Forgetting the Past, Perceiving Our Future
“Perceiving the Past, but not Dwelling on It”
Isaiah 44:21-22; Matthew 25:14-30
Rev. Dr. Thomas Boone
Central Presbyterian Church, Mobile, June 10, 2007

“If only.” “If only” we say to the people we should’ve avoided in years past. “If only” we say to the decisions not to do as well as we could’ve in school or a job we didn’t like. “If only” we say to the addictions we have that began with that first encounter. “If only” we say to our conduct in relationships that have gone awry.

“If only,” wrote Norman Vincent Peale, are the two saddest words in any language. When we respond to what’s going on in our present with “if only”, we’re inviting our pasts to define our nows. “If only” is the battle cry of the past against the heart’s yearning to move forward. “If only” that person hadn’t abused us. “If only” our finances had been more secure. “If only” we hadn’t made that decision.

Each of us has a past that we’d rather not repeat. Each of us has been through doors, whether figuratively or literally, that we hope never to have to go through again. Sometimes it’s the doors of divorce, or bankruptcy. Other times it’s the doors of abuse or addiction. Sometimes our doors consist of our children who have gone wayward in life. These are the doors from which God wants to rescue us when he says, “Don’t dwell on the past,” because these are the doors that many of us never stop walking through. “If only” we say, “I had done it a different way.” But, every time we say those words, we allow those doors, that past whatever it is, to invade our present. If you ever want to mature in your faith, you must turn your “if only” into “that just doesn’t matter anymore.”

This is the point that our passage from Matthew that I want to focus on today. [Read Matthew 25:14-30] In the parable of the master who gave part of his property over to his servants to do with as they wished, there are two servants who stand out to me. On one hand we have the servant who took the money, invested it, and doubled it for the master. In short, he showed himself to be a partner. On the other hand we have the servant who did nothing with what the master had given him. He didn’t even put it in a bank to earn a minimum amount of interest. In short, he showed himself to be a thoughtless servant. It was the same master for both servants. One servant couldn’t escape from his memory that the master was cruel. As a result, he froze and his past ruined his opportunity. Listen to what he says, “I knew that you were a harsh man ... so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” The other servant knew that the master was cruel, too, but decided to make the most out of the situation he was given. He didn’t allow his negative past with this master to strangle his opportunity for a brighter future. Did you notice what happened with him? Not only did he receive praise, but the master gave him the one talent that the “if only” servant once had.

Same cruel master. Same cruel past. Two different servants. Two completely different outcomes. One laid the past to rest and experienced a new future. One clung to his past and experienced even greater loss. Had the master been cruel to the servants? Absolutely. Was the manner in which they handled the master’s money a cause for anxiety among the servants? Absolutely. They had a choice to make, though. Either they could let that past and anxiety control what they were going to do in the here-and-now opportunity: “If only the master weren’t cruel I could risk more.” Or, they could say “that past just doesn’t matter anymore,” which freed the one servant to hope that in doing well he would receive much that is new, and even more.

If you’ve not seen the movie Spiderman 3, I’d encourage you to do so while it’s still out, because it’s talking about this. Briefly, it’s a story of how Spiderman allows some alien goo from space to cling to him and it feels really good. It makes him more powerful, but it also changes him. Rather than stop crime, he begins to kill the criminals. It transforms him and he can’t get out of his mind the past wrongs that people have done to him, so he becomes vengeful and vindictive, he becomes angry ... and no one recognizes him. Shortly after he realizes how much he has changed so that even the woman he was going to marry says “Who are you, Peter?” he finds himself at the top of a cathedral in his new favorite suit made of this black alien goo. Earlier in the movie, he had said, “You want forgiveness, find religion,” as he publicly humiliated the career of someone who had done something wrong to him. Spiderman decides that he was no longer going to allow his painful past to control his present, so he goes into the bell chamber and tries to take the suit off, but it won’t come off easily. He pulls at it himself and it keeps coming back on, until the bell in the cathedral begins to chime and the alien goo begins to loosen its grip on Spiderman. As the bell rings, Spiderman is able to free himself from the alien goo and the next scene he is in the shower, freed from it forever.

The point I’m trying to raise here is that our past, our “if only’s” are very powerful and they will control us if we let them, but God wants us to be freed from that so that we can perceive the new thing that he’s already doing in our midst. If there is a past that God wants us to remember and to define our future, it’s what Isaiah wrote in 44:21-22. [Read Isaiah passage] “Remember these things: I formed you. You are my servant. I will never forget you.” Let me break this down for you.

First, God made you in His image. Do you have a few scratches? Of course you do, we all do. But there’s a mystery about being a child of God that all my senses cannot comprehend and it’s this. In Colossians 3:3 Paul writes, “... your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.” No matter what you’ve done, or what’s been done to you, there’s a part of you that’s hidden away from all the junk of your past and that is with Christ in glory right now. You’re destined for glory so don’t let anyone or anything convince you otherwise.

Second, we’re servants of God Almighty. We don’t know all that much about servants these days, but here’s the scoop. Servants were not just low-class people. Their ranking depended in large degree upon the social rank of the person whom they served. They may have been horribly abused, but if they were servants of the King, they were proud among their fellow servants. How much more so for servants of Almighty God! And what is more, we’re not servants, but children. We’re heirs, and even if we were servants, we’d be the ones with the highest honor, and a servant can’t touch the honor of a child.

Third, God will never forget you. This doesn’t mean that we don’t experience dark nights of the soul where God seems nowhere present. God will never forget you. This doesn’t mean that we won’t have long period of spiritual drought. God will never forget you. This doesn’t mean that we won’t feel abandoned. Even the Psalmist experienced this. “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hid your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long. How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” But then, rather than bury himself in a prison of self-absorbed pity, he remembered that God has come through in the past and will do so again, so he writes “I trust in your steadfast love.” (Psalm 13). The Psalmist may have been going through a tough time of God-silence, a grand pause in the joy of salvation, but he also had a history of God coming through. So, the psalm doesn’t end with “if only” it ends with hope.

Do you want to live your life with “if only’s” or do you want to live it with hope? Each of us hears echoes from the past reaching into our present. An “if only” view gets trapped by those voices, but hope sees beyond them anticipating the glory that God will work. Do you hear voices of shame rising up from addictions, poor moral choices, financial blunders, divorce, an affair, or a thoughtless act against a child in anger? When we’re trapped by “if only” we fail to see that our past is actually marked by God’s fingerprints. As humans we have a lot of problems, but one of our big problems is that we’re self-absorbed to the point where we dare think God thinks like we do about all this stuff. It’s a humbling point to realize, but it’s true. In the timeline of eternity there’s nothing that you can do, or have done to you, that will shatter the framework of all creation or put a stop to the forward motion of history. We’re may be small, but we’re all so beautiful to God. We’re may be miniscule relative to the cosmos, but each of us was worth Jesus’ death. Praise the Lord that God doesn’t think like we do! Praise God, that He wants us to be partners with him as He gives us the ten talents and says “Go for it, make the most out of it, and don’t let the past dictate what you do with my gifts.” Hallelujah. Amen.