As a child I loved to hear my grandparents talk of what they could remember from "before." They could remember from before cars which meant they remembered when trains and horses were the rule and the blacksmith was essential. That was the most impressive to me. They remembered before the Great Depression even though all their lives were impacted by that Depression. They could remember before TV when everyone who could gathered about the radio for story times. All but one remembered before they moved to professional lives and their lives on large family farms. They spoke of working together, simplicity but always plenty to eat. Two of them were not fit for the farm. One because of polio, the other because of heat exhaustion. They could remember when indoor plumbing was just kitchen water. Outhouses were the rule.
I used to wonder what I would one day remember "from before." I know now. I remember before TV was in every home and bedroom. When there was only one station per city and all was black and white and gray. I remember before self correction typewriters. I remember before desegregation and before women were common as doctors and lawyers and clergy. I remember before you could talk or think about human sexuality. I remember before you could suffer through a divorce and hope to remarry and be in anyway acceptable in society. I remember before when children born in retardation (differently abled we say now) were almost always housed in institutions where we seldom would see them. I remember when one bath per house was normal, multiple baths an extravagance.
Today's lessons all have tinges of remembering from "before." Saul is just on the cusp of change. He can still remember when his prime responsibility was his father's needs and herds. He is growing in a new vocation as Israel's first King and not yet alert to the effect of power placed in his life. Except of course the power of being loved at home and entrusted with a herd to recover. Just anointed in a rather secret ceremony as King, he learns what it is to join in prophecy and look into the future. In the complex hours ahead will he remember the simple acceptance of God's love and call?
In Roman's we are asked to remember what we know of Abraham, what it was like to have faith in the One True God who would send one out to a foreign land with the promise of that land and children and a great nation to come. What was it like to order your life by God's will known in the law yet to be codified in things like the Ten Commandments? What was it like to trust God before we encountered God in Jesus' being and teaching? Can we imagine that depth of faith and use it to encourage our own. That is what St. Paul sets before the early Church in Rome...and you and me. We are to remember before...
And Jesus who we learn elsewhere in Philippians came form God and did not grasp at equality with God but at humility as in today's Gospel questioned.
"By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?" Matthew 21:24
How much did he remember from "before?" Is he remembering more deeply as he goes? His only answer is to ask the religious leader to wonder about the authority of John the Baptist. Where did this authority to call people to change back to God's people come from...earth or heaven? Slyly they will not answer. But we can guess, they remember.
OK then, think more deeply. If there are two sons asked to do their father's will and one says "No," yet does it. The other says, "Yes," but does not. Who is the better son? Well dah, the one who does it. So it is with those who catch a vision of God and follow even after they have said "No." Those you consider so desperately unclean, so tainted by the law broken, who have been brought now by John (and implied here by Jesus) to see again what once they knew (or did not), have reevaluated and returned to hope in God. They are headed into God's reign in front of those who can only see themselves as better than, as righteous.
Why? Because the returning folk remember what it was like before. They remember by an encounter with God's love and grace in John and Jesus what it was to live in this love, order, acceptance. They remember the freshness of repenting, turning to hope as they once did before the world's pressure to make an adult living settled in on them. As they encounter the small gift of the mustard seed of faith, the lost sheep found, the precious pearl sought, they remember before. And in remembering they find an energy of hopeful wonder, faith.
Perhaps this kind reign is in fact in me, in my heart, my memory, my self concept. They choose to follow it. What about me today?
Maybe all Jesus is asking is for us daily to remember before when our faith was more simple, hopeful, childlike and return to follow.
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