Introduction: Christian Citizenship
Derek Poole

Comment
Priscilla Reid

From the Director
David Porter

Outside the Camp
Donald Watts

Citizenship
From 'For God and His Glory Alone'

Love: An attribute of Citizenship
Graham Cheesman

Memory and Redemption
David J Montgomery

Holy Nation
Lois Barrett

Grace Healed Eyes
Steve Stockman

Negotiating the Future
Deirdre Mullan

Book Reviews
Alwyn Thomson and Dorothy McMillan

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MEMORY & REDEMPTION
The Way We Remember the Past Shapes the Way We Love in the Future

Depending on who you talk to, they are either sectarian eyesores to be removed, symptoms of the community strife that has existed for centuries on this island, or colourful and valid representations of cultural identity and community history. Of course, a lot depends on context. Painted kerbstones, slogans and intricate murals which were intimidating and sinister in 1993, became important assets of the tourist industry in 1994.

Nevertheless, perspective is also as important as context. While for the neutral tourist many of these artistic creations hold a fascination, for members of 'the other side' certain letters, logos and statements still invoke feelings of anger and fear, stirring memories of death and destruction even in a context of cease-fire. Common to murals on both sides is the word 'Remember'. Remember Bobby Sands, George Seawright, the famine, the Boyne. Remember 1690, 1916.

It has often been said that in Ireland our memories are too long and our perspective on the future too short and too narrow. Leon Uris's well used quote says that in Ireland 'there is no future, just the past happening over and over'. However, to say the sole problem is that our memories are too long, and that all we need is a sudden dose of amnesia, is of course unhelpful and simplistic. Remembering is important. It is good that we remember. The issue is not whether we remember, not even what we remember, but why we remember and how we remember.

Deuteronomy is the biblical book that deals most directly with issues of citizenship by outlining how the Old Testament people of God were to live and structure their community life. In Deuteronomy, the word 'remember' ( zakar ) appears fifteen times. The implication is clear. Without memory, or with a selective, defective memory, we cannot truly live in harmony with God or at peace with our neighbour. Without memory both our worship and our citizenship will be sadly flawed. Specifically I would like to draw attention to the commands to remember where you have come from, and to remember the Lord your God.

The Reason for Remembering

In chapter 24 the people are urged to remember their history. "Remember you were slaves in Egypt" (vv 18, 22). In the midst of these series of laws and regulations regarding the judicial system, bail and harvesting, the only recorded theological justification is simply, remember what you once were.

The reason for remembering was neither to glory in past victories, nor to indulge themselves in a show of strength. It was to encourage humility. Only once in the book are they told to remember how the Egyptians were defeated. In contrast the refrain 'Remember you were slaves in Egypt' is repeated five times.

The Routine of Remembering

This then is reflected in the routine of remembering. The story of the Exodus is a story of probably the longest marching season in history. It tells of a forty-year trek from a land where they were oppressed to one that they could call their home. And each year they relived it. But they did not relive the crossing of the Red Sea, nor the triumphant marching in to take the land of Canaan. Instead they remembered God's goodness in allowing them to escape Egypt, and they remembered it in a simple family meal — the Passover — with lamb, unleavened bread and storytelling.

The Result of Remembering

Their remembering had of course both private and public consequences. The joy, the glory, the thanksgiving, the celebration, the feasting, the re-enactment were all done privately in the home. The public demonstrations were the acts of justice and compassion towards other nations, the generous leaving of parts of the harvest, the looking after the poor and marginalised.

When the people of God remember, God's justice is seen in how they live as a community. There are economic, political, judicial, ecological, and sociological consequences to a right remembering. The memory of their former status as slaves caused them to have compassion towards those who are disadvantaged or on the periphery. The memory of the injustices they suffered inspired them to seek justice for all, fellow-citizens, neighbours and strangers. Any foreign peoples under their care or responsibility were not to endure the oppression they suffered at the hands of the Egyptians, and that would by implication include extending justice to their former oppressors.

In Northern Ireland we remember past injustices. Stories of hunger, discrimination and loss of citizenship are par of the folk consciousness, but our remembrance should inspire us to work all the harder for true justice for everyone, rather than try to reverse the tables and so be guilty of the same sin ourselves.

We remember past atrocities. The sites of indiscriminate bombings and shootings acquire so much emotional significance. But this can result in intransigence, making us eternal slaves to the past, or it can lead to a sober determination to ensure that no more names are added to the litany.

We remember past victories and celebrations, be they of long-gone battles, or recent electoral successes. But our celebrations can be characterised by exclusion and triumphalism. Have we anything to learn from the people of Israel? Their victory-celebrations were acts of humble thanksgiving to God, resulting in outward acts of compassion. They cared for the outsider, the stranger, and those from whom they were culturally and religiously alienated.

In Northern Ireland coloured kerbstones, flags and emblems are symbols of exclusion, used to make others feel uncomfortable and unwanted. Can we learn something from the people of Israel? They too once identified who they were by painting their doorposts. But that was part of their slavery in Egypt, on the eve of their exodus, and was never repeated. Instead the event was remembered in quiet gratitude and worship.

