The Shape of Memory
Preacher: James Roberts, Programme Manager, Council of Christians and Jews
Readings: Luke 4: 14-21 and 1 Corinthians 12: 12-31a
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts
be pleasing in your sight,
O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.
It is a great privilege to be back in St Andrews preaching this morning.
I spent 5 very happy years here when I was a student from 2010-2015.
I haven’t been back for quite a few years though, so walking around the town this weekend has been extremely nostalgic.
So much is the same, as you can imagine in a town as old as St Andrews. The same buildings, same three streets, the same freezing wind. But subtle things have changed. Many of the shops are different, new buildings have gone up, fine institutions such as the Lizard Lounge are no longer around. The people have changed too, of course. The majority of my friends and classmates from my time here have moved away, and I can no longer wander around Tesco and bump into several people I know, as I did when I was a student.
These small, subtle changes remind me that this is no longer a completely familiar place for me. It’s become different, whilst remaining remarkably recognisable.
My St Andrews doesn’t really exist anymore – the exact combination of conditions which made St Andrews what it was in 2010 can never be brought back. So in many ways, the St Andrews which I knew has become an object of memory. And this changes the way in which I engage with this place today, in the present.
When I walk around the town, I’m not responding so much to what I see in the moment. I’m interacting with how I perceive it through memory.
When I walk down South Street, I think of the conversations I had with friends as we went to lectures, and when I walk up the beach I feel the cold terror of May dip, almost as vividly as when I ran into the sea all those years ago.
These memories are like a whole world – one which follows me and which I can, in part, step back into, if not fully.
I say these memories follow me in the sense that the memories I have of St Andrews have formed me, and continue to form me, as a person. I don’t just mean academically, although this is obviously true, but also emotionally and spiritually. The remembrance of things I learned and felt here still influence the way I live my life today – I seek out similar happy times, and use memory as a corrective as I think ‘I remember that didn’t go well, how can I do that better this time around?’
Memory is highly formative of who we are. We carry experiences and feelings with us, of times and places which may no longer exist, but still have resonance in how we live our lives today.
On occasion this can be problematic because this ‘memory world’ which follows us, is intensely personal. So, it’s not always understood or appreciated by other people.
I’m sure we can all recall the discomfort of having to sit through a distant relative’s slideshow of their holiday snaps, and the intense boredom of going through someone else’s recollection of a good time.
But why is this so dull? Perhaps it’s because we can’t participate in it – we weren’t there, we didn’t feel the same joy that they now recall as they flick through the pictures of cafes or hotels and beaches. There’s a divide between their memory and us. The same thing would happen if I took someone new to St Andrews around these streets. They wouldn’t have the intensity of reaction as I do, and they would not feel the significance of this place.
On a more serious note, this is also problematic when someone recounts a difficult or traumatic experience. The memory of this trauma, for that person or community, is formative for them, as they carry the emotions and feelings with them. These memories impact the way they think and act now, and in some ways form part of their identity; albeit negatively. Which can be passed through generations, in memory.
For people who don’t share these memories, this can present a problem. We can’t know what it was like to experience this trauma, so how can we engage with it? How can we cross this divide of memory, which is so particular, contextual, and personal?
As a society, we attempt to cross the divide of memory in a number of ways. We have customs and rituals which invite people into memory. They serve as invitations into the past, bringing the joys and pains of memory into the present.
We write diaries and curate photo albums, we place personal objects in glass boxes in museums and attach plaques to walls in our streets where famous people lived or a notable event took place, we erect monuments to soldiers killed in battle, we place flowers at the sites of tragedies, or, just outside this chapel, arrange the cobbles in the pavement to remind us of a martyr’s death.
In her remarkable collection ‘In Memory of Memory’, Maria Stepanova draws on the work of Anne Carson, writing that an epitaph on a tombstone is ‘the first written poetic genre, the subject of the contract between the living and the dead, a pact of mutual redemption.’ An epitaph on a tombstone is an invitation into memory; reading it gives voice to the past, connecting the living with dead.
