The Narcotic of Nostalgia
A sermon by Brent J. Eelman
Abington Presbyterian Church
October 29, 2006

Philippians 3: 1-16
    Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord.
    To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a safeguard.
    ² Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh! ³For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh— ⁴even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh.
    If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: ⁵circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
    ⁷Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. ⁸More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. ¹⁰I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, ¹¹if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
    ¹²Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. ¹³Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you. ¹⁶Only let us hold fast to what we have attained.*

In 1688 a Swiss doctor, Johannes Hofer, identified a new medical syndrome which he called nostalgia: "the sad mood originating from the desire for return to one's native land." Nostalgia was originally an illness that was thought to be treatable. It was prevalent among soldiers who had extended tours of duty in foreign countries. Things have changed. Today there is an entire industry that is built around nostalgia. It plays upon a real longing that we have for the “good old days”: when things were simpler and clearer. Last year my brother purchased a boat like the one that he enjoyed when he was a teenager. He was like a little boy, putting it back in shape. Middle aged people are collecting Barbie dolls and matchbox toys, and surely their inflated value is related to the nostalgic feelings that they conjure up for the owner. Very few of us are immune. The other day, I caught myself talking about the “good old days” when I first started out in the ministry. I stopped myself; because I can remember hearing the older clergy do the same thing when I was younger. I hated listening to them, and now I am reminiscing in the same way.

There is also institutional nostalgia. In the life and history of every congregation, there was a “golden period” when things were right. The church was full. The choir sang like angels. The budget was fully subscribed and the pastor was a saint. In most Presbyterian congregations that are over 100 years old, that time was from about 1954 to 1970. I was ordained in 1976 and so I have spent thirty years listening to the nostalgic yearning for those good old days.

The same is true in the life of a nation. We always hear about the old values of the 40’s and 50’s, (and indeed there were many fine practices that have been abandoned like civility and sacrifice). But that was also a time of racial oppression, lynchings and other terrible things. It was not the good old days for everyone.

Our memories are very selective and that is good, because otherwise we would be depressed. But nostalgia can also be a problem because it is like a drug that robs us of hope and causes us to live in a romanticized nether world of yesterday.

The apostle Paul, writing to the Philippians, got involved in a bit of nostalgia about his life. He remembered his youth and early adulthood. He remembered the things that were important to him: “If anyone else has reason to boast, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” Paul lived a faithful life as Pharisee. He was an intellectual, he was respected, and most importantly, he found tremendous comfort and security in his Hebrew faith. Paul was not a “seeker” looking for something better. He was quite content with his life. It was the type of life that people could be proud of.

Then he made an amazing statement: He wrote: “All these things, I count as loss.” The politest way that I can translate the Greek into modern English is “All these things are but manure to me.” Paul was not nostalgic. He does not want to return to the “good old days”. It is the next paragraph that gives us insight into his life: “but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” Christian faith is not nostalgic… is is future oriented. History, we believe is in the hands of God, and it is God’s intention to redeem history, thus we look forward, rather than backwards.

One of the most interesting stories in the Hebrew Bible is the story of Lot and his wife (whose name is not mentioned in scripture). They are fleeing the destruction of Sodom and Gemorrah…. Lot’s wife looks back and she becomes a pillar of salt. Christian faith, does not look back.. it looks forward, it anticipates the future, not with dread, but with joy! The good old days, indeed the best days are in the future.”

Nostalgia can take some interesting forms. Joni Mitchell wrote a song entitled “Woodstock” and summed up the hopes of that generation, which is mine: It concluded with these lyrics: “We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” The sixties had a belief that we could recover innocence again, and get back to the Garden of Eden where human life started. It didn’t happen.

This Sunday is filled with history. It is Reformation Sunday, when we remember and celebrate the reformation of the church begun by Martin Luther. We are also celebrating history Sunday, and Abington Presbyterian church has 292 years of history to remember and celebrate. We also remember our history in our campaign theme: “Building on Generations of Faith”. Our history is a wonderful thing. We can be very proud of the past, but it can also be oppressive in our life together. If we think that we can go backwards, recover the past, re-create it, we are deceiving ourselves. We will become like Lot’s wife, looking backwards, and soon we will be as lifeless. We need a healthy nostalgia, a healthy sense of history. We need to understand and appreciate our history as the foundation upon which we build our future. History is the story of how God was with this people for all these years, but we need to celebrate and proclaim that God is with us now, supporting, loving, and also correcting and disciplining.

This means letting go; letting go of the past, no matter how wonderful or terrible it was… .and reaching forward and living toward the future, because that is the promise of God in Jesus Christ. When Paul wrote: “All these things I count as loss,” he was letting go of the past. It would not determine his future. The past should not determine ours either.

Nostalgia, if it is a healthy respect for history, is wonderful. Nostalgia becomes a desire to recreate the past, it is pathological and needs to be identified for what it is: a failure to believe that the future is in God’s hands. It is idolatry.

When I was installed as your pastor, I closed the service with these words: I am awed to be taking on the mantel of pastor to a congregation that has been together for 286 years. We have received a tremendous legacy of faith from them. The building that we occupy is a gift from previous generations who sacrificed, knowing that women and men, children and the elderly would continue to worship our Lord here. But their legacy is more than just a building… it is an affirmation of faith and faithfulness…. That in the midst of war, revolution and all that is part of history for those 286 years, they continued to worship, serving God and ministering to others. They survived controversy, disagreement and schism. History has cleansed our knowledge of their day to day activity. We don’t think about their follies, their mistakes, their sins. Our memory can be most gracious and forgiving…. And we need to be also.

My calling is to continue to lead you to be Christ in our time. At first I thought that was an arrogant vision… But there is no arrogance when we remember that Christ came first to serve, to wash the feet of disciples, to heal the sick, to comfort the sorrowful. There is no arrogance about being Christ in our time when our eyes and souls are focused on the cross.

As we continue to move forward in history, I ask of you for your prayers. I ask that you learn to forget and forgive the mistakes and blunders that we will make, recognizing that history will forgive them. I ask that we join together, recognizing that Abington Presbyterian Church’s history is not something that is in the distant past, but what we do. How we serve today is tomorrow’s history. I ask that you join me and focus on future generations, the children in our midst, but also imagine their children and their children’s children, and let us leave them a legacy of faithfulness. Amen

 
*The New Revised Standard Version Bible, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers) 1989.

Abington Presbyterian Church, Abington, Pennsylvania,  www.apcusa.org