People With a Past

Fellow Labourers-

Some of us would like so much even to forget the happenings of this week (week ending Oct. 9) that history and the reading of history or things we would rather not hear about. Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) was regarded as one of the greatest historians of the nineteenth century. I recommend his book "The Greeks and Greek civilization" edited by Oswyn Murray. This book helps one to understand that we may divide the study of history into State, Religion, and Culture. When we do this we may very well develop a taste for one over the other. His preference though was cultural history because he finds it more factual and less restrictive. Here is what he says about culture "Culture is the sum of all that has spontaneously arisen for the advancement of material life and as an expression of spiritual and moral life - all social intercourse, technologies, arts, literatures, and sciences. It is the realm of the variable, free, not necessarily universal, of all that cannot lay claim to compulsive authority."

We have become so abused by the overuse of the word tradition that we are afraid to look back less we be labeled a tradionalist.This abuse has caused some of us to live so much in the present that there is no context to our existence. The Jews were told to constantly remind their children of the past in order that they may find relevance in the present. We too as a church need to remind our congregants of our local as well as biblical history. During our communion and feet washing service two young men told me that this was the first time they were experiencing this act, and they have never heard of it before. These are more than two-year-old members, and high school graduates. When I directed one of them to St. John 11,and we read together, he exclaimed, "I never know this was in the bible." Wow!! We are people with a past and a rich one to boot.

Robert A. Stewart