MARY LEE TALBOT
Staff Writer
“I have two extraordinary grandmothers who came from impoverished backgrounds and found their American dream in northern Arizona. On my Chinese grandmother’s side, who is still alive, our family has been here for six generations,” said Michael Chan, Ph.D. “They began working on the railroads, went into business and are proud to be part of the immigrant story.”
Chan preached at the 9:15 a.m. Monday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. His sermon title was “Memory and the Neighbor,” and the scripture reading was Deuteronomy 24: 17–22.
One day, Chan’s grandmother was complaining about the people who wanted to migrate to the United States. “I asked her, ‘Isn’t that part of our family history?’” Chan said. “She saw them just as laborers or service workers. She forgot that our life has not always been what it is today. I reminded her of the stories she told me about our family, and our mutual remembering gave us a fuller picture.”
Chan reminded the congregation that Deuteronomy is the end of the Torah, and the book contains Moses’ last words to the people of Israel before he dies and they enter the Promised Land. In Chan’s Sunday sermon, he said, “the future of a people depends on the truthfulness of their memory. A forgetful nation is a fragile nation. Moses urged the people to remember the good, the bad and the ugly. Remembrance precedes promise.”
Deuteronomy 24: 17–22 contains admonitions to care for the resident alien, the orphan and the widow. Moses reminded the people that they were resident aliens, slaves, in Egypt. Moses told the people to leave sheaves of wheat for the poor to eat and grapes on the vine for them to have something to drink.
Why should they do what Moses said? “Remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do these things,” he told them. Chan called this sentence memory and mandate.
“Don’t forget where you came from; do this because of what you experienced. The alien, the orphan and the widow are the trinity of vulnerability in Deuteronomy,” Chan said. The widow and orphan were people without the protection of men. The widow had no husband, the orphan had no household and the alien was outside their own land.
Chan told the congregation that a fragmented memory leads to the withering of compassion. “When we fail to remember, we will fail to step up. Moses described a social safety net for the vulnerable: Don’t put widows in debt, don’t take food from the hungry,” he said.
He described the Book of Ruth as putting flesh on the legal bones that Moses laid down. Chan urged the congregation to read the story of Ruth, who was a widow and a foreigner. She was a Moabite who moved to Israel with Naomi and ended up in the lineage of King David. “She found a way because the safety nets were in place,” Chan said. “This is what the law looks like when it is embodied in real time.”
Chan said that society in the United States is in peril if we only remember in a fragmented way. He reiterated, “Memory instructs compassion and fragmented memory diminishes compassion. We need an ever-widening circle of liberty and freedom. It is our sacred duty to tend to history, to keep the flame of generosity from going out.”
The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton presided. Douglas Kirsop, co-host at the Lutheran House and a member of the Chautauqua Volunteer Fire Department, read the scripture. Sonya Subbayya Sutton played “Prelude on ‘We shall overcome’” by Adolphus Hailstork for the prelude on the Massey Memorial Organ. The Motet Choir sang “O Holy Spirit, Praise to You,” music by Howard Helvey and text by Mary Louise Bringle, based on Hildegard von Bingen. The choir was directed by Sutton and accompanied by Owen Reyda, organ scholar on the Massey Organ and Barbara Hois on the flute. Reyda played the postlude, “Allegro impetuoso,” by Herbert Howells, on the Massey Organ. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and preaching is provided by The Edmund E. Robb-Walter C. Shaw Fund and The John William Tyrrell Endowment for Religion.
