I is for Inheritance

Inheritance: A Cumbersome Suitcase Full of Curses?

The legacies left to future generations are not always positive. Our language has left us with names synonymous with pathetic legacies: Judas Iscariot; Pontius Pilate; Brutus; Machiavelli; the list goes on. Sorry legacies all!

We do not determine what we inherit. Among the things we may inherit from our forebears, for example, is disease; if you have inherited the BRCA1 genetic mutation, there's a good chance you will get breast cancer.

Similarly, our religious inheritance is not always positive. Kathleen Norris tells of organizing a writers' conference at which she suggested one of the discussion topics be, "What Religion Were You Raised In, and What Are You Now?" The interplay of religion and literature had long been of interest to her, and she felt it would be relevant to other writers at the conference. She was startled, then, when her question evoked a firestorm of controversy! Some conference attendees criticized her for bringing religion into the event, while others suspected her of trying to proselytize or took her aside to confide that this topic might be hurtful for many of those present.

Norris was not unsympathetic. Her upbringing in Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational and Disciples of Christ churches was not a uniformly pleasant experience. She had discarded the religious inheritance of her youth. She left it behind when she went off to college and began studying philosophy and literature. She became a poet and thought herself far too sophisticated for religion. She grew distant from her faith and impatient with churches. Preoccupied with her inner debates, it came as something of a surprise to her when, in her mid-thirties, she found herself reclaiming her religious inheritance.

Barton Sutter, a contemporary Minnesota poet and the son of a Lutheran pastor, says that he finds in his religious heritage both blessing and curse, citing especially the hatred of his body bequeathed him by his religious upbringing. Another poet (Jim Heynen), raised in a very strict church, likens the legacy of his church to a noose! (both cited by Kathleen Norris, "Inheritance: What Religion Were you Raised in, and What Are you now?" Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith)

I too have some sympathy with those who find their religious heritage to be cumbersome and unwanted baggage. There were a lot of things I wanted to leave behind when I left home. I wanted to get away from a very parochial expression of faith and church. I wanted to get away from hypocritical attitudes. I wanted to get away from backbiting Christians more often critical of each other than hospitable. I wanted to get away from suspicion of new ideas. I wanted to get away from manipulative family relationships, and when and if I had children, to shield them from the more unsavoury experiences of my youth. I wanted to leave these things behind, only to discover that they followed me! They are, for better or for worse, my inheritance.

We inherit the good, the bad, and the ugly, though some of us attempt to deny our heritage. One woman tells of trying to come to terms with the legacy of her mother. A therapist listened to her bemoan the fact that despite having worked hard to rid herself of her mother's negative parenting style, she found herself repeating, with her own child, the very same mistakes as her mother! Her whining continued for some time, until the therapist burst out laughing! "Come on now," he said to her, shaking his head in amusement, "did you honestly believe that ...you could erase your mother's influence? You lived at home until you were 18, right? So just by thinking about it, you expected to delete 18 years of day after day, interaction after interaction, of programming? Who told you all that parental input could be gotten rid of just by intending to be different?" The woman confesses, "My eternally adolescent outlook had believed that I could remake myself from the ground up with no vestiges of the unwanted influences of my mother." (Kathy Fuson Hurt, "Saving the Inheritance")

Norris suggests that we may have a similar relationship with our spiritual heritage, but suggests that trying to deny its influence is a rather adolescent response. She suggests that our "inheritance ...is not a curse that renders us helpless, butt unless we recognize the patterns, and make choices other than the ones that have caused our families pain for generations, we are doomed to repeat them." (Norris, "Inheritance: What Religion Were you Raised in, and What Are you now?" Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, page 82)

