May 25th, 2025 - "The Persistence of Memory" - Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris

Matt Nelson: Welcome to the Sermon podcast from First United Methodist

Church in downtown Bentonville.

If you have questions related to what you hear today or just want to find

out more about the ministries at First United Methodist Church, please visit us

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Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: Weep not for the memory.

Memory is an incredibly complicated thing, but I hope on the other side of today's

word that we at least find some joy, some value, and some redemption in it.

So we're going to hear two passages from the word of God, and the first one

will come from Exodus chapter two, and then the next one from Genesis 35 here.

Now the word of the Lord.

A long time passed and the Egyptian king died.

The Israelites were still groaning because of their hard work.

They cried out and their cry to be rescued from the hard work rose up to God.

God heard their cry of grief, and God remembered his covenant

with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

God looked at the Israelites and God understood.

God said to Jacob, get up.

Go to Beth El and live there.

Build an altar there to the God who appeared to you.

When you ran away from your brother Esau, Jacob said to his household and

to everyone who was with him, get rid of the foreign God you have with you.

Clean yourselves and change your clothes.

Then let's rise up and go to Beth El so that I can build an altar there to the God

who answered me when I was in trouble, and who has been with me wherever I've gone.

So they gave Jacob all of the foreign gods they had as well as the rings

in their ears, and Jacob buried them underneath the Terant that she them

when they set out, God made all of the surrounding cities fearful so

that they didn't pursue Jacob's sons.

Jacob and all the people with him arrived in Lutz, otherwise known as Bethel.

In the land of Canaan, he built an altar there and named the place

l Bethel because God had revealed himself to him there when he ran away

from his brother, Rebecca's nurse.

Deborah died and was buried at Bethel under the Oak, and

Jacob named it Alon Bako.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

Lord, open our hearts, our minds, and our eyes that we might see and know

the word you have for us this day.

In your holy name we pray.

Amen.

All right.

I have a story to tell you, but we're gonna have to have a vocabulary lesson

first, because otherwise I'm going to sound like a lunatic as I tell this story.

So here are some terms you need to know.

We're gonna talk about the word tattoo, but we're not talking

about it as ink on your skin.

We're talking about it as this big kind of drum fife.

Dance Celebration parade kind of thing.

And there's a very famous one in Virginia Beach, which brings in particularly drum

and pipe bands from all over the world to have an exhibition of their sound.

And it comes from the drum and bugle call to recall the soldiers back

to their quarters from the pub.

Uh, and it comes from.

The Dutch word tap to which I hope I'm pronouncing correctly, somebody correct

me if I'm am tap to, which means close the tap, it's last call basically.

Right?

Okay.

So you've got that understanding of tattoo.

Now at a tattoo, the big Drummond pipe band celebration, they have a preview

party that they call a hullabaloo.

Okay?

So the preview party is the hullabaloo.

And then the last thing you need to know is about Anzac Day.

Anzac Day is on April 25th, and it's Australia and New Zealand's Memorial Day.

And it is referred to as Anzac Day because ANZAC stands for

Australia, New Zealand Army Corps.

Okay.

Alright.

Vocabulary and place.

My brother plays in drum and pipe bands.

He is a drummer and he absolutely loves it and he is part, or at least

has historically been, he's kind of backed away a little bit recently.

He's been part of the, of one of the drum and pipe bands in Virginia

Beach and they've done really well.

In fact, they've gone to world competitions in Scotland.

I mean, that's the place to go if you're a drum and pipe band, right?

Um, they've been to Worlds and so they've met a lot of people from around the world.

Well, for the tattoo that's happening in Virginia Beach, my brother lives

in Norfolk, right there, the Australia band came in and their drummer,

one of their drummers couldn't come because he had a family emergency.

So they knew my brother.

They reached out to him and said, Hey.

Our bass drummer can't play.

Can you come be part of our band for the tattoo?

And he said, I play snare.

I don't play bass.

And they said it's the same thing.

And he said, well, not really, but you know, whatever.

He also thought, you know, I'd get to hang out with Australians for like a week.

That'd be pretty cool.

So he decided to become a bass drummer for a week.

So he's playing in the Australian drum and pipe band, and the

tattoo happens to start.

On April 25th, which is their Anzac Day, they requested before

the hullabaloo to have the stadium where the hullabaloo kicks off.

Could they have that?

And do a solemn memorial for their fallen soldiers.

And the organizer said, yes, of course.