If I can make an anachronistic parallel, they did not eulogise Moses, or write all over the land of Canaan 'Remember 1280', if that's when it was. (If they had, it perhaps would have saved modern scholars a lot of wasted ink arguing over the exact date of the Exodus!). Those things were not important. They were not to use their deliverance as a weapon. They were to remember where they had come from, but only as a motivation to do justice and righteousness, and thus forge a closer identification with the God who delivered them.

Remember the Lord Your God

For the New Covenant people of God, the church, there is a direct line of continuity here, in that Christ himself initiated with his disciples the transition between Passover and the Lord's Supper with the significant words, "Do this in remembrance of me". Christians too remember what we once were in a simple meal. As we break bread together we recall the spiritual deliverance won for us by Christ who,with compassion and mercy, became our sacrificial lamb. We do so with humble gratitude, and the expectation that the Spirit of God will meet with us as we celebrate, and empower us to perform similar acts of compassion and mercy.

The second aspect of remembering to which I want to draw attention comes from chapter 8. Verse 2 reads: 'Remember the Lord God who led you those forty years to humble you.' Then in verse 18, at the end of that discourse, we read, 'Remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth'. Remembering God in these ways completed the process, for here the people were given a view, not of where they have come from, but of who they are and what they have the potential to be.

Remember who you are

Chapter 8 begins, 'Be careful to obey every command I am giving you today that you may live….' Remembering how God had brought them thus far gave them a perspective on who they were. The motif of a chosen people is a much-misunderstood one because, without a grasp of God's grace and a humble spirit, it can so easily be perverted and twisted into a reason for pride, exclusion and superiority. Deuteronomy chapter 8 and many of the later prophetic writings make it clear that Israel was chosen, not because there was anything at all to merit their election, but solely that they might be a channel of blessing and shalom to the nations.

Rightly understood, the biblical concept of being chosen by God inherently implies natural unworthiness and inferiority, because right through history it is within God's nature to work with the weak, the despised, the rejected and the apparently foolish. Hence we have little Israel, then the believing remnant of the exiles, then a humble Nazarene carpenter (a crucified preacher), then a motley group of fishermen, taxmen, and paramilitaries. Hence we have the church.

The people of Israel were reminded that their very existence was due to the grace of God, grace that sustained and protected them through forty years in the wilderness. Do we also not need to recognise the importance of the grace of God? Grace which has prevented us from going down the spiral of violence to self-destruction.

Remember what you have the potential to be

They were also told to remember what they had the potential to become. Later in the book, in what is a key passage, Moses says to the people, "I lay before you two paths, death and life, now choose life." (30:19). The people's future lay in their own hands. In chapter 8 the choice is the same. What they would become depended on their willingness to obey. It was God who would give them the ability to produce wealth.

We noticed earlier the continuity between the Old Testament Israel and the New Testament church in their remembrance of the past through celebrating the Passover and the Lord's Supper. However, the promise of wealth in chapter 8 is one of the clear instances of discontinuity between the testaments. In spite of what some offbeat religious groups would assert, wealth for the Christian is spiritual not material.

The promise of Deuteronomy still stands but, interpreted through Christ and Paul, we see now the primacy of spiritual riches and Christian character. We are warned against storing up treasure on earth, we shiver at the parables of the rich who were selfish and greedy and ended up in hell, and Paul constantly refers to the riches of Christ even when he is experiencing imprisonment, poverty and persecution.

And yet the promise of Deuteronomy 8 still has relevance. For if we are to become a people characterised by such spiritual wealth, we must remember the Lord our God. Our unquestioning obedience to him and to his values will produce spiritual fruit such as love, peace, faithfulness and self-control.

What will we as a Northern Ireland society become? What will we as the church become? In a climate of political fear, competing allegiances and conflicting histories, have we forgotten the Lord our God who calls us to choose life?

When Israel rested smugly in their self-satisfaction, using their chosen people status as an excuse for careless living and sectarian superiority, they were remembering wrongly and they suffered the judgment of war, internal division and eventually exile. They lost their political security, and almost lost their national identity.

The Christian church that has identified too closely with one political regime, or rested too comfortably on its established status, glorying in its numerical majority or its cultural influence, has remembered wrongly and has suffered the judgement of corruption and compromise. It has lost its distinctiveness, becoming salt without any taste.

Individual congregations that cling to the glories of former preachers, powerful personalities of the past, or bygone revivals, remember wrongly and are in danger of suffering the judgement of irrelevance and closure.

Such wrong remembering has nothing to do with inaccurate facts. What was remembered probably happened. But it has everything to do with the attitude in which the remembering is done, and with its effect on the present.

Yes, battles have been fought and won, atrocities have been committed, governments have made mistakes and innocent people have suffered. Yes, there has been oppression and violence, and the guilty have often gone free. But the question for those of us who wish by God's grace to be good citizens is this. Will we allow such remembering to transport us into the past and keep us there, or do we have the courage to let our memories motivate us to serve the future interests of all? Only if we have the courage to do the latter, will we be remembering rightly, for then we will be remembering the way of the Lord our God.

Wrong remembering holds our lives captive to the past and makes us irrelevant in the present

David Montgomery is a native of Glengormley. He has worked at a residential reconciliation youth centre in Lucan, Co. Dublin, and as the Presbyterian Church's Youth Reconciliation Officer. He studied theology at Regent College, Vancouver, and is now the Assistant minister in Stormont Presbyterian Church.