Forgotten
There’s an old public-speaking exercise that asks audience members to raise their hands if they know their grandparents’ names, and keep them up if they know the names of the generation before that, and the one before that. Anyone? Usually not. It demonstrates that any of us are only a few generations away from irrelevance.
Even if you can name these ancestors, do you know their lives? Maybe your great-grandmother had a 1941 Willys 3-window coupe, and your grandfather inherited it and chopped and channeled it during the burgeoning 1950s hot-rod movement. Could you describe your great-grandmother’s meticulous maintenance of the new car, or your grandfather’s exploits with it at the drag strip?
That public-speaking exercise is usually a motivator for people to do something: buy a time-share, invest in a franchise, construct a monument, etc. In the face of serious issues like world hunger, gross income inequality, genocide, poor mental health, and war, this action is a bit misplaced. And when our attempts to do good don’t accomplish much except further our interests or serve our purposes, we wonder why God lets some people suffer.
This, exactly this, is what many churches dwell upon during this pre-Easter season that is traditionally celebrated as Lent. A famous passage in Isaiah spells out that misunderstanding of our role in the world today, and in Jesus’ life and death:
“Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:4-5)
People in Jesus’ time thought they were doing good when they killed him. They were silencing a revolt so their Roman occupiers wouldn’t become even more oppressive. They were adhering to old laws because that’s what they thought God wanted. In their search for power, self-righteousness, geopolitical stability, remembrance, and peace, they killed the source of peace. And they thought God forgot about him.
Today, in our search for meaning and purpose outside of what God lovingly shows us in the Bible, we sin and our sins kill the source of that meaning and purpose. Our desperate clinging to glory, legacy, and conquest – and our misapplied use of God’s gifts – only results in more death.
We think we’re doing good, when we’re really forgetting Jesus and the purpose of his death. We forget that the love that sent him to earth extends to all people, including the ones who are suffering and within our reach. We forget that our sins died when Jesus took them to the cross, and we don’t need to let them continue to define our lives. God took this on himself in the form of Jesus and it died with him.
God wants us to remember Jesus, and the peace he earned for us. That peace reorients our lives. We can let go of the fear of being forgotten because God remembered us in our most despicable state and redeemed us. We can let go of the fear of death because the sinful part of us died, and the spirit in us was given new life, during the same event on the cross.
Because all of Creation is God’s, we already own nothing. Because we have an inheritance with Jesus, we already own everything. Doesn’t this give us peace too? Doesn’t it reshape how we think about earthly possessions, and how we expect them to define our legacy? When a wealthy tycoon died, his asset manager was asked, “What did he leave behind?” The manager answered, “Everything.” In some cases, this includes memories. Names may indeed be forgotten. Stories may die when a car owner dies, or the car is sold, or crushed.
One day, we will all fade from memory. A generation is rising up today that mostly doesn’t know Willys, and the ones that do just associate them with Jeeps. But God hasn’t forgotten about us, and that’s the most important thing to remember.