So they go into the stadium and the only people that are in the

stadium are the Australian band and then the New Zealand and Australian

dance teams that are also there.

So it's just people from Australian, New Zealand.

They play this incredibly moving set in honor of their fallen soldiers.

The organizer, the kind of head of the hullabaloo, hears this performance

and says to the leader of the Australia Band, wow, that was amazing.

It was so beautiful.

Would you mind sticking around and kicking off the hullabaloo with that performance?

And the leader of the Australian band said, absolutely not.

That was for us and for our people.

And for no other reason.

My brother earlier that day, knowing the significance of the day to

the band that he is in, said to one of them, Hey, happy Anzac Day.

And the band member said, whoa, whoa.

We do not say Happy Anzac Day, which caused my brother to go,

why do we say Happy Memorial Day?

He shared this story with me and it made me think the same thing.

And I started thinking in general about how often we are trying to run

from remembering, and particularly to run from remembering around death.

It's not just the only thing that we run from.

I am now convinced that you can tell the true soul sicknesses of our country

by what you can drive through and do.

So we have problems with health and diets in this country, and

we have fast food drive-throughs and pharmacy drive-throughs.

We have problems with addiction in this country, and you can

drive through a liquor store.

We have a whole lot of hangups about money.

You can drive through a bank.

We have our struggles around appearance and fame.

You can drive through a dry cleaner.

And believe it or not, of course, we have our problems around death and memory,

and in some places in this country, you can drive through a funeral home.

That's right for the visitation.

They roll the casket up.

They usually use old banks, so they roll the casket up to the window where you

could see the tellers and people can drive through and pay their respects.

We struggle with this.

We struggle with memory and death in our country, and it's

made me think about how we.

Practiced Memorial Day when I was a kid, and this is not a back in my

day moment, but I do remember as a kid going to the graves of our family

members and putting flowers on them, and I haven't done that in forever.

Part of that's 'cause most of our families in Oklahoma, I now live in Arkansas, but

people used to travel to do that too.

Now it's observed much differently.

We skip the grave moment and we go right to the party, to the picnic, to the

boating, to all of that stuff, which there's nothing wrong with that at all.

And in fact, we would often go to the graves and then go have

a picnic, or go have a family reunion or something like that.

There's both celebrating the people of the past and celebrating where we are now.

But we seem to be skipping a step these days.

And I think in a lot of ways it's that we're running from our memories.

But God has wired us to remember it is a central metaphor for how we

understand our relationship with God.

We want God to remember us.

I just read those words from Exodus.

When the people were in slavery, they cried out to God, set us free,

and God remembered and understood.

God also wants us to remember God, just as I read the passage about Jacob,

where God instructs Jacob, that place where you wrestled with me when you

fled from your brother, go back to that place and put up an altar, make it a

place of worship so that you remember that we wrestled together in the midst

of that really hard time in your life.

And at that place, he was given a new identity.

That's where he is named Israel.

God also wants us to remember each other.

You think it's an accident that God asked Jacob to remember?

Go back to that place where you were at your lowest because you

were fighting with your brother.

Remember, remember your people, and God also wants us to remember our experiences.

The Exodus is a defining understanding.

For so many people around this world, as God as the liberator,

Jacob is given the name Israel, which is still with the people today.

And then I had to think about Job.

I didn't read it today.

I read it a year ago when we were suddenly not having worship in person.

And I was sitting in my very recent landlady's space using her

internet that was still in place.

Thank God to broadcast to all of you and bring you a word of

hope in the midst of disaster.

And the Holy Spirit led me to Joe that day when God shows up in the whirlwind.

And I remember declaring for everyone that God is in this

whirlwind, God did not cause.

The whirlwind and I affirm that still today, God is not the source of our

traumas, but God is within them to help us find our way out of them.

So God shows up in the whirlwind that does no damage to Job, to show

Job that even in the midst of his hardest times, he's still with him.

Now, why would Job get that?

Well, because Job's greatest loss in all the losses that he

encountered was when a mighty wind blew his house down on his children.

So I had to stop this week and say, wait a minute, God, why?

Okay.

Like that's job's worst memory.

And you come in a representation of job's.

Worst memory.

I have to admit, I had a little bit of a moment thinking about that like I had at

the beginning of this week when everything was shutting down because of bad weather.

The week of our anniversary of the tornadoes, and as I'm looking at my

weather apps to figure out what's going on, I also see storms today on the

anniversary of the tornadoes, and I prayed in that moment, but here was my prayer.