The Apostle Paul agrees. Our inheritance is not a curse that renders us helpless. In his letter to the Romans Paul confesses that we have inherited from our primordial progenitor, Adam, a sordid legacy of sin, disobedience, and death. Adam's last will and testament bequeathed us a messy inheritance, that if it were merely material would prove litigious without end. However, we have another inheritance, says Paul. Christ has bequeathed us an abundance of grace and freedom and reconciliation and eternal life! (Romans 5:12-21) Christ's last will and testament has bequeathed us what Paul refers to as "the riches of (God's) glorious inheritance". (Ephesians 1:18)

Inheritance: Money and Memories

An inheritance may be a mixed blessing. Les Kotzer, an estate lawyer in Toronto, says that even estates that cause havoc among family heirs are not just about money; they're also about memories. These "memories can create such bitter warfare that family members will sometimes spend more money on legal fees than the assets in question are worth." (Fred Brock, "Dividing the Money (And the Memories)," The New York Times)

I am not unappreciative of material inheritances. When our remaining parents died in the last five years Dorothy and I inherited some money from them. A little surprising, given that both of our families farmed the prairies during the Great Depression and lived in poverty for most of their lives. It was not a huge amount, but it has allowed me to continue in congregational ministry, at least until it's gone!

I also inherited this pocket watch from my father. Actually, I had to purchase it at his auction sale, trying to outbid other potential buyers, but I like to think of it as an inheritance. I don't really need it to tell time — which it does, thanks to Swiss skills with old watches — and I don't hold onto it because it's worth a lot of money. In fact, it's probably worth less than I paid for it at the auction sale! Its value, however, is in the fact that it ties me to my father, and to his father, before him. For that reason this watch is very precious to me.

Inheritance: A Collection of Colourful Scarves

Di Brandt writes, "sometimes i visualize (my Mennonite heritage) as a suitcase i drag around with me, centuries old, unwieldy, cumbersome, ...handcuffing me, binding me, & then again, i open it in a new place & it's filled with coloured scarves, playthings." (Di Brandt, Prairie Fire: New Mennonite Writing, Summer, 1990, page 183)

We are not able to escape our heritage by denying it, or to replace it by simply appropriating someone else's! A young man was stunned when he went to Thailand and tried to join a Buddhist monastery, only to be told by the monks to go back home and become a Christian monk first. Learn your own tradition! (cited by Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith) It too contains some colourful scarves!

It doesn't help to trivialize our heritage, as Esau did, thinking about little more than his immediate gratification. Our heritage may be an ambiguous one, but part of maturing is sifting through what is in the suitcase and asking ourselves, "What do I need to set aside? And what can I hold onto, as a blessing?

It's important, aside from coming to terms with the cumbersome aspects of our inheritance, to claim the colourful scarves in our suitcase. Our heritage may not always live up to our expectations, but sometimes we are surprised by the depth of its riches. The Old Testament psalmist speaks very positively of his heritage. "I have a delightful inheritance," he says. (Psalm 16:6, NIV) "My heritage is beautiful to me." (NASB)

When people speak of a person's legacy at his or her funeral, they rarely talk about the deceased's wealth or possessions. It wouldn't be in good taste, of course. We're far more apt to hear the bereaved recall winsome qualities like generosity, humour, love, friendship, and hospitality.

In Paul's letter to Timothy, he mentions the inheritance of faith Timothy received from his grandmother, Lois, and his mother, Eunice. It must have intrigued Paul to see the faith of these two women pass on to the next generation. Perhaps it was the way Timothy articulated his faith, or the things he emphasized that evoked Paul's memories of Lois' faith. Or perhaps it was his disposition that evoked Paul's memories of the way Eunice lived out her faith. He could see her impact on her grandson.

