with Rev Dr Chris Walker
Memory and Hope
Kennon Callahan said, “Memory is strong but hope is stronger.” These words captured my attention years ago and still do. While memory is very important we live more on the basis of hope. We are creatures who look to the future. We want the future to be better and different than the past. Memories do often provide us with motivation, positive or negative, for the future. But we cannot live in the past. We live in the present looking to the future.
Individuals and nations can let past events and injustices be their driving motivations. While it is understandable that people and groups who have been badly mistreated can hold on to their resentments, it is unfortunate if this is their dominating motivation. However what is needed is not simply a matter of seeking to forget the past or even moving on from it without acknowledging it appropriately. Truth telling is important so what happened is acknowledged and recognized for what it was. South Africa led the way as a nation in this with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission. What happened during the Apartheid era could not be moved on from until the injustices and suffering were openly acknowledged. For many that was enough. They did not even expect reparations of some sort. They did want their suffering and loss to be heard and appreciated. They could not bring back loved ones who had died but they did want to remember them and what they went through. They wanted the memories to be accurate and not ignored or covered up. Then they could move on.
In the Australian context, it was important for the Prime Minister to publicly say ‘sorry’ to indigenous people for the suffering inflicted upon them with the coming of white people. Reconciliation required it though there is still much more to be done. In the Uniting Church a new Preamble to the Constitution was adopted by the national Assembly in 2009. It came about in response to the indigenous people in the Uniting Church wanting to have their experience recognized formally. So the new Preamble has ten points that acknowledge this. It begins with recognizing that through this land God had nurtured and sustained the First Peoples of this country, the Aboriginal and Islander peoples, who continue to understand themselves to be the traditional owners and custodians. It goes on to acknowledge the mixed response to indigenous people made by church people. Some approached the First Peoples with good intentions, standing with them in the name of justice. They considered their well-being, culture and language as the churches proclaimed the reconciling purpose of God. Many church people, however, shared the values and relationships of the emerging colonial society including paternalism and racism towards the First Peoples. They were complicit in the injustice that resulted in many First Peoples being dispossessed from their land, their language, their culture and spirituality. It goes on to acknowledge the development of the Uniting and Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress within the Uniting Church and the covenanting process which was put in place. The new Preamble concludes by saying, “the Church celebrates this relationship as a foretaste of that coming reconciliation and renewal which is the end in view for the whole creation.” This last sentence draws on a key statement in paragraph 3 of the Basis of Union of the Uniting Church. Memory, appropriate acknowledgement of the past, leads to hope for the future God intends.
We are all people of hope. Without hope people lose motivation, become depressed and life loses its colour and vitality. With hope people can endure great hardship and suffering. Victor Frankl as a Jew was incarcerated by the Nazis in WW2. In the death camps the question, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ was bound to end in despair because no answer existed. But if the victim was able to see the holocaust as something he was forced to endure, however undeservedly, if he was able to say to himself, ‘all right it happened – what can I do now?’ there was at least some measure of hope. Frankl’s experiences in German concentration camps confirmed the theories he had formed. People who found meaning and hope were able to survive when others succumbed. Although he was required to do hard labour for up to 18 hours a day, and at one point was reduced in weight to eighty pounds, he continued to organise secret discussion groups on mental health and prompted other inmates to think about past achievements as well as tasks still waiting to be fulfilled. Hofrat Heinrich Klang, a member of the Austrian Supreme Court, recalled how Frankl had gathered around him a group of inmates who were, as he was, enthusiastic rock climbers. They met every two weeks, and at every meeting one of them talked about some of his rock climbing exploits in the Alps. Engrossed in listening, in their own memories, and their hope of seeing the mountains again, they were for a time at least able to rise above their hopeless situation.
Jesus’ primary message was about the coming kingdom or reign of God which was breaking into the present through his teaching and actions. People were being healed in body, mind and spirit as signs of God’s desire for wholeness. Jesus pronounced sins forgiven on behalf of God enabling people to experience freedom from their past and able to live into a new future. He challenged the authorities of his day for abusing their positions and oppressing the people. He taught about the rule of God and invited people to respond by repentance and faith, turning from their past ways and trusting in God for their present and future. There was both a present and a future component to his teaching and ministry. He gave people hope based on his conviction about God’s coming reign which was in evidence in all he said and did.
Memory and hope for Christians are based on remembering God’s faithfulness in the past and God’s promise for the future. Not even death can have the last word for God is a God of resurrection.
Chris Walker
(National Consultant Christian Unity, Doctrine & Worship)