores used to send messages with great speed, a layer of misplaced important papers and, just above bedrock, a layer reserved for lost cat toys.

So, the first thing I thought about was that God's memory must be a place like that -- filled with various things, some predictable and some long forgotten, though sometimes sought after.

At the same time, as I thought about "place," I was sure that God's memory was not best pictured as a repository of things under a city street. Thus, I began to imagine what contours God's memory might take, as if to ask, "What shape is, after all, must suitable for holding all things in remembrance?" What would it look like?

Chartres…Notre Dame…Salisbury. Yes indeed! It would look like a cathedral, exactly! Specifically, the cathedral of the 12th century renaissance described by William Durandus a century later. From each structural element in the building, Durandus took deep meaning, deep theological and devotional substance. Each beam, each stone, even the mortar. "The cement…is made of lime, sand and water. The lime is fervent charity, which joineth to itself the sand, that is, undertakings for the temporal welfare of our brethren:…water is an emblem of the SPIRIT." [The Symbolism of Church and Church Ornaments, I.10]

Everything bore meaning. What Durandus saw was piety in stone and glass and light. It was orthodoxy in solid, soaring form. Surely, this would be a place appropriate for God's remembering. And through the vaults and columns would come the music of Palestrina, Bach, Healy-Willan, Ralph Vaughn Williams, Calvin Hampton, the voices of King's College and Mahalia Jackson, the evening canticles our dear Russell wrote to remember Hal Perry. Ah, yes. God's remembrance looks like a great cathedral.

Now, having come to that conclusion, I was immediately beset by other options. Instead of a great cathedral, wouldn't God's recollections be best kept in a greenhouse? Yes, a greenhouse, silent, damp, fertile-a place where, nourished by air and water and sunshine, these memories of God would flourish-in all their vivid color and eccentricity. Of all the memories to inhabit any imagination, surely God's memory is most likely to be filled with exotic flowers, and a remarkable abundance of fertilizer.

A cathedral or a greenhouse. There's yet another image that visited me. The one I would choose, if given a choice. This place for God's memory is not made with stone or glass; it's made with cloth -- heavy canvas, really. Gaily colored and festooned with banners. The canvas draped over a series of large poles, poles held in place by strong cables. The poles are typically set in place by elephants. The music here is provided by brass band and calliope.

God's memory is a circus tent. Think about it. Vitality, adventure, sweat, color, movement, dust, tears, tension, joy -- and, of course, in God's memory, countless clowns.

Having reached this point, I then wondered if, in truth, God's memory might actually best be served by a synagogue, or mosque, or a high place out in the open. Oh, well…

Another question presented itself. What would we find there, in this place of God's remembering? Whatever the shape and form, whatever the color or texture -- what would we find kept, retained, remembered by God?

Surely there would be memories of God's life before time, before the first act of making, before the first spasm of creation, before the coming-to-be of all things, seen and unseen. God, alone. ["For God alone," the Psalmist says, "my soul in silence waits." Ps 62.1]

There would certainly be the remembrance of stories told by all sorts of creatures about their own beginnings-stories about ancestral times, when the earth gave them life. Stories told by dinosaurs, newts, cockroaches, daffodils, amoebae, live oak trees, and all the tribes of earth. These stories would likely be in their own section of God's memory, honored by God for their imagination. There we would certainly find our own story-the recollections of the primordial ooze, and the time of "hovering" that gave birth to "galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses…" [BCP, 370] The stories about gardens and blessings, serpents and nakedness, sloth and exile.

Among God's souvenirs, we would find supple and robust memories of works of justice and mercy, kindness, generosity, thoughtfulness and hospitality. Recollections of life on a tricycle, the giddy games played by lovers, the 2-step at a Texas honky-tonk, the smile of a peaceful death. We would also come upon the gnarled but still incendiary memories of hatred, violence, abuse, of harm, disregard and disrespect of all sorts and kinds. God's collection would be quite complete.

There would be numberless rainbows, hung in the clouds of numberless years, used by God as reminders of promises made, godly promises kept. And, we would find without difficulty the memories of other promises made, promises made by us, by our kind, promises that have gone unkept, unconfessed, unrepented. God would surely have these. Finding these we would hurry on, shielding our faces, our throats filled with pounding, tho' in the distance we could hear a voice saying, "Abba, forgive them for they know not what they do." We would weep.

By the same token, here in God's remembrance, we would find no evidence of sins that had once been offered up in confession, sins named with true repentance. These sins, well known to God in their time, these sins are gone without remainder, without residue, without sign or suggestion. Forgotten. Remembered, if at all, only by ourselves, not believing well enough in God's willingness to forgive us completely and then to forget. We might remember but God has forgotten. God, you see, has been persuaded, long ago, by that voice we heard, pleading for us. That voice has the power of the rainbow.

We find no trace of sins confessed, sins forgiven. Wonder of God! What could exceed this lovely discovery? Only one thing. And that is this: in the timelessness of God's remembrance, it is always the festival of All Saints'. In this festival, this Jubilee, the dead live in God's sacred memory. All those dead, known to God, live, rejoice, frolic "where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting." [BCP, 499] Wonder of God!

My imagination has probably taken us far enough, on a fanciful but not on a false journey. The God to whom we speak, in whom we trust, this God intends to know us, to set us free, to keep us in heart, to keep us in mind. Yes, this God intends to keep us in mind, because to be kept in God's remembrance is to live, to be forgotten by God is to die. Consequently, Dear Ones, thank God for the rainbows, pray with the Psalmist, "Remember [us], O LORD, according to the favor you hold for your people; and visit [us] with your saving help [again]." [Ps 106.4]

Blessed be the Name of God

William Seth Adams