CREEDE HINSHAW: Memorization ‘sinks’ words to the heart

I’m not sure whether this column is about Jesus’ Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12), about the challenge and difficulty of memorization or both.

As the de facto leader of a weekly men’s coffee group, I usually select what we’ll study. Over the years, we’ve read many books interspersed with reading books of the Bible.

This January I selected Jesus’ most concentrated teaching, commonly known as the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), for our current topic of study. I suggested four or five books the men could read as companions to the text.

Then I suggested we should try – for starters – memorizing the Beatitudes.

These timeless, inspiring sayings/exhortations were only nine verses long, for heaven’s sake. How hard could it be for a group of college-educated men, some with post-graduate degrees, to memorize a few familiar verses? I suspect that some of the men, myself included, had been challenged by a Sunday school teacher somewhere in our grammar school years to memorize those verses decades ago.

As it turns out, this was a more challenging assignment than I thought. We’re all retired guys these days, and memorization doesn’t come quite as easily. My friends wailed that this was too hard an assignment.

It did not seem to help when I pointed out that (according to the internet; I can’t vouch for this) the adolescent Bill Gates (yes, that Bill Gates), upon being challenged by his Seattle pastor at confirmation, memorized the entire Sermon on the Mount – all three chapters – without missing or mangling a single word. His reward was a meal at the top of the Space Needle.

We met the following Tuesday, having had a week to complete our assignment. I was the only one of our group who successfully accomplished the task, but I allowed as how I had an unfair advantage. I’ve been studying this passage and preaching and teaching from it for close to 40 years.

In addition, however, memory work is still important to me. You might think that a pastor would automatically have all the books of the Bible memorized. I’m sure many pastors do. I haven’t been one of them, usually getting hung up somewhere around Ecclesiastes. Last month I set out to memorize the proper order of the twelve minor prophets. It took a while, but with a few memory tricks I now can do it.

There are many reasons why memory work is important, not the least of which – at my age – is to keep the mind sharp. But for the faithful adherent of religion, memorization goes far deeper than this. One memorizes not so much to master the proper order of the words, but so that the words will sink into the heart and soul and become second nature.

Oswald Chambers called the Beatitudes “spiritual torpedoes,” exploding our human sensibilities and taking us to a deeper level of holiness. I am praying for and expecting some depth charges in my life this year.

Email Creede Hinshaw at [email protected].