2025.11.02 | Remembering as Acts of Resistance

“Remembering as Acts of Resistance”
Joshua 4:1–8 

Preached by 
Rev. Dr. Marvin Lance Wiser 
Eden United Church of Christ  
Hayward, CA
02 November 2025

I must begin by saying thank you again for calling me as your senior minister. I am both humbled and grateful, and as I said last week, am honored to be able to continue walking alongside you co-creating belonging in justice and joy. You know, God calls us to the place where our passions and the needs of the world meet. I didn’t particularly envision myself where I am today. As a kid I wanted to be a meteorologist, particularly a tornado chaser, an author, a reporter, a jazz musician, then a psychologist, then a professor. When you have a plan, tell God, right? Well, I came to find out the occupation that involves all of those is called a minister. My great grandfather who by trade was a logger, timberman, or lumberjack depending upon where you are in the country, just so happened to be a minister as well. He’s long since passed, I never got to meet him, as he died at 54 years of age in a logging accident. But I heard stories about him and his influence certainly persisted throughout the generations. Today I want to talk about talking about our ancestors. Highlighting especially, stories of resistance, courage, and how cultivating collective memory sustain liberative movements against empire and erasure.    

When all the people had crossed over the Jordan, the Lord told Joshua to choose twelve men—one from each tribe—and to have them take twelve stones from the middle of the riverbed. These stones were to be carried to their camp and stacked there, so that when future generations asked, “What do these stones mean?” the people could tell the story of how God made a way when there was no way.

t’s a strange thing to pause in the middle of a crossing. The people are finally stepping into promise after forty long years in the wilderness. You’d think the instruction would be to hurry up—keep moving! But God says: Stop. Remember. Mark this moment.

Because memory is holy work. Because forgetting is easy. And because the homogenizing forces that seek to erase memory are always at work.

Cuando el pueblo cruzó el Jordán, Dios le dijo a Josué que doce hombres —uno de cada tribu— tomaran doce piedras del lecho del río y las apilaran como señal. Cuando las generaciones futuras preguntaran: «¿Qué significan estas piedras?», contarían la historia de cómo Dios abrió un camino donde no lo había.

Resulta curioso que Dios les dijera que se detuvieran en medio de una promesa. Después de cuarenta años de peregrinación, uno esperaría que Dios les dijera: «¡Sigan adelante!». En cambio, Dios les dice: «Deténganse. Recuerden. Graben este momento».

Porque la memoria es un trabajo sagrado. Porque olvidar es fácil. Y porque las fuerzas que borran la memoria siempre están presentes.

As people of faith, we are not only runners in the race; we are also storytellers along the way. The ancestors of our faith didn’t just arrive—they remembered, and in remembering, they resisted the temptation to believe they had gotten there on their own, and they resisted the way empire wanted them to live.

Joshua’s stones were not trophies of triumph, but testimonies of togetherness. They declared: We didn’t cross by our own strength. We crossed because God was faithful, and because we did not give up on one another.

So too must we pause to build our own monuments of memory. To tell our stories. To name the victories, both large and small, that carried us here.

The writer of Hebrews reminds us, “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.”

Those witnesses are our ancestors—our saints, our abuelas and elders, our martyrs and truth-tellers—who surround us even now. Their stories are the wind at our backs. Their faith is the ground beneath our feet. And stopping to remember and learn from them is not a distraction from the race—it’s what keeps the movement going.

We can’t run forward without looking back.
We can’t keep the faith without telling the stories.
We can’t build a just future without honoring the memory of those who dreamed it first.

Como personas de fe, no solo participamos en la carrera, sino que también narramos historias a lo largo del camino. Nuestros antepasados ​​no solo llegaron; recordaron. Y al recordar, se opusieron a la mentira de que llegaron solos y a la forma en que el imperio les impuso vivir.

Las piedras de Josué no eran trofeos, sino testimonios de unidad, que proclamaban la fidelidad de Dios y que cruzaron la frontera porque no se abandonaron mutuamente.

Así que nosotros también debemos detenernos a construir nuestros monumentos a la memoria, contando las historias y nombrando las victorias que nos trajeron hasta aquí. Como nos recuerda Hebreos: «Puesto que estamos rodeados de una nube tan grande de testigos, corramos con perseverancia la carrera que tenemos por delante». Sus historias son el viento a nuestro favor, su fe el suelo bajo nuestros pies.

Y necesitamos esa fuerza ahora. Con otro cierre, sistemas paralizados y personas ansiosas por el mañana, es útil recordar cómo nuestros antepasados ​​soportaron los tiempos difíciles. Cultivaron huertos de la victoria, compartieron comidas y se apoyaron mutuamente. Su creatividad y cuidado no eran solo supervivencia, eran resistencia.

Al recordarlos, no solo honramos el pasado, sino que encontramos fuerza para el presente. Su resiliencia se convierte en nuestro recurso; su memoria, en nuestra guía.

Por eso nos reunimos para el Día de los Muertos y el Día de Todos los Santos: para recordar a quienes nos precedieron. Encendemos velas, colocamos ofrendas y les contamos a nuestros hijos: de aquí venimos, así sobrevivimos. ¿Qué historias les estás transmitiendo hoy?

We live again in a time when the world feels increasingly unsteady—we talked about the shaking and the quaking earlier this month—another shutdown, systems stalled, people anxious about what tomorrow will bring. But this is not the first time our ancestors have faced scarcity, fear, or uncertainty.

They made it through depressions and droughts. They planted victory gardens in backyards, rooftops, and alleyways. They leaned on neighbors, shared meals, pooled coins, and told stories around tables of faith. They leaned in and lived out the communalism of Acts 2. Their creativity and care were not just survival—they were resistance.

So when we remember them, we don’t just honor the past; we equip ourselves for the present. Their resilience becomes our resource. Their stories become our strength. Their memory becomes a map for how to move through this moment together.

That’s why we gather this weekend for Días de los Muertos and All Saints Day—to remember those who have gone before us. We light candles and place pictures of loved ones on ofrendas because we know that remembering is not just nostalgia—it’s resistance. It’s how we tell our children, this is where we came from, this is how we survived.

Because we live again in an age that prefers the convenience of amnesia. Forget the pain of those silenced. Forget the wisdom of the elders. Forget the victories we’ve already won. Just look at the erasures happening around us—exhibits pulled from the Smithsonian, histories rewritten, voices muted that once sang of struggle and hope. This isn’t just routine rotating of exhibits, Executive Order 14253, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” signed earlier this year directs review of Smithsonian exhibits to remove what the order terms “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology.” 

Those who do not study history are. . . 

And so here we are—still gathering stones. Still stacking stories. Still declaring, in the face of empire, that our memory matters, just as Joshua and the Israelites did so long ago. This weekend I charge us to do just that, when we meet with family or friends, make a point to discuss deeper the freedom fighters of our past, Sojourner Truth and Ella Baker, Marsha Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, or going back even further to Taíno chief Anacaona or Túpac Amaru II, even further still take a look at Hebrews 11. Who are your heroes, sheroes? Whose stories are you passing down? There exists no shortage of stories, only a predilection toward forgetting by dominating forces. Today’s the day to share a story.

So let us stop and remember those who built the bridges we walk on.
Let us mark the occasions of victory, no matter how small.
Ain’t no shutdown gonna slow us down. 
God makes ways out of no ways. Amen?
Let us tell the stories of how God made a way through the waters—how love carried us through loss, how community stood when others bowed.
And then may we continue the work, keep building, feeding, and caring.

And let those who come after us find our own stones and know:
They were here.
They remembered.
And because they remembered, we are free to keep running the race. Amen.