![The steeple of the Memorial Church](/sites/g/files/omnuum7126/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2025-02/160725ChurchCalArt4.jpg?itok=rG9ZvXzh) # Keeping Watch: The Responsibility of Remembrance November 12, 2026 - [ Blog ](/news-categories/blog) ![The Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts delivering a sermon from an ornate wooden pulpit adorned with a red cloth featuring a gold cross inside a church.](/sites/g/files/omnuum7126/files/2026-11/261108Commemoration10.jpg) *Sermon for Commemoration Sunday* *By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D ’13* *Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity* *Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church* *(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Nov. 8, 2026)* May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all this day and forever. Amen. "When a bright future beckoned, they freely gave their lives and fondest hopes that we might learn from them." So begins the exhortation that's written in the memorial room close to the ceiling. What are we meant to learn from them? The exhortation continues. We're meant to learn courage. We're meant to learn in peace to make the world better. What does that mean? What should that mean 94 years on? I have a distinct memory of walking into this church the first time as its newly appointed minister. As a student, I'd come into this church before, but it was different once I was named minister, as you might imagine. This was almost six years ago. It was in the middle of the pandemic, so no one had been on campus for a while. They had named me the Pusey Minister, and so I came in to record a blessing for the online graduation ceremony. And they let me walk into the church, which had been empty for months on this campus that had been empty for months. And I remember walking in, as you all walked through, many of you walked in today, and coming out from underneath the choir loft and seeing the names on this wall. I mean, I'd seen the names on that wall before, but I felt, I felt the presence of those names as a weight and as a responsibility because I had become, in that appointment, one of the stewards of their memory. Now, every Christian is a steward of memory. Every Christian minister is a steward of memory. We proclaim Jesus Christ crucified until he comes again. We are in the business of keeping and bearing witness to memories. But to see all those names, to know all that those names signify, the histories behind those names, I felt the burden of it, the burden of responsibility, and that feeling has only deepened in the five-and-a-half years since. As I've met people, tourists who come into this church looking for a name on that wall or on another wall of a grandfather or great-uncle whose name is inscribed there. I got to know Bob Hurlbut, who was a part of this congregation for many years; he was a friend of mine, and his dad is in the class of 1934 and went down on a ship in the Pacific. Getting to know how close these names are to people in this community, maybe some of you who are here today, the weight has only felt weightier. This church, this memorial church, is a unique church. We're unique for lots of reasons, but one of the ways, maybe one of the primary ways we are unique, is because of the watch that we keep, the memories that we try to hold, the names that are written on all these walls. And the parable we have today from Jesus, the one that just happens to be assigned for this Sunday, is about keeping watch, staying alert. We are winding up the long liturgical season after Pentecost. We've been learning about Jesus' ministries over the last several months, and we're only a few weeks from Advent, which is the preparation for Christmas. And as we wind our way toward Advent, the next, including today, the next three Sundays in church, you are going to hear these kinds of stories from Jesus, stories about expecting Jesus' return, what it means to expect Jesus' return, and it's because we're getting ready for Advent. Advent is not just the time of waiting for Christmas; it's also waiting for the time when Christ comes again. And so we have these stories of readiness, of wakefulness. They're actually stories of apocalypse. Harvard Memorial Church · The Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts Ph.D. '13 - Nov. 8, 2026 | Sunday Sermon If you look, this lesson, this parable, comes from the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. It's right at the end of Jesus' story; he's about to die. And he's actually just told them what scholars call the little apocalypse in Matthew. He's told his listeners, they're in the temple, and he's told them what will happen. He's told them that all this will be destroyed. It's all going to happen. And he says, "You have to be ready for it. All this will be destroyed. There will be suffering and devastation. And in the midst of that devastation and suffering, you must wait and look for me. You must keep alert and keep watch." That word apocalypse is just the Greek word for revelation. And Jesus is saying, "I'm revealing to you what will happen. And then once it happens, I will be there. Look for me. If you look, I will reveal myself again. So be ready. Because if you're not paying attention, you might miss it," which is what happens in this gospel lesson. These foolish bridesmaids, they miss the bridegroom. This is a kind of uncompromising parable. We have the wise bridesmaids who seem sort of miserly with their oil, right? They can't share their oil with the foolish ones. Aren't we supposed to share? If you have two cloaks, give one to your neighbor, right? There actually might be something more complicated going on with these bridesmaids. I was reading some scholars, and they were saying in an ancient Jewish custom, a wedding like this might involve a long procession with torches, and you would take oil for your torch, and you'd have as much oil to get you where you were going through the night. So if you split your oil with somebody else, it actually ruins everything because everybody's oil runs out halfway there, right? So if we're going to light the way all the way, we need to keep these torches lit. So maybe they're less miserly than practical. But even if that's the case, what happens when they get to the party is hard. Preachers like me who like the nice Jesus, we have trouble with some of these rigid judgments. "I do not know you," Jesus says. Literally, the Greek says, "I do not see you," which is somehow more harsh even. I don't even see you. I can't really interpret my way out of this one. I think it just says that there are consequences to missing Jesus. When Jesus shows up, if we do not see, if we are not alert and watchful, there will be consequences. So if there are consequences, we should be really clear what it means then to be alert, to keep watch. So let's talk more about this parable, or at least situate this parable within the gospel. As I said, we're right at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, and the Gospel of Matthew is actually structured around several discourses of Jesus, several five different teaching moments that Jesus gives. The first one was the one I preached upon last week, the beatitudes: blessed to the