Hello Big Red
I was walking along the waterfront of Kollen Park in my hometown of Holland, Michigan, passing a number of anglers patiently tending their lines. They never seem to catch anything, which may be a good thing, given the pollution in Lake Macatawa. I looked over at the children in the playground when I saw someone whom I knew from a few years ago. He had been sitting on a bench by the lake and was heading for his truck.
“Hello Big Red,” I said. He looked at me a bit surprised.
“I’m Tom. That Christmas season a few years back, you repaired my sewer line.”
He paused for a moment and then smiled. “Yeah, that time the city messed up their repairs and blocked your line. You couldn’t flush your toilets.”
It was the week before Christmas and my house was full of family, and then full of something less pleasant when sewage backed up into the basement. I frantically called around, trying to find someone who could come right away. Within hours, Big Red showed up. His diagnosis was tree roots invading the line, and he hauled a roto-rooter to the basement and ground them out.
A day later the sewage backed up again. Big Red returned, this time with a camera to scope out the line. It turned out the city had inadvertently blocked our connection to the main sewer when making repairs a few months earlier. We hadn’t noticed until the house was full of family. That Christmas was made more memorable because we were constantly driving to Grandma’s house to use the toilet. Stories from that time are now part of Boogaart lore and are told with great delight at holiday get-togethers. They’re a little raw to retell here.
Eventually the city reconnected the line, and hired Big Red to oversee the work. Big Red was knowledgeable and took pride in his work, obviously essential, but not highly esteemed by others. He saw his work as a calling and clearly derived joy in using his skills to serve his community. He was Reformed, even though he did not claim it. Big Red was at peace with himself, and such a person is rare in our hurried and harried world. He was someone whom I would not forget.
After our brief encounter in the park, Big Red said that he had to get back to work. He started to walk toward his truck, but then he turned around and looked directly at me. His face aglow with a slight smile, he said, “Thank you for remembering me.”
I left Kollen Park and continued on my way home, cutting through Centennial Park, just south of downtown Holland. I passed by the memorial to all the soldiers who died in the service of their country, starting with the Civil War. On one side of the memorial was a list of names, above which was the statement: THEY MADE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE. On the other side was the affirmation:
DEDICATED TO ALL VETERANS
THROUGH PEACE OR WAR
THEIR MEMORIES WILL NEVER DIE
The Power of Remembering
In the time since that walk, I have been rehearsing both Big Red’s parting words: “Thank you for remembering me,” and the words chiseled in granite in Centennial Park: “Their memories will never die.” I have been pondering the meaning of remembering in human relationships.
In my remembering Big Red, some kind of energy, hard to identify but very real, passed between us. My remembering touched him, and his offering of thanksgiving touched me. The act of remembering had revitalized the past, bound us together, and enhanced our lives–that was clear from the smiles on our faces. The resultant intimacy was surprising to me and confounding. I felt oddly obligated to a man who had only been a stranger at my gate. I felt that we had engaged in some form of the ancient ritual of covenant making.
The memorial in Centennial Park stands through the generations to remind all who pass of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our safety and security. We pledge to remember the dead and believe that in doing so we have the capacity to keep their memories alive forever.
Forever. Such a bold word, such an unabashed hope, humankind reaching for eternity. The memorial assumes that forever is within our grasp and intimates that remembering keeps something of the fallen soldiers’ essence alive for eternity. The memorial assumes that remembering operates outside what we normally understand sequential time to be, and it affords communion with the dead. To remember is to resurrect.
Both the words of Big Red and the words chiseled on the Centennial Park memorial show that remembering is not merely an individual exercise taking place deep inside our souls, a movement from the realm of the unconscious to the conscious, or a recalling of formative experiences in our lives. Remembering is a communal exercise. It is a life-giving power that keeps the past alive and strengthens the bonds of our life together.
The Effect of Our Remembering
While human remembering is a power, it is a very weak one. Like everything else in human existence, its effect is short-lived. It fades. We all too quickly forget. My remembering meant something to Big Red in the moment but would have only a small effect on the course of his life. I am quite sure that as he returned to his truck and drove away to someone else’s sewer crisis, the memory of our encounter faded and the sense of communion dissipated.
We can chisel THEIR MEMORIES WILL NEVER DIE on a granite monument, but we all know that such an affirmation is not true. I took the time to read aloud the names of the dead from the Civil War on the Centennial Park memorial and realized that neither I nor anyone else had any memory of them. Their memories were as dead as their bodies. Memories do not live on in stone-cold memorials; they live on in human communities. Perhaps a few people remember the dead of World War I, a few more the dead of World War II, more yet the dead of the Korean and the undeclared war in Vietnam, but no one remembers these Civil War heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice.