Hey, be nice, God.

Come on, my people need to break and I, I have to feel like Job probably

went, Hey, what are you doing here?

Showing up in my worst memory.

But remember I said that God was not the source of the damage.

Of the destruction of the loss, but in showing up in Job's, worst memory, God

showed him that there's nowhere that God won't be with him even in his worst.

Memory.

But I think also as I've been reflecting on that, that God was also showing us

and reminding us that we are not in the reign of God yet in the reign of God.

No more tears, no more destruction, no more whirlwinds, knocking

down houses, none of that.

But while we're live, not in the fullness of the reign of God, there will continue

to be those things, including whirlwinds.

But God gave us memory.

And memory contains within it what we need to survive the hardest times.

Because what memory gives us are four things.

Resilience, wisdom, connection, and hope.

Let's talk about those four things.

Resilience.

Resilience is the strength to go on Exodus.

The Exodus means so much for that people and for so many people

because it basically proclaims you survived slavery and are still here.

You took the worst of what humanity has and you're still here.

You can do this, whatever this is.

Just like this week, the memory of the tornadoes.

So we do have folks in our congregation who had some damage this week.

I woke up Tuesday morning and immediately knew what to do.

That is not the case from a year ago.

A year ago, I woke up and went, what in the world do I do?

Right?

But Tuesday I was like, okay, I know what to do.

We have a disaster coordinator at this church now, and I knew who had chainsaws.

And I knew who had a heart for this kind of service, and we reached out and help.

Was immediately sent out.

Immediately sent out.

'cause I remembered how to do this and so did all of you remember how to do this?

I was sharing this with my therapist this week and she gave me this quote.

Don't just forgive your past self.

Thank them.

They walk through chaos without the wisdom you have now and still got you here.

That's resilience.

And that also points to the next one, which is wisdom.

We learned the lessons, right?

Jacob learned a lot about his family and having family and what the potential

pitfalls are, but also he learned what the value of family is as well.

So when he came back home and had to repair the harm between

him and his brother, he had wisdom about how to do that.

Like I said, Tuesday, I knew how to organize.

I knew who to call.

I had that wisdom.

I had that learning and, and I built on that, that resilience that had taught me.

We can do this paired with the wisdom of knowing how, and that's

the wisdom of Memorial Day two, when we stand at the grave of those who

have served, we get to reflect on when war is just when it is needed.

And we get to remember the high cost that comes with it, to

ask ourselves, is it worth it?

That's wisdom.

That's wisdom.

As we go through things, we also create connection.

We have that shared experience that knit us together, and memories of that

shared experience can help us heal.

He saw the last time he saw Jacob, he was trying to kill him.

Because he'd stolen his birthright and his blessing, but time had passed

and he started to remember much more of what it was like to have a

brother, and he missed his brother.

He missed that connection, and Jacob missed it too.

And so they were able to overcome the past because they had in the midst of

some hard memories, good memories too.

Memories can help us heal.

I'm gonna share this next story with her permission.

Brooke Tilly had a little minor surgery this week and she's in the

hospital and the nurse anesthetist comes in to, you know, give her the

good knock and you out drugs, right?

The nurse anesthetist walks in, sees Brooke and Jennifer and Phil,

and says, I remember you last year.

You all showed up with a chainsaw.

And cut a tree outta my yard.

Their act of love and caring and service in am midst of a hard time for that nurse

then returned in her act of caring and love to be able to take care of this

young girl as she's going into surgery.

They were connected and that connection brought healing both ways.

And then we have hope.

You know, setting up an altar, setting up a place to worship means first setting

up a stone, which is what Jacob did.

And by the way, Beth El means the house of God.

So he is basically setting up this place.

He sets up a stone.

Sometimes you're referred to as an Ebenezer.

Here I raise my Ebenezer.

We sing that song sometimes if you don't know, an Ebenezer is a memory stone.

It's a stone you set up to remember how God was with you in your hardest time.

Why do you suppose we all put up gravestones?

It is a memory stone.

It is to mark the memory of the person that we have lost, and it is to lay

claim to the promise of the resurrection because God will remember us too.

It's a memory stone.

It's the hope.

That comes from memory, from the memory of that person, from the

memory of a life lived with God, from a memory of a relationship with

God, that leads to eternal life.

