Forgetting Our Own Faces

Picture taken as part of the Mwelu Foundation, a project in the Mathare Valley slum of Nairobi, Kenya.

Preached at Salem Presbyterian Church (pulpit swap)

August 30, 2015

Genesis 1:1-5, 24-27

¹In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, ²the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

³Then God said, “Let there be light”;  and there was light. ⁴And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind." And it was so. ²⁵ God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good. ²⁶ Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." ²⁷ So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

James 1:17-27

¹⁷Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. ¹⁸In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

¹⁹You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; ²⁰for your anger does not produce God's righteousness. ²¹Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

²²But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. ²³For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; ²⁴for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. ²⁵But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act-they will be blessed in their doing.

²⁶If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. ²⁷Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Sermon: “Forgetting Our Own Faces”

Every once in a while, if you're like me, you have a dream that wakes you up. Sometimes it's a bad dream-a dream in which the shadows become so menacing that your heart skips a beat and you come awake to the knowledge that not even the actual darkness of night is as fearsome as the dreamed darkness.

Sometimes it's a sad dream-a dream sad enough to bring real tears to your sleeping eyes so that it's your tears that you wake up by. Or again, if you're like me, there are dreams that take a turn so absurd that you wake laughing-as if you need to be awake to savor the full richness of the comedy.  Rarest of all is the dream that wakes you with what I can only call its truth.

Several years ago I had such a dream, and it is still extraordinarily fresh in my mind. I dreamt that I was staying in a hotel somewhere and that the room I was given was a room that I loved. I no longer have any clear picture of what the room looked like, and even in the dream itself I think it wasn't so much the way the room looked that pleased me as it was the way it made me feel. It was a room where I felt happy and at peace, where everything seemed the way it should be and everything about myself seemed the way it should be too.

Then, as the dream went on, I wandered off to other places and did other things and finally, after many adventures, ended back at the same hotel again. Only this time I was given a different room, which I didn't feel comfortable in at all. It seemed dark and cramped, and I felt dark and cramped in it.

So I made my way down to the man at the desk and told him my problem. On my earlier visit, I said, I'd had this marvelous room which was just right for me in every way and which I'd very much like if possible to have again. The trouble, I explained, was that I hadn't kept track of where the room was and didn't know how to find it or how to ask for it. The clerk was very understanding. He said that he knew exactly the room I meant and that I could have it again anytime I wanted it. All I had to do, he said, was ask for it by its name. So then, of course, I asked him what the name of the room was. The name of the room, he said, was Remember.

Remember, he said. The name of the room I wanted was Remember. That was what woke me. It shocked me awake, and the shock of it, the dazzling unexpectedness of it, is vivid to me still. I knew it was a good dream, and I felt that in some unfathomable way it was also a true dream. The fact that I did not understand its truth did not keep it from being in some sense also a blessed dream, a healing dream, because you do not need to understand healing to be healed or know anything about blessing to be blessed. The sense of peace that filled me in that room. The knowledge that I could return to it whenever I wanted to or needed to--that was where the healing and blessing came from. And the name of the room-that was where the mystery came from; that was at the heart of the healing though I did not fully understand why. The name of the room was Remember.

Why Remember? What was there about remembering that brought a peace so deep, a sense of well-being so complete and intense that it jolted me awake in my bed? It was a dream that seemed true not only for me but true for everybody. What are we to remember-all of us? To what end and purpose are we to remember?

Frederick Buechner’s powerful telling of this dream in his book A Room Called Remember, reminds us of that deep search within each of us.  We’re reminded that what, I believe, we most long for as human beings is a room called remember.

This is our greatest longing because, as my grandmother would say, “Our forgetter works overtime!”  We are professional forgetters, so much so that, ironically, we can’t even remember there ever was anything to remember.

This letter of James serves as a spiritual string around our finger, connecting with that worrying, frustrated part of our souls that knows we have forgotten something essential.  What have we forgotten?  I’m glad you asked!

We have forgotten what we look like, our true faces. This letter of James says “if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.” 

In the Greek, it’s a bit more interesting, saying that those who fail to “do” the Word, are “like those who look at their face of origin (or “genesis”) in a mirror, and go away, immediately forgetting of what sort of person they are.”  We forget our own face, our Genesis, the sort of person we are.  In the book of Genesis we hear that we are made of something incredible: that our very faces mirror the image of God.  The sort of person we are is a child of God, reflecting that divine glory to everyone we meet.  But oh, how we have forgotten that.

We see instead faces that have more lines than we’d like, or scars we’d rather not remember.  We see faces that have forgotten how to smile.  We see faces that are jaded and tired, worried and restless.  It is no wonder we’d rather forget.

But this letter of James begs us to remember.  To remember what it means to do the Word of God, and not just speak it when it justifies our political and social agendas.  To fulfill the loving law of Jesus Christ, a law that makes it very clear what religion was designed to be: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

We in the church are a people who pray.  We are a people who worship.  We are a people who study God’s Word, and we are a people who serve.  But we only do all of these things because we are called to be a people who remember.  Remember who God is.  Remember who our neighbor is.  Remember what sort of people we Christians are.

What would the world be like if we remembered?  Remembered that pure and undefiled religion is about the poor and the orphan, not the color of the carpet or the numbers in our pews.  Remembered that our true face is not the false perfection we project to the world, but our “Genesis” face.  Remembered that our true face is God’s face, and so is everyone else’s.

I believe that our most tempting sin as human beings is not greed or gossip or gluttony.  It’s not anger or lust or jealousy or pride.  Our most tempting sin is forgetting.  Perhaps that’s why the 10 Commandments starts with a call to remember: “I am the Lord your God.”  For so much sadness stems from forgetting: we oppress our fellow human beings, failing to see God’s face in theirs.  We compete and fight to be the best because we forget where our real worth comes from.  We obsess over capitalist cosmetics – “things” -- to cover the parts of our faces that make us feel imperfect, forgetting that the grace of God is all the covering we need.  And what of the orphan and the widow?  Well, we forget them, because they remind us too much of our own abandonment and grief, rooms of our hearts we’d rather not visit. 

When Jesus gathered with his friends, including the one who would betray him, in an upper room on his last night on this earth, he gave that room a name.  “Do this in remembrance of me,” he said.  He called that room Remember. 

So, how do we visit that room we so desperately need?  Again, I’m glad you asked.  We just have to recall its name, and allow the Word of God and the Table of grace to take us there, again and again, until we remember our true faces, until we remember the faces of our neighbors, until we remember the face of God. 

Remember.  Remember as if your life and the lives of others depends on it, because of course, it does.  And then wake up, knowing you have been visited with truth, and you will never be the same.  Amen.