More Than Memories

John 14: 15-21

[Jesus said] “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.  This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.  In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 

On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.  They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day, and it began after the Civil War to remember and honor all the soldiers, both Union and Confederate, who had fought and died in that war. Then as now, volunteers would place US flags at the gravesites of soldiers. Later, parades began to be held. Nowadays, it sometimes seems, this national holiday is mostly marked by barbecues and appliance sales as a way to spend the extra day off from school and work. But in the midst of all that, we do still remember and honor those who gave their lives to protect our freedom.

Every Memorial Day weekend when I was growing up, after church on Sunday, my mom and dad would get my grandma and we would have lunch, then head over to White Chapel cemetery, where we would drive somewhere into the center, near a large sculpture I can still see in my mind’s eye, and stop the car, and count our way down the rows and then down the grave sites, until we found the grave site of my Uncle Kenny, who I never met; my dad’s older brother, who was killed in France in 1944 during World War II.

Dad would carefully trim away any grass that was growing long around the edges of the gravestone, while Mom and I took the upside down vase out of the ground, turned it right side up, went to a nearby pump and filled a container we had brought with water. We’d transfer the water into the vase, and then carefully arrange half the flowers we had brought from our garden in the vase, saving the other half for my grandpa’s gravesite nearby. A bit of the water would be poured carefully onto the gravestone so we could rub it clean. I can still remember the feeling of my fingers outlining the name and the cross etched into it, or the water and the cool stone, or the times it had been warmed by the sun.

I remember how strange it seemed to go to my grandpa’s gravesite next, and see my grandma’s name already etched into it, her birth year there too, with a dash next to it, waiting for the unknown future year of her death to be added later, even as she was standing there with me.

I haven’t been back there since Grandma died while I was in high school. I stopped going when I went away to college, and I don’t think I’ve been there since. But I’m going to go there this afternoon, to search for their graves, and to remember them in that strange, tangible way that cemeteries seem to offer us. It seems like a cemetery is one of those places where you feel like you are in that thin space between heaven and earth, where you can sense them both.

And in that time of standing still, of kneeling down to lovingly clean up the gravestone, of placing flowers, and during the drive there and back in the car, the memories do come back to you. You remember the times you spent with the person, and you think of the stories you have been told, even if you never met them. It is all a part of you, and through these memories they abide with you, they remain a part of you.

When Jesus speaks the words of our scripture text this morning to the disciples, they still do not understand what is coming; that this young man, this teacher they follow, will die a violent death in just a few days.

He is trying to prepare them for what is to come.

He knows that they will feel like they have been orphaned, these disciples who have left their work, their homes, their families to follow him. And he knows they will think that all they have left are the memories of the brief time they had with him. And so he tells them, I will not leave you orphaned.

         You will see me, even though the world cannot.

         You will live because I live.

         You will be in me, and I will be in you.

It sounds a bit like memories, doesn’t it? The way those we love seem to live on inside of us, in our memories.

But Jesus is speaking of more than memories. He tells them that God will give them another Advocate, the Spirit of truth. He tells them that this Spirit already abides with them and will be in them.

He knows that memories will not be enough to sustain them for the kingdom work that lies ahead for them all, for us all.  And as time goes on, and all of us who are followers of Christ look back over the past 2000 years, and we try to understand the meaning of Christ’s life and death and resurrection, and to explain to others the hope and promise that has been given to us, we need more than memories, too.

The Bible, on its own, is a type of memory book, a scrapbook, a recording of the ways that God has worked in the world, how God has taken the brokenness of humanity, over and over again, and redeemed it, redeemed us.

But the Bible is more than memories, because it comes alive through the Holy Spirit. It is because the Spirit abides in us that we keep Christ’s commandments, to love God and love one another. Our memories are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit into the ways God calls us to action.

Christ says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. If you love me, you will live a life of obedience to my commandments. And what are those commandments? To love God with our whole heart, mind, strength, and to love our neighbors the same way we love ourselves. Our memories – both our personal experiences and the stories we hear that remain with us, including the Bible stories –

our memories go beyond just making us feel good, when we let the Holy Spirit work on us to show us what to learn, how to live, how to love. How to love God, and how to love one another. 

Sometimes the Holy Spirit is helping us see through our experiences and our memories how not to love God, and how not to love one another.

Always, the Holy Spirit is there as our Advocate, our Counselor, our Trusted Advisor and our Friend.

This is God abiding in us, helping us to know what to do, helping us to translate and interpret our memories and the stories of life all around us into new direction, new hope, new ways to work together – if we will open ourselves to hear. Joan Chittister wrote, “God is calling lovingly to us always, if we will only stop the noise within us long enough to hear.”

It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that God calls to us, that Christ comes to us. We are not alone, in any of our joys or our sorrows, because God has given us the Holy Spirit, to be with us, to abide with us forever. Christ is revealed to us in our everyday lives, in the Holy Spirit who urges us toward love, who urges us toward keeping Christ’s commandments. This participation of the Holy Spirit in our understanding and our actions, is about so much more than memory; it is what forms the ongoing life of discipleship; it is what shows us how to live our lives in new ways, as Easter people; it is what Jesus told his disciples they (and we) would have to provide help along the way; it is the Spirit of the life that has conquered death, the life that truly is life.

And so our lives as disciples are not just based upon memories, even as we continue through our lives to hear and to ponder and to tell others the stories, as the words of a hymn put it, “to tell the old, old stories, of Jesus and his love.” We continue to take these old, old stories and interpret them in the new contexts of today’s world, in communion with the Holy Spirit, in order to use these stories full of memory and of future hope, to dedicate our lives to loving God and loving one another, and in that way reflecting our love of Christ to the world, recognizing with grateful hearts that God has given us so much more than memory in order to guide us in lives of obedience to Christ’s commandments.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.