And I have to tell you, I have so many people that will share with me not

just memory stone stories, but other memory stories that help them understand

that their loved one is still alive.

People will say, we were out at the graveside and a red cardinal flew by,

and that was my mother's favorite bird.

You know, my, my father died and all of a sudden onions sprouted in an old

garden, and he loved to grow onions.

I'm gonna share with you my memory story from this weekend.

So I was putting this sermon together and I was like, Ugh, ugh.

I have not been to my dad's grave in a long time.

And I was in central Arkansas this weekend, so I really

didn't have an excuse.

I'm like, you know, if I'm gonna preach to a bunch of people, I probably

should also do what I'm preaching.

So, so I said to mom, I was like, how about we go see dad?

Now I'm gonna tell you this story and just listen for little

markers of memory all along.

You don't even have to know my dad, but you'll, you'll

recognize markers of memory.

Okay?

So first I had told a friend that I was gonna propose to my mom that we do this.

And I said that, um, she's probably gonna say, 'cause it's raining, uh,

she's probably gonna say, I don't want to go out there because it's raining.

And which point I'm gonna say, do you know how many grave sites

I've stomped around in the rain?

And she's probably gonna say something like, will you get paid to do that?

So I don't feel so bad for you.

But anyway, so go see mom.

And I'm like, okay, let's go out and, and she goes, well I was gonna

say we're not gonna go 'cause it's raining, but then I remembered your

dad stops the rain, so let's go.

Now this comes from her experience of driving around with my dad when he was a

truck driver, that it would be blinding rain and as they would pull up to wherever

dad needed to stop, it would stop raining.

And dad would say it is because I control the rain.

So, um, yeah, so we're heading out to the grave site and also neither of us

can ever remember where he's buried.

We have a map.

It's the worst map on the planet.

I can't, I cannot figure out this map and I'm not good with maps anyway.

But anyway, so we get out there and he's in section 10, I think

we're looking at section 10.

We know he's by a tree.

I'm hopping around looking at all the trees.

I got out.

It's pouring down rain.

I have my umbrella.

I'm wandering all around in here and I'm shaking my head, my mom's

in the car and I'm shaking my head.

I was like, it is not out here.

And she's hollering, I don't think this is the right section.

I'm like, I think it's the right section.

It's not, but I'm not finding him.

And then I find a sign that says Section 11.

I'm like, this is not the right section.

So I go back, get in the car and I'm like, this is not the right section.

But we know this is section 11, so that must be section 10, but now

we're on the wrong side of Section 10.

So we make our way around and we pull up and.

We stop the car and it stops raining

and she said, we're in the right place.

So first I see a grave that says Harris on it.

I'm like, oh, there's Harris, but there's flowers.

We don't usually get him flowers.

And then we see it's Chester Harris.

It's not Bill Harris.

So I'm like, okay, wrong Harris.

We find the right.

Harris and I have brought chicken sticks.

Candy for my dad.

He loved awful candy.

Ugh, ugh.

Anyway, so I unwrap the chicken sticks and we put it there in the grave and we talk

a little bit about him and say hi, and, and uh, then we get back in the car to

leave and I'm like, I don't know if we're gonna be able to find our way outta here.

And, but mom says, you know, I, I feel, I feel good that

we brought him chicken sticks.

Flowers don't seem right.

Flag doesn't seem right.

Candy seems right.

Candy Or what else is something else that we could bring him and y'all.

A Domino's pizza delivery truck drove right in front of us in the graveyard.

I dunno who was getting pizza in the graveyard, but, but my dad sure would've.

And so, and I'm like, or we could have gotten pizza.

She goes, follow that pizza delivery truck.

It'll take us outta here.

And so we did, we followed the pizza delivery truck and we were

delivered from the grave site.

Oh.

It felt so much like dad was there.

I felt so much like his story goes on and it's still going on.

Such hope in that this life is never the end.

But just another beginning, resilience, wisdom, connection, hope all of those

depend on or are strengthened by memory.

So let's quit running from our memories.

And start parking the car, getting out and walking through.

Sometimes we need a guide for that.

Sometimes we need a therapist, sometimes we need a grief group.

We're gonna do a grief retreat in October.

For those of you that wanna do that, it's gonna be an overnight for, sometimes

you need someone to walk through it with you, but park the car and walk through.

And look for God within because God is always there redeeming all things.

Happy Memorial Day.

Maybe not hopeful.

Memorial Day.

Absolutely.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Matt Nelson: Thanks

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