Sermon:
April 13, 2001
Good Friday

The phone rang late one night and, as I always do, I answered by saying: "Bill Ritter speaking." Which was followed by another voice ... higher, sweeter and infinitely more teasing than mine ... saying: "I bet you don't remember who this is?" I didn't. And admitted I didn't. Which led to a second response: "I bet you don't forget all the girls from your past." And while I was still trying to figure out if I'd had a past ... and if there were any unforgettable girls in it ... she suddenly interrupted and asked who it was that I said I was, upon answering the phone. Alas, she wasn't looking for me at all. Which left her feeling embarrassed. And me feeling old.

I can't remember everybody. And I have never spent much time worrying whether anybody will remember me. But when I received a pair of requests from two prior churches for large pictures of myself suitable for hanging, I readily supplied them. Heck, I even went out and had somebody take them. Then I delivered them, not as offerings of vanity, but as antidotes to obscurity.

"Jesus, remember me." Which is both the plea from the thief and the title of this sermon. But the thief hanging next to Jesus was not the first to voice it. That honor belongs to the unnamed psalmist of Psalm 25: 7, who wrote: "Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; but according to thy steadfast love, O Lord, remember me." What a wonderful phrase ... and so beautifully turned. What it is, however, is two phrases, juxtaposed in counterpoint. "Forget my sins." "But don't ever forget me." Let's unwrap both sides of the equation.

"Remember not the sins of my youth," the psalmist cries. But what were they? As I look at my life in the rearview mirror, my youth was more boring than it was sinful. Which is probably true for more young people than you might imagine. But that's not the way most people picture things. When you hear the phrase "the sins of youth," what do you see? Many of you see sleazy dives and smoky rooms ... all-night binges followed by aching heads ... toga parties and chugging brewskies ... fraternity basements and the backseats of Chevys. You see road trips, beer runs, and descents-into-the-hell-of-God-only-knows-where. In short, you see Animal House recreated in every sleepy college and university town in North America.

I think the word "sins" and the word "youth" are grouped in the same sentence because youth is a time when choices multiply, and not every choice is a wise one.

William Willimon, Duke's infamous chaplain, writes about the university music department's annual presentation of Handel's Messiah, in the midst of which a young boy soprano steps center stage and sings: "He suffered not corruption; he suffered not corruption." All of which led Willimon to ask: "What right does an 11 year old have to sing about corruption? How can he begin to know of such a thing?" He found himself wanting to tell the kid: "Come back when you're a Duke sophomore, and you can sing about corruption with conviction." Willimon then recalled that heroic figure of Catholicism, St. Augustine, who (when he was the exact same age as a Duke sophomore) wrote his famous prayer: "O Lord, make me chaste; but not yet." For this, Augustine became the patron saint of college students everywhere.

"O Lord, remember not the sins of my youth." Not because they were among my worst, but because they were among my first. Alas, however, they have persisted. Meaning that my perversity hasn't improved over time. All of which reminds me of the man who was seen running frantically upstream beside a fast-flowing river. Someone called out to him and said: "Where are you going in such a hurry?" To which came the answer: "My wife fell in the river and I'm trying to rescue her." "But why are you running upstream?" the bystander asked. "If your wife fell in that water, you ought to be searching downstream." Which caused the husband to shout back over his shoulder: "You don't know how contrary my wife is."

But God knows how contrary we are. And we know God knows. Which is why we pray for divine amnesia. But our initial concern is far more personal. Prior to wishing that God will forget our sins, we wish that we could forget them. We wish they could be over and done with. But they are hard to shake. We are not the escape artists we pretend to be. In visiting with people pastorally, the most frequent sort of suffering I encounter is suffering brought on by memory. Which is usually well hidden. For while we fill our family rooms with trophies, diplomas, brass rings and blue ribbons ... the collective stuff of our good memories ... we fill the corner cupboards of our souls with darker memories, drawn from those times when we were more deserving of chastisement than cheers.

But those corner cupboards have direct pipelines, if not to our minds, almost always to our digestive tracts. Which is why guilt is an emotion that is often tasted before it is pondered.

All of which leads to a second formation of the psalmist plea. "We wish, O God, that others could forget our sins." But they don't. They remember far too much, for far too long. As we do with them. Sometimes the sins of others are remembered with barely-disguised delight. "Let's see ... E. Smith. Are we talking about E. Smith the philosopher? Or, if memory serves me correct, about E. Smith the philanderer?" Try as he might to begin again ... start over ... make a clean break from it ... or have a fresh go at it ... there is always someone who will remember that E. Smith once fell from grace in October of 1978.

One of my friends in the ministry recently attended his high school reunion. As the band was belting out oldies but goodies in the background, a former female classmate came up to him and asked: "You weren't always planning on being a preacher, were you? I mean, you weren't seriously thinking about the ministry when we were in high school, were you?" In response to this, my friend admitted that the ministry hadn't even crossed his mind in those years. "Good," she said. "That certainly makes me feel better."

There's always somebody, don't you know, who remembers what we did on Saturday nights ... and during the rest of week, as well. It's not so much that we keep finding our sins, but that the people who remember our sins keep finding us. The world is never quite big enough for those who wish they could start completely over.

Our sins!

