Joshua 4:1-7 Faith and Remembrance
All Saints' Sermon Nov. 2, 2008: People's UCC, Dover, DE: The Rev. Dan Griggs
I want to go back to the Lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures, where it says: "For the children of Israel these stones are to be a memorial forever." Since yesterday was All Saints' Day, and today is All Saints' Sunday, that word "memorial" leapt off the page when I read it: a pile of stones, a "memorial" of what God had done for the Hebrew people. It's all very obscure. We need some context.
God sent Moses to lead the Hebrew slaves out of Egyptian bondage. At Mount Sinai God gave them the Law of Moses that basically created the nation of Israel. But that generation was afraid to invade Palestine because the cities were strong and their spies saw giants there; so they stayed out in the Sinai desert for forty years, until all that generation had died. Now Joshua is leading the second generation into Palestine, and just as Moses lifted his staff and the waters of the Red Sea divided, so again Joshua sends the holiest symbol of their religion, the ark of the covenant, into the middle of the Jordan River at flood-time, and the water is stopped, so that the Hebrews walk across the Jordan on dry land. Their first camp is at a place called "Gilgal." Joshua orders a cairn erected there—a conical pile of large stones—as a reminder, a "memorial" that God had brought them to the land promised to their ancestors Abraham and Sarah. And in years to come, when their children saw the cairn and asked, "What is that?" they were to tell the story of what God had done for them. This story in the Book of Joshua was written as much as five hundred years after the events, and a few sentences after the end of today's Lesson the seventh century writer noted, "and they are still there today."
They had a heritage to preserve, names to remember, deeds to wonder at; and it was important for their children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to see the stones and hear the story and join with their parents in a prayer of thanksgiving—all these centuries later. They gave God thanks in remembrance of their forebears' faith.
I may have told you this story before, but I've done some further research on it, so I'd like to tell it again. My family has a memorial site too; and what happened there is still affecting my life every day I get up and walk down the stairs into my livingroom. We're in an economic slump right now, and some of the television reporters are waving their arms and comparing it to the Great Depression that began in 1929; but there was another Great Depression that the people in 1929 could look back on: the Depression of 1893. It lasted four years, through the presidency of Grover Cleveland, at a time when neither the President nor Congress believed that the government should do anything to help the people who were suffering or the banks that were failing. My grandfather Tom Griggs, the one we all called "Bigdaddy," was about twenty-one years old when it hit. For awhile during the Depression of 1893-97 he got a job as a peddler. He had a horse and wagon full of household items, and his route was in rural West Tennessee. One of his customers had a sixteen year old daughter named Drucilla Jane House, and they fell in love. They married in the middle of the depression—some of you know what that is like. They were living in a log cabin when their first child was born—my Aunt Lora. So he had a young family now: how was he going to support them? He took a job as an armed guard for the Tennessee Central Railroad. The company was still building track in East Tennessee, and they sent him there to guard state prisoners who were excavating a railroad tunnel through granite. He finished that job and returned home with enough money to buy a farm in West Tennessee; and Tom and Drucy lived on that farm for the rest of their lives. They had seven children, who all married and had children—including me. When my grandparents died the children sold the farm and divided the proceeds—each child and each grandchild received a thousand dollars. My parents didn't mention it to me: they just invested my thousand dollars and let it make money.
But that tunnel dug by the prisoners my grandfather guarded is still there, and the main east-west railroad line from Knoxville to Nashville goes through it. U.S. highway 70 follows the tracks through there, and every time my family drove by the site my parents would tell the story of "Bigdaddy's tunnel." When my children got old enough to understand, I took them there and told them the story; and one of these days I hope to take Blade and Aiden there, too. That tunnel is my family's memorial site, and as I said, there was money made there that bought a farm that provided an inheritance to me.
Last year my sister called and said that our mother had not used up all the investments to pay nursing home expenses, and I had a check coming—my inheritance. Harriet and I took the check and bought a new, over-stuffed rocker-recliner and sofa for our livingroom: furniture good enough to last us for thirty years or more. So every morning I walk past the proceeds of my grandfather's work at the end of the Depression of 1893-97. I call it "Bigdaddy's couch." In a sense I give God thanks in remembrance of my forebears' faith, just as Joshua told the Hebrews to do.
Do you have someone in your life, perhaps a saint, perhaps not quite a saint, who has left you a legacy of love, of memory, of moral example and faith? Maybe you have your own memorial place, or thing, that helps you touch again and again the blessings you received from them. That's what All Saints' Sunday is for me. Every year at this time I make a special effort to touch again the signs of my saints and give God thanks.
In your worship bulletin there's a blank piece of paper. Would you take that out now. I invite you to take a couple of minutes to write on that paper the names of your personal saints—the people who have really touched your life. I'm going to receive them all and place them on the altar for a memorial—I'm not going to read any of them aloud, so you can write what you need to write.
Also, if there is something in your life right now that is especially troubling, someone who needs God's special attention, or a loved one you have lost in the past year—write that down on the paper, so we can give our losses and our anxieties to God now, before the holidays.
Prayer: Minister brings the papers to the Communion Table
O God of memory and hope: We give you thanks for the saints in our lives, and for the values they continue to give us as we live. We present our anxieties for your touch of blessing. Receive our memorials this day, we pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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