poor, blessed to the peacemakers. That's how Jesus starts his preaching ministry. And now we're in the moment when he ends it. And part of this parable is a callback to that first lesson because right after Jesus gives the beatitudes, speaks about all these blessings, he says to his listeners, "You are the light of the world. Keep your lamps lit." So he's hearkening back to something he was saying with this parable. And he's also anticipating the end of his preaching, the end of his teaching, which happens in this 25th chapter. As I said, he has these three parables of expectation, and waiting, and apocalypse and the last one is the final judgment. We're going to read this in a couple weeks, or hear about it in a couple weeks, so I won't say too much about it, but you may have heard this before. What happens is those who are cast off come to Jesus and they say, "Whoa, wait, what about us, Jesus?" And Jesus says to them, "When I was hungry, you did not feed me. When I was thirsty, you did not give me drink. When I was naked, you did not clothe me. When I was sick, you did not visit and care for me." And they say, "Wait, what are you talking about? We never saw you." And he says, "Whenever you fail to do this to the least of my children, you failed to do it to me." Recognition. "You didn't see me when I came. I did not look the way you thought I would look, and so you missed me. You missed your chance." This is the through line of Jesus' teaching. This parable of the bridesmaids, as harsh as it is, is connecting these ideas. Keep your lamps lit. You are the light of the world. We light the way so we can see. Who are we looking for? What are we looking for? And I think that's the key really to this lesson. And also, to how we should think about these apocalyptic scenes, about these dire predictions of the end of the world which Jesus is giving to his disciples, even as he is also inviting them to look, to pay attention in the present. All these dire predictions Jesus gives of the end of the world, these are relatable. These are familiar to us in our 21st century because don't we, in our own moment and our own day, have our own apocalyptic warnings? Warnings of climate change, catastrophic climate collapse. Warnings of AI, artificial intelligence and its impact upon our lives, upon our existence. I was just talking about the pandemic. I don't know how well-prepared we are for future pandemics. In the little apocalypse of Matthew, Jesus says, "You'll know the end is coming when you hear of wars and rumors of wars." Anybody heard any of any wars or rumors of wars? This is what we have. It makes sense that we feel anxiety about the future. It makes sense that we feel like we are in this apocalyptic moment, that we need to get ready for something big, to be prepared. And we should. There is real uncertainty and real risk in our world. There are real threats. But there are also ways in which our preoccupation or our attention to those real threats might distract us from something which is more immediate. Or might distract us from a more immediate question. Which is what does it mean to keep watch? What does it mean in this moment here and now to be alert? As we hear of wars and rumors of wars, what are we looking for? What are we meant to see? Because the plea Jesus is giving, if we read this parable in the context of these other parables, of these other teachings, the plea Jesus is giving to us is not to be ready because someday in the future it all might come. It's actually something more like don't wait too much or too long because it may already be right in front of you. There's a way in which waiting so much for the big event, for the big thing, will blind us to all the little ways that Jesus meets us every day, will blind us to the little revelations we have of our Lord who meets us right here, right now in our neighbor, in the needy. Waiting for Jesus to descend from the heavens on high means that we don't recognize him when he knocks on the door at midnight in the guise of a stranger, or a beggar, or a refugee. We won't listen to him or see him when he asks us to walk with him on his long journey through the night and shed some light upon his path. The point is that the weight of our expectation can sometimes distract us from what is right in front of us here and now in the present. We're so busy looking for thunderbolts and heavenly chariots that we fail to see Jesus standing right outside our door. And that matters on this day of commemoration because memory too, as I said before, is a way of keeping watch. That's the weight I felt the first time I walked in this church as its minister, a weight I still feel, the burden of responsibility. You can't look at the names inscribed on these walls without being overwhelmed by all they signify, all the lives that hide behind those names, the grief and the loss, the futures that might have been. You can't look at these names or read them with any attention or care and not feel overwhelmed by all that they signal. It's important that we recognize that. It's important that they commemorate that, which is what we do today. But the question is not do we feel the great weight of memory? Of course we do, of course we should. The question is what will we do with the weight of that responsibility? How might that memory make us alert to our responsibilities in the present? What will that memory help us to recognize, and who will that memory help us to see? Today we commemorate the war dead. We remember them. It's also good to be reminded that we are a country at war. We have been at war for most of the past 25 years, but you wouldn't know it looking at our walls. None of the names of those wars' dead are written on our walls because, so far as we know, none of those dead graduated from Harvard or were close affiliates of Harvard University. But whether they are listed here or not, they are still our war dead. Whether we see their names or not, they still belong to us and they deserve to be seen. The veterans who have returned from these 25 years of war, especially those who have returned broken in body, mind, or spirit, their names are not listed here either, but they are still our responsibility. They deserve to be looked after and to be seen. The hundreds of thousands of civilian victims who have died in our wars, hundreds of thousands think of that. Their names are not written anywhere here. Nor indeed are the names of our dead enemies, all of whom Jesus tells us God loves. The fact that we don't see them, the fact that they aren't recognized, does not absolve us of responsibility. Today is a day of commemoration and remember the great cost of all the sacrifice that is signaled by the names on our walls. So what will our remembrance do to us and for us in the present? Because if these parables are true, our responsibility as Christians is not in waiting for some far-off apocalyptic future, nor is our responsibility hidden in some sealed-off sacred past. Our responsibility is standing right outside our walls, knocking on the door, waiting to be seen. ## Full Sunday Service ## See also:- [ Sunday Service ](/blog-categories/sunday-service) - [ Sunday Service ](/archive/sunday-service) - [ Sermon ](/archive/sermons) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)