Guy Fawkes Day––

I still remember, as a kid, going with dad to the shops and buying an assortment of skyrockets… 

Roman candles… 

and other fireworks;

then gathering outside that night in my dressing gown…

as he carefully lit them all…

and the night sky was engulfed in bangs, and smoke, and fizzing colours.

At the time, I had no clue why we did it––

that it was commemorating a failed assassination plot against the king of England…

by a group of Catholic loyalists in the seventeenth century.

I certainly had no sense of the anti-Catholic sentiments… 

which it embodied in certain parts of the Anglo-Saxon world.

Then again, I doubt that many Australians in the early nineteen-seventies…

either knew…

or cared about the origins of this celebration.

This celebration had become utterly divorced from its origin…

and had become an end in itself.

Aside from the inherent dangers––

and the appalling injury rate––

that’s why it was a tradition that was so easy to let go of.

It wasn’t a tradition that, in any significant way, spoke to us…

or defined us…

our shaped our sense of identity.

Australia Day, on the other hand, is quite different.

As a child, what I remember most about Australia Day celebrations… 

were the re-enactments of the first-fleet landing.

My memory now of the way that it was celebrated then,

is of a fairly low-key event.

It was simply a time to give thanks for our ‘Australian-ness’––

whatever that meant––

and for the achievements of those who had built our nation.

For some, those sentiments have evolved into something far more patriotic––

and sadly, in many cases, into something quite ugly.

For others, it’s a time to reflect seriously––

and somewhat more soberly––

on the origins of this nation as a large scale invasion…

which wreaked havoc on the original inhabitants.

For such people, Australia Day needs to be remembered… 

but, instead, as Invasion Day or Survival Day.

 

Celebrating the past in the present is a complex thing.

Remembering is not a simple process of reminiscing, rehearsing, or re-enacting.

Rather, remembering is a continual process of interpretation––

and re-interpretation––

a continual process of meaning-making.

What a past event means for me––

for us––

today…

will be different from what it meant twenty or thirty years ago…

and it will be different from what it will mean twenty or thirty years hence;

because–– 

as is the way with living organisms–– 

we’re constantly evolving.

As we experience new and different things––

as the world around us changes…

as we grow and change––

how we see things also changes;

and, thus, the meanings that we give to things…

and the meanings that we derive from things…

must also change. 

It’s simply not possible to live in the past––

especially an idealised past.

We simply cannot hold onto things because that’s how they have always been…

or that is what has sustained us in the past…

or that is what has helped to shape our identity.

We are shaped by the past––

it moulds and informs our identity;

we learn from the past––

from the good and from the bad;

but we cannot live in it.

That, in the end, is what it means to remember:

to reflect, critically…

to reinterpret… 

and to reappropriate.

And yet, that’s not always something that we do well in ‘the church’––

is it?

In many respects, the reason that the church exists is to enable people to experience ‘the Holy’––

whoever and however we might define that––

and, to enable people to experience that in each generation…

in each culture or sub-culture…

and in each new life-situation.

To do so, surely, demands that we find new words…

new images, symbols, and metaphors…

new expressions and new ways of being.

But, at the same time, we cannot do that apart from our traditions.

We cannot do that without making deep connection to the foundational stories and myths…

the images and symbols…

the rites and the rituals… 

and the sacred spaces…

that have shaped people down the ages…

and that have fundamentally shaped us as well.

Tradition connects us to ‘the Holy’…

and it also connects us with those who have gone before us.

But “tradition”––

like remembering––

is something living and active…

something intrinsically creative and nourishing…

something constantly evolving…

something that both shapes and is shaped in its keeping.

Otherwise, it is, as the spiritual writer Thomas Merton reminds us, nothing but convention:

“unoriginal…slavish imitation…simply the ossification of social customs”…

which merely disguise the “interior decay of the spirit”. 

 

The author of Ephesians––

writing what appears to have been a circular letter, addressed to a number of churches––

seems, perhaps, to recognise that too…

although in a way that’s both somewhat simplistic and slightly convoluted.

In our reading this morning, the author commends the recipients for their faith and love––

which has been demonstrated and embodied in the way that they relate to each other.

But then he prays for them––

and note what he prays:

“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ…may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know Him”.

Clearly, he wants them to have a deeper insight into the nature of God––

which can only mean that they are open to new ways of knowing;

to new experiences and fresh expressions;

to new ways of being…

by which they might encounter God in their midst.

 

So, today, as we celebrate All Saints’ Day, we give thanks for–– 

and we remember––

all those who have gone before us;

all those who have helped to shape us into the people who we are.

But, in remembering, let’s learn from their example… and from their mistakes;

let’s remember, reinterpret, and reappropriate.

But let’s not replicate or rehearse their words or their ways.

Let’s not maintain antiquated ways of thinking or being…

or out-dated attachments.

Let’s not turn the traditions that we have inherited into ossified conventions.

Rather, by word and by example––

by the way that we live and the way that we worship––

let us speak afresh of the Holy One in our midst…

the God who is ever new.