Our spiritual inheritance is a "delightful inheritance," full of colourful scarves and many things of beauty. Paul rhapsodizes about our spiritual inheritance in his letter to the Ephesians, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, ...He destined us for adoption as his children ...according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption ...according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ.... In Christ we have ...obtained an inheritance, ...so that we... might live for the praise of his glory." (Ephesians 1:3, 5-9, 11-12)

Paul concludes with a prayer: "I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ ...may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation ...so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints...." (Ephesians 1:17-18) Paul refers to this heritage elsewhere as "an inheritance that is imperishable...." (1 Peter 1:4)

Our Inheritance: Blessed by its Breadth and Depth

A spiritual inheritance, of course, is not a static thing. We mature, and change, and become the sum of a variety of parts and experiences. Kathleen Norris came to treasure the religious legacy of her youth, but it was also immensely deepened by her encounters with Benedictine monks. We learn from each other. I mean, look at us! A strange mix if you ever saw one! A ragtag collection of content agnostics, lapsed Lutherans, pensive Presbyterians, sceptical Catholics, rogue Southern Baptists, recovering fundamentalists, affable Anglicans, myopic Mennonites, and a whole lot more — but all of us trying to find a spiritual home, a community ready to stand with us as we get our life sorted out, our souls healed, our hearts mended.

This congregation has always had a dreadful, unworkable mix! But it has caused me to reflect upon my own heritage. I once preached a sermon about my religious heritage with the long and unworkable title, My Bergthal, Old Colony, Christian and Missionary Alliance, Church of God, Full Gospel, Pentecostal, Plymouth Brethren, Presbyterian, Salvationist, United Church, Mennonite Brethren, General Conference Heritage. (OMC, June 9, 1985) During the 1930s and 40s my parents lived in a community without a Mennonite Church and they took that opportunity to sample a wide variety of Christian churches. My Christian heritage also includes a rich experience in a United Methodist Church, not to mention Dorothy's Swiss Mennonite and Baptist heritage.

Our religious inheritance is as deep as it is broad. Often we pick only the first colourful scarf we see in the suitcase. We should probe a little deeper. Our religious legacy goes beyond a generation or two. It goes beyond the Ukraine; beyond Gdansk, beyond Friesland; beyond the Jura; beyond the Reformation.

Our common, and greatest inheritance is that we are all blessed by being children of God. The New Testament tells us that "those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children." (Revelation 21:7)

When Rachel Naomi Remen, a medical doctor, was young, she was caught between two different views of life: that of her rabbi grandfather and that of her highly academic parents, who believed religion was an opiate. Remen has very fond memories of her grandfather. She says that her family of physicians and health professionals were always struggling to learn more and to be more. "It was never enough," she writes. "If I brought home a 98 on a test from school, my father would ask, ‘And what happened to the other two points?' I pursued those two points relentlessly throughout my childhood. But my grandfather did not care about such things. For him, I was already enough." (Rachel Naomi Remen, "Blessing," My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging, page 23) His grandfather called her "Neshume-le," which means "beloved little soul". What a blessing!

Remen tells a touching story about sitting at her grandfather's bedside just before his death. Years earlier they had what was their only disagreement. It had to do with the nature of the "minyan," which has to do with the Jewish practise of requiring at least ten men present before an official prayer service can be held. This group of ten men is called a minyan, and Remen, a precocious child, was indignant that women did not qualify in constituting a minyan. Her grandfather said that it had always been so, since the beginning. Astounded, she asked, "If something is old, does it have to be true?" And when she insisted that God is also present in a room when ten women gather there, her grandfather replied, "This is not what the law says." They had never disagreed about anything before and Remen was shaken, though her grandfather seemed quite comfortable with the distance between their beliefs. They never discussed the matter again, and she though he had forgotten it.

When her grandfather became very sick, Remen was allowed to visit him. She was six years old and very proud of her reading, so she often read to him from one of his books. Sometimes they would simply sit quietly together, and sometimes she would hold his hand while he slept. "Once after a nap," she writes, "he opened his eyes and looked at me lovingly for a long while. ‘You are a minyan, all by yourself, Neshume-le,' he told me." (Rachel Naomi Remen, "The Presence of God, My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging, pages 364)

The New Testament tells us that God's Spirit bears witness in our spirit that "we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ...." (Romans 8:16-17) What a privilege! What a blessing!