Heart of the Matter: Leaving the Land of Forgetfulness (1 Sam. 7) Chris Altrock – June 18, 2017

This entry is part [part not set] of 4 in the series The Heart of the Matter

There are a small number of people in the world diagnosed with hyperthymesia.^[1] Essentially, these are people who remember everything–everything. Alexandre Wolfe is one of them. In an interview for NPR, Alexandre described how she can recall every detail of a mundane activity like driving to Target for groceries more than ten years ago. She can recall what she wore and ate every day for the past decade. She remembers if the fan in the bedroom was running on this date last year.

This hyper memory could be helpful. Imagine never forgetting another birthday or anniversary or special occasion. Imagine never forgetting another important fact while you are at work or school. Imagine studying for a test and remembering everything you studied. Imagine being able to win every trivia game.

But it could also be hurtful. Imagine remembering, in detail, every harmful word ever said to you, every failure you’ve ever suffered. Imagine the weight of carrying around the mind-numbing details of all the TV shows you’ve ever watched, all the bad meals you’ve ever eaten, all the mundane days you’ve ever lived. Imagine not being able to forget anything–anything.

Still, the opposite could be true. Forgetting can be terrifying. The novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Garcia Marquez, describes a village named Macondo. The village is cut off from the rest of society.^[2] One day someone arrives in Macondo with a sickness. This person has an insomnia sickness. It quickly spreads to the rest of the village. No one is able to sleep.

Initially the villagers are thrilled. They are able to do so much more work now that they don’t have to waste time sleeping. But the lack of sleep eventually causes a terrifying problem. The villagers begin to lose their memory. All that sleep loss causes memory loss. They forget the most basic of things.

To try and salvage memory, a villager named Jose develops a plan that involves labeling everything. Jose takes an inked brush and marks everything in the village with its name:

Table

Chair

Clock

Door

Wall

Bed

Pan.

He even paints the name of the animals on the animals:

Cow

Goat

Pig

Hen.
As memory in the village continued to fade, Jose decided that he needed to be even more explicit with his signs. He posted a sign on a cow that read:

“This is the cow. She must be milked every morning so that she will produce milk, and the milk must be boiled in order to be mixed with coffee to make coffee and milk.”

Then Jose put up a large sign outside the village with the name of the village, “Macondo.” He wanted to ensure the villagers remembered the name of their home.

He even put up a large sign that said this: “God Exists.” The villagers needed a physical reminder that there is a God who exists and is active in their lives.

For those of us for whom spirituality matters, it’d be one thing to struggle with memory loss in general. It would be tragic to wrestle with forgetting all of those everyday things–having to label the table, the clock, or the pig so we wouldn’t forget what they were. But the ultimate tragedy would be forgetting God–having to install a massive sign at home, at school, at work saying, “God Exists” because we were so apt to forget it.

And yet, that’s the great tragedy of the spiritual life for so many of us. We don’t have a plague that’s caused insomnia and with it, memory loss that’s affected our ability to remember God. But the truth is this: Many of us still forget God.

To be sure, there are times when we feel God has forgotten us. The author of Psalm 88 writes about one of those times:

Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? (Ps. 88:12 ESV)

There are times when we feel like we are in the dark with God, when we feel God’s abandoned us. We feel as if we’re living in the land of forgetfulness.

And while that’s a topic for another sermon, the image is useful for describing what happened in Macondo and what happens in our lives. We often live in the land of forgetfulness in that we often forget God.

Listen to this series of seven scriptures describing our divine forgetfulness:

“Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. (Deut 4:9 ESV)
then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. (Deut 6:12 ESV)
And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. (Deut 8:19 ESV)
Mark this, then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver! (Ps. 50:22 ESV)
so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments; (Ps. 78:7 ESV)
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, (Ps 103:2 ESV)
Can a virgin forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? Yet my people have forgotten me days without number. (Jer. 2:32 ESV)

We seem to be constantly in danger of living in the land of forgetfulness. Dwelling in the village of Macondo. Forgetting God. In need of some way not to forget.

Lest we think it’d never happen to us, consider the people to whom these Scriptures are written. The texts in Deuteronomy are written to a people whose direct descendents walked through the Red Sea, saw the plagues fall upon Egypt, and witnessed God fight for their deliverance from Egypt. They personally witnessed how God granted them victory over every enemy keeping them from the Promised Land. But now that they have finally made it to the Promised Land, they are in danger of forgetting. Forgetting the unforgettable.

Thus, along comes Samuel. Much like Jose. And he, like Jose, provides a way not to forget God:

7 Now when the Philistines heard that the people of Israel had gathered at Mizpah, the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel. And when the people of Israel heard of it, they were afraid of the Philistines. 8 And the people of Israel said to Samuel, “Do not cease to cry out to the Lord our God for us, that he may save us from the hand of the Philistines.” 9 So Samuel took a nursing lamb and offered it as a whole burnt offering to the Lord. And Samuel cried out to the Lord for Israel, and the Lord answered him. 10 As Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to attack Israel. But the Lord thundered with a mighty sound that day against the Philistines and threw them into confusion, and they were defeated before Israel. 11 And the men of Israel went out from Mizpah and pursued the Philistines and struck them, as far as below Beth-car. (1 Sam. 7:7-11 ESV)

Prior to this battle, at another place called Ebenezer, the Israelites had been defeated by the Philistines (1 Sam. 4:1-11). Thirty thousand Israelites were killed at Ebenezer, and the ark of the covenant was taken from them by the Philistines at Ebenezer. But on this day, Samuel cries out to the Lord on Israel’s behalf. God hears the prayer and answers. The Lord thunders with a mighty sound that causes the attacking Philistines to be confused. And this allows the Israelites to defeat the Philistines. It is a great victory following such a great defeat.