• We wish ... to God ... we could forget.
• We wish ... to God ... that others could forget.
• We wish ... to God ... that God could forget.

Does God have the memory of an elephant? If so, think of the pain that could cause us. For, as yet another psalm ponders: "If thou, O Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, who (among us) could stand?" Meaning that we can't take any comfort in the fact that, as sinners go, there's a whole lot of people who are a whole lot worse than us. The psalmist isn't saying: "If thou, O Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, some of us will have a leg up on the rest of us." At least I don't think that's what the psalmist says. What the psalmist says is: "If thou, O Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, none of us will be left with a leg to stand on."

Last Sunday night, Paul Stookey (of Peter, Paul and Mary) performed a wonderful concert in our sanctuary. And while he didn't mention it last Sunday, his presence recalled his earlier dream about divine judgment. In Paul's dream he is waiting in a long line (somewhat smugly) to have the content of his life reviewed by God. In order to kill time while waiting, he strikes up a conversation with the lady standing just ahead of him. Much to his surprise, he finds he is talking to Mother Theresa. But that surprise is mild, compared to the shock of overhearing God say to the saintly sister: "All things considered, Theresa, I was really expecting a lot more of you." Now I don't know about you, but if I was standing there ... hearing God say that to her ... I'd start looking for people wanting to take cuts, so that I could give myself some time to reassess my response.

Sure, God knows we could have done worse. But God also knows we could have done better. Much, much better.

But think how painful such knowledge must be for God. If God really knows all this stuff ... I mean, if God really sees everything, misses nothing, and carries it all around in his head ... God must suffer terribly. For what if God has to carry around, not only the sum total of yesterday's meannesses and cruelties, but also the collective memory of who did what to whom at Auschwitz, Antietam, Appomattox, Belfast, Bosnia, and Baghdad ... proceeding alphabetically past Nagasaki and Oklahoma City, clean on through to Uganda, Waterloo and Zaire. Could you carry the memory of all that stuff? Or, sooner or later, would you have to forget it ... if not for the sake of others, but for your own? Nobody ... even God ... especially God ... wants to carry all that crap around forever.

"Remember not, O God, the sins of my youth. But according to thy steadfast love, remember me." That's what we really want, isn't it? Not to have our sins forgotten, but to have ourselves remembered ... so that God will feel no need to call for our file, but will simply call for us.

Hanging beside him on the cross, one thief mocked Jesus. The other thief said: "Man, don't you fear God? We are getting what we deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong." Which was when he turned to Jesus and said: "Jesus, remember me."

Remember me. Not my sins, but me. It's our last and deepest prayer ... that God will know us, in spite of all God knows about us ... and that God will not turn his back on us, in spite of all that has come between us. For to be forgotten by God, would constitute the ultimate in homelessness, causing us to be numbered among the wild and wandering strays of the universe. Will God allow that to happen? Or is there something in the visitation of Jesus ... the message of Jesus ... even in the death of Jesus ... that will provoke God's memory?

A family is out for a drive on a Sunday afternoon. It is a pleasant afternoon and they are taking a relaxed and leisurely pace down the highway. Suddenly the two children begin to beat their father in the back: "Daddy, Daddy, stop the car. Stop the car. There's a kitten back there on the side of the road."

The father says: "So there's a kitten back there on the side of the road. We're having a drive."

"But Daddy, you must stop to pick it up."

"I don't have to stop and pick it up."

"But Daddy, if we don't pick it up, it will die."

"Well, then, it will just have to die. We don't have room for another animal. We already have a zoo at the house. No more animals."

"But Daddy, are you just going to let it die?"

"Be quiet, children. We're trying to have a pleasant drive."

"We never thought out daddy would be so mean and cruel as to let a kitten die."

Finally, the mother turns to her husband and says: "Dear, I think you'll have to stop." So he turns the car around, returns to the spot, pulls off to the side of the road, and says: "You kids stay in the car. I'll see about it."

He goes out to pick up the kitten. The poor creature is just skin and bones ... all sore-eyed and full of fleas. But when he reaches down to pick it up, with its last bit of energy the kitten bristles, baring tooth and claw. Sssst! He picks up the kitten by the loose skin of its neck, brings it over to the car, and says: "Don't touch it. It's probably got leprosy."

Back home they go. When they get to the house, the children give the kitten several baths and a gallon of warm milk. Then they intercede. "Can we let it stay in the house, Daddy ... just for tonight?" The father says: "Sure, take my bedroom. The whole house is already a zoo." So they fix a comfortable bed, fit for a pharaoh. Several weeks pass. Then one day the father walks in, feels something rub up against his leg, looks down, and there is a cat. He reaches down toward the cat (but not before carefully checking to see that no one is watching). When the cat sees his hand, it does not bare its claws and hiss. Instead, it arches its back to receive a caress.

Is that the same cat? I mean, seriously, is that the same cat? No, it's not the same frantic, frightened, forgotten cat from the side of the road. Of course it's not. And you know as well as I do what made the difference.

My friends, one Friday afternoon, when God touched down into my little corner of the world's sinful zoo to reach out to Billy, Krissy and the Princess, I chanced to look at God's right hand. And if memory serves me correct, it was covered with scratches.

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This sermon was delivered at the Good Friday Ecumenical Service held at the First United Presbyterian Church, Birmingham, Michigan.