The same short-lived effect of human remembering is evident in family life. I have vivid memories of my Grandma Gillespie. She led a brave but troubled life, and I try to pass on the important stories to my children, who are once-removed, and my grandchildren, who are twice- removed. She lives on in my memory and expresses herself in my character and behavior, and I want my children and grandchildren also to feel the ambivalence of her life and her influence on both my mother and me. I want them to know the reality of what many call deep time,to know that every moment of their lives touches the past and the future. I want them to know the power of remembering the past and the power of hope for the future. But her memory fades and will die with me and my siblings. Outside of the few people who are remembered for lives that influenced the course of history, no one is remembered past three generations.
Job and Remembering
One of the most intriguing and provocative laments in the book of Job is found in chapter 14. Job is responding to Zophar, but in his pain he turns away from him and begins to address God. He begins by deploring the contingence of human existence:
A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble,
comes up like a flower and withers,
flees like a shadow and does not last (14:1-2).
Job has been taught, and his so-called counselors confirm, that suffering has a purpose: suffering is the punishment for sin and enduring suffering makes one a better person. This teaching makes no sense to Job and only adds to his suffering. He reminds God of his contingency and tells the Holy One not to bother trying to make him a better person:
Do you fix your eyes on such a one?
Do you bring me into judgment with you?
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
No one can.
Since their days are determined,
and the number of their months is known to you,
and you have appointed the bounds that they cannot pass,
look away from them, and desist,
that they may enjoy, like laborers, their days (3-6).
Job’s anger at God grows when he looks up from his seat among the ashes, and his eyes light up an olive tree. Even the humble tree has hope. It can be reduced to a stump and its roots grow old in the ground. Yet when the rains come, the water revives it, and it puts forth branches like a young plant.
The ordinary olive trees knows a hope that humankind does not know. Job offers this obituary for all of humankind:
But mortals die, and are laid low;
humans expire, and where are they?
As waters fail from a lake,
and a river wastes away and dries up,
so mortals lie down and do not rise again;
until the heavens are no more, they will not awake
or be roused out of their sleep (10-12).
In the midst of his pain, his mind perhaps lingering on the life of the olive tree, Job has an impossible thought. Could the natural world be teaching him something? Could the tree be telling a truth? He re-examines his understanding of suffering and death and wonders whether he also might live again. He pleads with God:
O that you would hide me in Sheol,
that you would conceal me until your wrath is past,
that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!
If mortals die, will they live again?
All the days of my service I would wait
until my release should come.
You would call, and I would answer you;
you would long for the work of your hands (13-15).
Job pleads with God: “Remember me.” Remembering is God longing for him and calling for him. Remembering is God longing for all of us, walking the ruined garden and calling to the descendants of Adam and Eve, who are hiding and dying in their shame and misadventures. If God remembers Job and the rest of us, we will live again. The power of divine remembering is the power of resurrection.
Job knows the power of God who created all that exists and the power of divine remembering, but he does not believe that God longs for him and remembers him. He ends this lament with angry words directed at God and accuses the Holy One of making his suffering complete by destroying any hope he might have:
But the mountain falls and crumbles away,
and the rock is removed from its place;
the waters wear away the stones;
the torrents wash away the soil of the earth;
so you destroy the hope of mortals.
You prevail forever against them, and they pass away;
you change their countenance, and send them away.
Their children come to honor, and they do not know it;
they are brought low, and it goes unnoticed.
They feel only the pain of their own bodies,
and mourn only for themselves (18-22).
Job ends this lament in hopelessness. God does not long for him, does not come calling for him, does not remember him. Or so it seems at this point in the drama. Yet, at the end, God does come calling. God appears in a whirlwind, and maybe God’s coming rekindles Job’s hope in life after death.
Resurrection and Remembering
My death approaches. I often joke with my friends that my cancer is like Jesus: it is coming again. Hopefully, not for a few years; hopefully, not for many years. Regardless, most of my life lies behind me, and death is constantly announcing its presence. Despite what is often assumed, the scriptures are extremely vague about life after death, and most depictions by Christians are trivial and unhelpful. I especially dislike the notion that whatever we enjoyed in life, we will enjoy in heaven. I have enjoyed golfing, but I do aspire to play nine holes with Jesus forever. I also dislike the notion of a bodiless communion with the Spirit of God. I have only known love, blessing, promise, and remembering in my physical body. A bodiless communion is just another way of picturing death as non-existence.
Job hopes that God will long for him and come calling. In short, he hopes that God will remember him. In the life and ministry of Jesus, this is exactly what God does. Christians believe that in the person of Jesus, God remembers our fragile existence in a fragile world. In Jesus, God and the world were reconciled. Call it atonement; call it ransom; call it victory over the forces of evil. By whatever name, God remembers us. Whatever kind of body, whatever kind of consciousness, whatever kind of world I will inhabit, it matters little to me. My hope is the same seemingly impossible hope that Job expressed–-that God will remember me, that God will long for the work of God’s hands.