But Samuel realizes how quick we are to forget. So he does something unusual, much like Jose painting his signs:

12 Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, “Till now the Lord has helped us.” (1 Sam. 7:12 ESV)

There is a tradition in the lives of the ancient followers of God of using stones to mark important moments and places of divine activity.

In Genesis, Jacob uses a stone to mark a spot where he and God engaged in a life-changing encounter (Gen. 35:9-15 ESV).
As they entered the Promised Land, the people experienced another form of the parting of the Red Sea as the Jordan River parted for them. To memorialize this, twelve stones were used (Josh. 4:8-9 ESV).
When Joshua urged the people to choose whether or not they would truly serve God, he placed a large stone as a witness that would stand as a lasting testimony to the choice they made that day (Josh. 24:25-27 ESV).

The ancient people of God used stones to help them remember moments of God’s presence and power in their lives.

This may seem unusual. But when you think about it, there are modern equivalents. For example, there are 415 historical markers in Shelby County according to the Shelby County Register of Deeds.^[3] Some are actually stone. Others are metal. They are designed to be long lasting records that help us remember important and notable people and places in Shelby County. They include the following:

With far greater significance those in biblical times would set up stones to mark places of spiritual importance. And Samuel, knowing how easily we forget God, sets up a stone to help ensure that the people do not forget the way God helped them on this day in battle.

He names the stone. He calls it “stone of help” or Ebenezer. It is to remind them of of the way, “Till now the Lord has helped us.” “Now” also means “here.” It thus is chronological and geographical. It’s intended to be a marker in time–up to this point in our timeline, God has helped us. And it’s intended to be a marker in space–up to this point in our journey, God has helped us. When they saw this stone, they would remember how God helped them and by implication how God would continue to help them. It would keep them from forgetting God.

There’s some interesting background to this stone. In the ancient world, such as in ancient Egypt and Babylon, stones were used as boundary markers. People would use stones like this to mark the boundaries of their property. These stones would often be inscribed with details explaining why that person had rights to that land.^[4]

Here, Samuel places this stone of divine help, as a kind of boundary marker, showing that everything behind it is a space where God has helped them. It marks the territory of God’s assistance in their lives. It’s as if he’s suggesting that our lives, the space in which we live, should be bounded by Ebenezers, markers which remind us of the history of God’s work in our lives.

Most of us make use of a host of things to help us remember things. We use a calendar to help us remember birthdays, anniversaries, meetings, and appointments. We use lists to help us remember things we to do. We take pictures and post images on social media, in part, so we can recall the moments they captured.

And the question this text is raising is this: What do you do to help you remember moments of God’s power and presence in your life? The problem for many of us is not that God is not present. The problem is not that God doesn’t, at least at times, work powerfully. The problem is that we forget. We do not remember. Life is so busy. So hurried. And these moments of God’s presence and power in our lives get lost in the land of forgetfulness.

We are like the villagers of Macondo. We need someone to write on those moments of our lives, saying, “God was present at this moment. God did something great at this moment.” We are like the people of Samuel’s day. We need someone to plunk down a large rock inscribed with “stone of help.” “This is where and when God did something great. Remember it. Recall it. Do not forget it.”

Why? Because Ebenezers are what keep us going when the going gets hard. Joni Mitchell, a paraplegic paralyzed in an accident, writes this:^[5]

For many years now, I’ve looked at my wheelchair (and I’m not kidding) as my Ebenezer. It’s a visible, physical reminder; it’s my stone of remembrance to commemorate God’s grace in my life. It reminds me thus far the Lord has helped me and everyone who sees me smile in this wheelchair knows that God is my help. In fact, the other night I was lying in bed, and I glanced over at my wheelchair that was sitting in the corner in the shadows. It was plugged into the wall, getting its batteries charged. But as I lay there staring at it, I found myself singing that verse from the old hymn:

Here I raise my Ebenezer; hither by thy help, I’ve come;
And I quote by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God;
He to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood.

Here’s the basic truth we learn from Samuel: When God acts in our lives, we need to set an Ebenezer, we need to record the act in a way that allows us to remember it. For some, this means writing it down in a journal. For some, it means taking a picture that symbolizes what happened. For some, it means posting about it on social media. For some, it means making something–a painting, pottery, or writing poetry. The important thing is to find a way to record God’s act in a way that allows you to go back and remember it. Why? Because we so often forget. And these Ebenezers are what keep us going when the going gets hard.

Chris Anderson, in his book Light When it Comes, writes this:

The problem isn’t that God doesn’t exist. The problem is that we don’t pay attention long enough to realize that he does.

Chris Anderson, Light When It Comes

Just as the villagers of Macondo needed that sign saying “God Exists,” so we need Ebenezers, reminders in our lives that God exists, that he’s active, that he

^[1] Alix Spiegel, “When Memories Never Fade, The Past Can Poison the Present,” NPR (12-27-15).

^[2] Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, 45-48.

^[3] http://register.shelby.tn.us/shelby_landmarks/index.php

^[4] https://books.google.com/books?id=PBv0DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA290&dq=1+samuel+7+ebenezer+formation&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj43-vZiarUAhWJwiYKHfqOBdEQ6AEIRDAF#v=onepage&q=1%20samuel%207%20ebenezer%20formation&f=false

^[5] http://www.joniandfriends.org/radio/5-minute/raise-memorial/