Remembering and Forgetting

By Sandi Mull, Guest

It's good to be with you this morning. At my age, this title I have could call for some questions. It's Remembering and Forgetting.

So hopefully that's not a state of what's going to happen in this post, but we're going to talk about those things in relationship to the scripture and to some of the story that I will share with you. My first scripture, and I'm going to use several along, this is called more like a topical message where the story sort of supports what I'm saying, but we're not really going into depth exploring the various passages of scripture. Jeremiah 31:33-34:

But this is a covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them and on their hearts. I will write it and I will be their God and they will be my people.

They will not teach again each person, his neighbor, and each person, his brother and sister, saying, know the Lord, for they will know the Lord and know me from the least of them to the greatest of them, declares the Lord.

And may God add his blessing as we seek to understand his word and his message for us. Today, I'm going to share some of my story and some of FCC’s story as a congregation, as we remember the past and some things in the present and discuss the future.

My story, of course, starts when I was young. And one thing I want to share with you that might lend something to it. This was before I was on this earth.

Some of you met my mom years ago and all. And she, when she was in her 20s, was in a youth group. At that time, the youth group were from junior high through whenever you wanted to stay in the group. And the pastor took some of the people out to churches that didn't have a pastor. And they needed someone to preach. Well, the guys wouldn't preach.

So my mom and her friend preached. That was in, would have been a long time ago and women weren't preaching then. So, I would say that I just felt like that was an important history in my story.

Not that she told me I needed to be a preacher or anything, but she was the more outward going person of my two parents. And then a story that a few of you have probably heard that was sort of my debut in speaking and another activity. I was four years old and we had a vacation Bible school program.

Well, with my parents, especially my mom, if I had a part to say, she would go over it and over it and would tell, and she told me, “Be sure you speak loud, be sure they can hear you, be sure you're distinct,” and all these things. Well, I really think I passed that part of it pretty well. But what came next more or less overshadowed what happened.

We had a song to sing at the end, our vacation Bible school group. And they would start and then they would stop and start again and stop and start again. Well, finally this little kid next to me that was my friend, he said, “Sandi, I think they're laughing at us.” And my parents hadn't told me to sing loud, but I guess that's what we were doing and getting them all off key. So that was the beginning and ending of my singing in public as far as people hearing me.

During my youth, I early decided to, I was actually seven years old when I decided I wanted to be baptized. But my parents being as they were, first of all, wanted me to take the pastor's class, which was not unusual. And then they had some other things they thought were a good idea so that they knew, they thought it would be my decision. Number one, because a lot of the kids were baptized on Easter, they didn't want me to do it on Easter.

They wanted to make sure I did it sometime when I wasn't doing it with a big group of people and maybe following the leader. And then the second thing is, some of the parents walked their child down the aisle. Oh no, not mine, and it was a lot longer aisle because it was a big church. I had to walk down the aisle by myself. And I don't know whether that was good or bad, but that was some of the prerequisites when I decided I wanted to make my confession and be baptized.

In my early youth, I can always remember my parents trying to live their Christian faith. And my dad was a less vocal person than my mom, but he had a huge garden. And he shared that with people all over the neighborhood, many widows, and some people in his office that had been out of jobs and were short on money for food. And some of the women that knew him, because he'd do other odd jobs for them if he could, he'd say, “That Henry Mulhey lives his Christian faith.”

And so I had really good memories of my parents in that aspect. There was a day in Sunday school we talked about, had we ever memorized the 23rd Psalm, because we were talking about it. Well, if there was a memory verse for Sunday school, and usually they had one every month, you better be sure that Sandi Mull had to learn that memory verse, or the books of the Bible, or whatever it was, because that was another part of my family history.

