The Things You Never Remember

Psalm 106 (106:1-6, 19-23)
Series: Dwelling in the Psalms
October 11, 2026
William G, Carter

That’s one way to end up with a short sermon: pick a long Bible passage! There are longer psalms to choose from. But there are few quite as exhausting. Psalm 106 is a history psalm. A long history psalm. A psalm recounting a long history. If it were left up to the Lectionary Keepers, whoever they are, we would hear six verses in the beginning and five verses in the middle. That’s all that was suggested for today. 

When a text gets trimmed, I’m always curious what gets left out.

The beginning is pleasant enough. The psalm starts by singing a hymn: Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His steadfast love endures forever! That is a familiar verse. It comes up regularly. It is followed by a declaration of right living, and that is always a good idea. Then comes a one-word prayer, “Remember!” Remember us, O Lord. We call on God to look back in the divine memory and recognize us.

Yet from that point on, it is the psalm that does all the remembering. What it remembers is a significant number of times we have goofed up. We have sinned. We have twisted ourselves out of shape (That’s the root meaning of “iniquity.” It signifies a twisting beyond original recognition.) And we have done evil.

Here’s my question for today. What kind of people remember all the ways that they have messed up? God isn’t calling them to account. They are calling themselves to account. What kind of people do that?

History, they say, is decided by the winners. We rarely listen for the losers. Can you imagine the history of North America told by the people who lived here first? And if it were spun in a positive direction? Let me imagine one of those scenarios.

We had resigned ourselves to living in North Dakota. The land was barren. The winters were cold. So, when the pale-skinned strangers from Scandinavia arrived, we were happy to hand over the land to them. Not much here for us anyway. So glad they came and planted their flags. We snickered the whole way to Nebraska.

Is that the way the story went? It depends on who tells the story. It’s not revisionist history, just the rest of the story, a more complete version.

Tomorrow is designated Columbus Day, a national holiday. It’s named for an Italian adventurer was financed by Spain to cross the sea, where he discovered Bermuda. Well, he didn’t discover it – other people were already living there. To the empire he represented, they did not count. Thinking he had found a new way to India, he planted a new flag, looked for hidden riches, and took what he could find. In subsequent returns, he and his crew brought smallpox and slavery to the islands. Thousands of natives died from the diseases brought by Europe.[1]

Isn’t that the way we were taught the story in school? No, not really. Back in second grade, the teacher passed out crayons for us to color the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. It was all about the European conquest of a New World. We were taught it was a story only about courage and adventure. Don’t get me wrong; I like it here. Yet there’s a whole lot more that has been cut off of the story. Just like the suggested verses of Psalm 106.

What would we have lost if we had trimmed out verses seven through eighteen and twenty-four through forty-eight? Rebellion against God, superficial faith, wanton craving, and wickedness. That’s just in verse seven through eighteen. In the latter half of the tale, there was dissatisfaction, grumbling, scattering, to say nothing of sacrificing their own children to the violence of their own making.

If that wasn’t enough, they said, “God is too quiet and too invisible for us. Let’s make a few smaller gods for us to worship. We will light up a bonfire and crank up a pep rally.” They wanted fire, excitement, exuberance, so God nodded and gave them over to the vain desires of their ravenous souls. And it did not go well. The shorthand account is in the psalm that we read together.

Once again, I ask: what kind of people tell the crystal-clear truth about themselves? They must not be running for office in Pennsylvania. They might not even be Presbyterians.

Do you remember that classic scene with Colonel Nathan Jessup, in the film A Few Good Men? In a critical moment, he bellows out, “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth.” And a few moments later we discover in the darkness of the theater, he can’t handle the truth either. He has acted despicably and done what he could to cover up what he has done.

And Israel goes into the Temple, opens the prayerbook to Psalm 106, and begins to tell the truth. God already knows what they’ve done – and what they have left undone. God is not surprised by anything we do or say. The surprise comes when we have the courage to say out loud when and where we have been wrong.

Years ago, I had a friend who wrote a lot of songs. Dave has been gone for many years, but I had the privilege of his company on many occasions. One day, Dave Brubeck gave me the handwritten manuscript for a fresh new song he had written. There were words attached. The first verse went like this:

            The things you never remember / are the things I’ll never forget.

            The vows we made to each other / the thrill we felt when we met.

            The life we started together / so full of promise and yet

            The dream was so quickly shattered / our hearts so full of regret.[2]

I said, “Dave, are you in trouble with your wife?” He laughed and said, “She wrote the words.” Then he quickly added, “It’s about a dear friend who went through a traumatic breakup.” And I thought, “It could have been anybody.”

Reflect on your own experience. We try to push painful memories out of our heads. We jump out of one broken relationship to create another broken relationship. Our friends, the therapists, tell us if we bury the pain or pretend “we don’t remember,” the pain is still there. Grief always waits for us to catch up. If you kick it down the road, it’s waiting for you. Unresolved pain waits to be named – and only then can it begin to be healed.

And Israel goes into the Temple, opens the prayerbook, and recites Psalm 106. “Lord, here is when we wandered off your path. When we broke your commandments. When we went our own way rather than your way. We are certain that we made you angry – yet you have never let us go. You are a god – The God – of steadfast love and mercy.”  

Suddenly, my friend’s song modulates to a new key. The things we never remember are the things God never forgets. Let’s hear it that way. Mercy comes only through honesty. We cannot be free from the mistakes we’ve never confessed. We cannot fully experience the power of forgiveness if we have never owned our own broken lives.

And here we are, in the Temple, in God’s local Presbyterian Temple. This is safe space for truth-telling. And it’s an old, old building – a hundred fourteen years old. I suspect it’s heard it all and seen it all. It’s OK if you drop your burden here. God can carry it.

At the same time, let’s remember there is more at stake than our personal issues. Our psalm is a national psalm. It is a national confession. And there is so much pain in our own nation that is shoved aside, denied, and dismissed. Every single day we see real truth covered by lies, smoothed over by selfishness, and postponed in the hope that our grandchildren might tackle the problems someday.

Now, we can’t fix all the messes we’ve made. Nor can we mend all the brokenness we have inherited. The psalmist knew that. But here is what we can do as the people of God: we can tell the truth, the whole truth, and our differing points of view of the one truth. We can look into our own past to admit, “Yes, that was us.” There’s no shame in confessing our shame. We can keep talking with one another and resist the tendency to shout past one another. And we can look to the Holy God who has not given up on us, who waits for us to get it right.

This is what true community looks like. It is faith embodied by honesty. It’s a community led by Jesus to remind us of what we don’t want to remember. It’s a community that invites those who have been silenced to speak up. It’s a community that stands up for others when those who are far too comfortable beg us to sit down. It is a community in Christ that serves a broken world with crucified hands, a truthful tongue, and an open heart.

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Let all the people say, “Amen.” Praise the Lord.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] See, for instance, https://www.history.com/articles/columbus-day.

[2] “The Things You Never Remember,” words by Iola Brubeck, music by Dave Brubeck. © Derry Music.