These invitations to memory surround us, but it’s all too easy to ignore them. For the symbols to fade into the background of our everyday reality. We can wander around a graveyard without reading its epitaphs or contemplating the life which they invite us to remember.
So, the divide of memory can still exist, despite these invitations. Importantly, then, we have to choose to bridge this divide. We need to respond to these invitations.
***
In our service today, we are remembering the Holocaust, in light of Holocaust Memorial Day on Thursday. Every year, on the 27th January (which is the date of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp), we remember the six million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust, and the millions of other victims of Nazi persecution. We also remember the victims of other genocides across the world.
I work for the Council of Christians and Jews; an interfaith charity which was established by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chief Rabbi in the depths of the Second World War, to foster strong relations between Christian and Jewish communities in the UK. Ever since our formation, we have been committed to teaching Christian communities about the Holocaust.
Now in 2022, teaching and learning on the Holocaust is entering a different stage. The number of survivors of the Holocaust is diminishing. Since the Holocaust, survivor testimonies have served as a powerful reminder of the horrific depths which humanity can sink to in persecuting others. These testimonies have helped the world to cross the divide of memory, to be invited into an appreciation of the trauma and horror of Nazi persecution. In the not-too-distant future, however, there will not be any more survivors to tell us of these horrors.
There’s a danger that the divide of memory will deepen. There’s a concern that the invitations into memory which have been documented on the Holocaust will be left unanswered, fading into the background of the everyday.
This is especially concerning when we consider the surprising prevalence of Holocaust denial, a lack of knowledge around the Holocaust, and the continuing presence of antisemitism across British society.
So, what is to be done? And, specifically, what can the Church do?
***
Our New Testament reading today speaks of the unity of the Church; of the ‘Body of Christ’.
As a church, we are called to be united; to honour one another, to bear one another’s suffering, to rejoice together. We are called to be united despite our difference, just as a body is made up of its constituent parts.
For the Church to be united in this way, we must ‘enter into’ the inner life of the other. We must come out of our individualistic shells and open ourselves up to the possibility of the other.
This also applies to memory. To be ‘one body’ involves stepping into the ‘memory world’ of another, to recognise the significance and formative nature of memory for our neighbours. And to begin to feel their significance ourselves, to empathise with them.
Of course, though, we can never fully enter into the ‘memory world’ of another (an individual or a collective). We can never fully understand the memories which shape and form individuals and communities, because our story is different to theirs. In fact, we need to be careful that our attempt to understand the memories of others does not become appropriation as we seek to enter into their world.
We also can’t enter into the ‘memory world’ of others fully, because the task would be too enormous. We cannot give voice to all memories, as we would soon be overwhelmed. We cannot read aloud the epitaphs of every tomb.
Perhaps this isolation, this divide between us, is part of our fallenness as people; our inability to truly commune with one another, to form a united and sympathetic body.
But in and through Christ, we believe that we are offered hope. The God who is without beginning and without end invites us, welcomes us, into eternity.
We are invited into a story, a living memory, which is bigger than ourselves and which promises a future where all will be united in love.
In the hope of this future glory, Christ invites us to attempt to build such a united body here, to strive for this Kingdom of God on earth. This striving requires our efforts, an ascetic aligning with the will of God for us to love our neighbours unconditionally, to bear their sufferings as our own, to uncover the burdens of memory which they carry, and hold them in prayer. To do this we must choose to respond to invitations into memory; to enter into the inner life of our neighbours, to be in solidarity with them as one body, regardless of race, religion, sexuality, gender, or anything else.
This week, as we remember Holocaust Memorial Day, I invite you to cross the divide of memory which separates us from our neighbours, to strive to enter into an appreciation of their stories; the past which has shaped them, the stories which continue to shape people and communities today, which you may not fully understand, but seek to hold in solidarity. I invite you to give voice to the past, to bear witness to what has preceded us, in order that the stories of memory will not fade into the oblivion of the everyday. And I pray, that we will strive to live together in the unity which God offers us, on earth as it is in heaven.
Amen.