We had a fairly large church, and usually had youth pastors, had lots of activities. But one year we were in between youth pastors, and there was a yearly youth festival in Lincoln, Illinois, at Lincoln Christian University, where I eventually went to college. They had a parade, and the different youth groups put together the floats. And we were determined that even though we didn't have somebody helping us, I'm sure there were some adults helping us there, but we didn't have a youth pastor, we were going to have a good float. And we worked very hard on it. Well, some of us were watching the parade, and I couldn't figure out, why didn't our float ever come through the parade? Well, come to find out that the wind blew it apart.

So we distributed that float all over Lincoln, instead of having it in the parade. And you know, at that age, it seemed like a crisis, but if you really think about it in life, that happens sometimes to our best laid plans. They seem to blow apart, and sometimes in retrospect, that's good, sometimes it's not. But God is with us in those times when things don't work out.

I was a first generation college student. First generation, and then once I got to college, I never did leave, because I went to Northwest and taught all that time. We had a real high academic standard at the school I graduated from, but some other colleges had different experiences with students coming from Christian schools, and they sometimes weren't real eager to accept you for advanced degrees. Well, I had a professor that helped me out, so I was able to navigate that.

By the time I was a junior, I was having some questions. I was in that time of confusion, and what they told me is that it'll work out better for you if you actually graduate, and then go to another school than if you try to transfer now. So that's what I did. And when I came to Northwest, I was very excited about the opportunity, still having some of these maybe negative feelings, and I have to say FCC was a part of helping the healing. Some of my friends at the university also.

And something that may surprise you, when I put my membership in FCC, because I was from a different expression of the Christian church, I really thought, “Well, I'm just gonna sit on the sidelines.” Well, that didn't last very long.

They didn't let me do that very long. And so I got involved in things, and at that time, Morris Page was the district superintendent and kept saying, “Sandi, when are you going to take a church?” Well, I had an unrealistic picture of what was involved in that, because I saw what all the pastors in this church did, and of course, in many of the small churches, they want somebody to preach on Sunday, and some even just have somebody every other Sunday.

When I went to Lincoln, the university, the opportunities weren't there for women to preach, and yet, here was Morris Page telling me that, “Hey, there's some churches that would like to have you.” And then I started avoiding him every time he was here, because I was too busy at the university at that time. When I retired, it seemed like God was saying, “Hey, this is the last call. If you were serious about wanting to be a pastor and thinking God was calling you to be a pastor, you better act on it now.”

And at that time, Bill and Donna Rose-Heim had come to what was the Northwest area, and I talked with them, and they said, “We can take you through the search process to find a church, or we are looking for people that will help with the area.” And so that's what I chose to do, and I spent 15 years doing that, and it was a wonderful blessing working with them and visiting and serving the churches.

But now, I've remembered some of the past, and I hope I wasn't like an old woman wandering around and not making sense or whatever, but anyway, I've told you a little bit, maybe a few things you didn't know about me, but we also need to remember people and opportunities in the present. Hebrews 13:1-3 says, “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so, some people have shown hospitality to angels who, without knowing it, continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.”

I've known, especially the first two verses of this, for a long time, and remembering those in prison and suffering, but I've never seen it said as though I was there with them, and that really sort of got me.

Recently, well, in the last maybe three or four years, God surprised me a bit when I ended up in a ministry with our international students that were probably about a third my age. The first one that I met was Maddie.

Deena and Phil introduced me to him. And I have to say, the first year, he and I had visited a little bit at church, but I really didn't get to know him. But then he started asking questions about why the disciples believe some things and some of the things in the churches in the U.S. and all, and probably most of you know that Indian Christians tend to be more conservative than the Disciples of Christ denomination is, and yet they are more open than some conservative Christians, that you can talk to them, we may not agree, but it's not a thing where they have to be right or we have to be right. We can have disagreements and still be brothers and sisters in Christ.

This ministry wasn't just me by any means. I have to say that Allen and Terry Immel were very helpful in providing rides. Deena and Phil often were the ones introducing me to people. They make sure they got to know them. And you welcomed them when they came. And I want to tell you that every time I see and hear from them, they'll tell me, give my regards to the congregation or somebody in the congregation.

