We have eleven video music channels on HD cable.  This has been a welcome addition since the video music channels we already had on basic cable only play music videos before 9am.  Otherwise they program the kind of reality shows that make obvious the fact we share more than 95% of our DNA with chimpanzees.  Now I get to watch videos again.  Two of the new channels play classic videos, so I get to watch my videos again. MTV premiered when I was a college freshman, and I was immediately addicted to the format.  It is therefore with equal parts nostalgia and excitement (a potent concoction) that I click off the 24 hour news channels for The Clash, Pat Benetar, and The Pretenders.

            Of course some really good videos were made after the Regan Administration.  I was watching “The Tube” channel the other day when Weezer’s award-winning video “Buddy Holly” was on.  The video was from 1995, and as I was sitting there being nostalgic about being a freshman in college, I found myself being nostalgic about being 1995, when all my kids were in elementary school together, and I hadn’t fallen completely apart (physically).  The video, directed by the brilliant Spike Jonze, splices Weezer into an episode of “Happy Days.”  This made me remember the 70’s, and being 17 all over again.  “Happy Days” is set in the 1950’s.  Although I wasn’t born until 1962, I was raised on the reruns and classic songs from the Eisenhower Administration.  So I got nostalgic about that.  The particular episode of “Happy Days” that Rivers Cuomo and the boys are spliced into is the one where Joani and the Fonz compete together in the big dance marathon.  Dance marathons were popular during the Great Depression, and that made me nostalgic for Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller.

            It occurred to me that those were a lot of levels of nostalgia.  There was nostalgia for things I could personally remember, and nostalgia for things I couldn’t (the Germans have a word for this which I can’t presently remember, but which sounds like schadenfruede, or maybe liederhosen).  There was nostalgia for things from the 90’s to the 80’s, the 70’s, through the 50’s when my mom was a teen, back to the 30’s when my grandma Pauline was flirting with the boys at C-K High School.  Then it occurred to me that such a depth of nostalgia was pretty pathetic – but was it any less pathetic to deconstruct such a depth of nostalgia? 

One thing I do – forgetting the past, and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ. Philippians 3:13-14

            When God said “Let there be light” he set the universe on a course of ever accelerating expansion.  The word of God as well, through prophecy, promises, and the relentless process of history, pushes us forward, forward, ever forward - not just forward, but toward.

            Paul says he forgets the past – which might seem disingenuous since he has just spent the first 10 verses of Philippians 3 rehearsing it.  But Paul makes clear how he, and the Bible, and we should use the past.  For Paul, to “forget” the past does not mean to lose cognizance of it.  He can’t possibly mean that.  He has just rehearsed his past for us in the immediately preceding verses.  In fact, he frequently his past for us – see 2 Corinthians 11,  1 Timothy 1, Galatians 1-2. By “forgetting” the past he must mean to refuse entanglement with it. He uses the past as a coordinate, not as a dwelling-place.

            It takes two points on a line to demonstrate the direction of that line.  If we know where we have been, and where we are, we know where we are headed – and can thus continue confidently – either by moving forward, or changing course as needed.  It is this use of the past Lord Acton intends when he made his famous comment about those ignorant of history being doomed to repeat its mistakes.  The past can be spider’s web, or door-less maze, or it can be an indispensable navigational reference point.

            We are at a unique, exciting, and challenging moment in our congregational history.  As we look back over more than 50 years of family history, we can use that history as a deep and comfortable armchair, from which we will never budge – or we can use that history as the star chart that points home.  Our progress forward will be the evidence that we have done the kind of forgetting Paul says is necessary to attain the calling of Christ.