This week ended up being sort of old student week, I guess, or something, because I had contact with five of them, and often I go for weeks and don't have contact with some of the ones that have been here. Some of you may happen to remember Pavan. He came with Maddie and then came the next year. Some of the others, you probably wouldn't. There was MJ and Divya.

Pavan's had a job in New Jersey for quite some time. MJ and Divya, separate companies, but both of them now have a job out in Phoenix. And I was talking to MJ and he said, “Oh, it's hot out here.” And I said, “Oh, it'll get hotter.”

This is just a little bit of a explanation about the kind of jobs they can take. They're in what they call the STEM area, science, technology, engineering, and math. It's for people who have advanced degrees in these fields. And there's not enough Americans that can fill these kind of jobs. Usually they're the kind of job, most Americans, if they get degrees in technology, they'll combine it with something, not have straight computer science. And I don't know whether any of you use your apps on your phone, but one of the things I learned is that when Maddie was working for the former company, one of their jobs was to make the apps very secure, very workable, and I don't know, several things. They had several people working on one app. Now, of course, it depends on the company how many people they hire to keep it in good shape. So that might give you a little bit of background on that.

Then on Friday, well, actually, in the middle of the night, Thursday night, I saw on my phone, Raajitha had written me and said, “Hey, we're coming to Maryville tomorrow. We hope we can see you.” Raajitha and Ashok, they were the two that put their membership in and wanted to be deacons because they wanted to be deacons. And they were deacons until they graduated, which was just a short time.

They talk about that, and that was one of the high points of their life in Maryville, that the Christian church let them be deacons. So, we never know how what we do and the action we take will affect a young person.

We visited for a while, and they've been in Lincoln, Nebraska, but they are going to New Jersey to start a job on June 24th. So they will be leaving.

And now I want to talk about some things maybe we need to forget, or the forgetting that we need to do. Isaiah 43:18-19 says, “Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up. Do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

We probably can't forget, but we can use whatever baggage we have from the past and maybe learn from it and make it so it's not something that drives us to do things that are not helpful today. So, the question is, what do we, you, congregation, need to forget? How does forgetting and remembering bring growth? And now that it's uncertain of the future of international students coming, who else will we welcome as a stranger? There's unlimited possibilities there. Who else will we serve?

It talks about not forgetting to be hospitable. And I've said that the students talk about the church as being very hospitable. They were so appreciative of the graduation parties that we had for them and had such a good time knowing that we were affirming them. That's the only celebration they get for graduation because their parents can't come so they don't walk in March in graduation.

And last thing I want to say, I had two envelopes at church last Sunday. I've had at least one other time that I got an envelope. This was an envelope that somebody put money in and somebody was coming to Maryville with the instructions that they were to deliver it to me. And I was to put it in the offering. And that's what those envelopes were too.

Now I don't know how much there was. Whatever it was, it's not going to help our bottom line. It's not going to hugely increase our budget, but the thought and what they're doing is huge.

They've been living on very little. The people that did this the last couple of years. Yes, they are going to have a job and be making money, but they wanted to share and give back to the church.

So it's a tribute to you as well as all of the people that have gotten to know them and that you have been a part of their faith journey. You have made a difference in their life. Your hospitality made a huge difference and that should give us hope and inspiration as we go into the future.

I want to give us the challenge that Paul gave to himself. This is Philippians 3: 13b, which means the second half of 13th verse. “Forgetting or letting go of what is behind and straining towards what is ahead.”

We stand on some of the past that has gone on before us and how God has been faithful and we remember that. But also we stand on the promise that a new thing is happening. We may not know what that is right now and it may be a little scary, but God is in that and God will take care of us.

Whether we do this individually or as a congregation, we need to be ready for whatever new God is ready to give us. So, I'd like for us to think about what do I need to remember? What do I need to forget? And how can I and we walk into the future that God has for us?