Living Stones

Armenian Genocide Memorial Day

Joshua 4:1-7

A young theological student was very shy. His stage fright was a big concern for his professors who wanted to help him out by giving him more chances to practice preaching in class.

One day the student came to class and started his sermon with the question, “Do you know what I am going to talk about this morning?” “No, we don’t,” was the answer. “Then I will not tell you either,” replied the man and left the podium.

Next day he came again and asked the same question. This time the answer was, “Yes, we know what you are going to talk about.” “So I don’t need to tell you,” he replied and went to his seat.

On the third day, he came back and asked the same question, “Do you know what I am going to talk about this morning?” His classmates had agreed to do the following. Some said, “Yes, we do” while the rest said, “No, we don’t.” The young shy student looked at them and said, “So those who know, please tell the others,” and went back to his seat.

Is it important to tell what we know to those who don’t? Yes, many stories pass from person to person, from generation to generation. Family history is often passed that way. As Armenians, we have a story to pass, to tell. We remember our victims, our countless martyrs of the Genocide and we tell the story. That is also why we have built monuments in many cities around the world. Monuments tell a story.

There is a monument story in the Bible. The people of Israel reached the land of Canaan during the leadership of Joshua, the successor of Moses. God tells Joshua to ask 12 men to each carry a stone from the middle of Jordan. Joshua obeys and here is the story.

“So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever” (Joshua 4: 4-7).

God wants them to remember what happened. He wants future generations to know what God did for His people.

How often do tell each other meaningless things? Do we tell each other what God has done? The story of the Armenian people has to be told from person to another, from generation to another. Generations should know how God kept us as a nation, gave us new life in the Diaspora and granted an independent Armenia.

I read about the French Armenian playwright and filmmaker Henri Verneuil (Henri Malakian) who made the famous autobiographical movie “Mayrik.” He says, “I had to pay my dues to may family. I had promised to tell my story.”

I read the following in my own grandfather Balaban Khoja’s memoir called “The Cold and Hot Day of my Life”. “I have reached the autumn of my life. I feel that sharing the story of my life, which is a series of stories of suffering, pain, blood, killings, and confrontation of death, is a debt I need to pay to the young rising generation.”

The story has to be told. These days there are so many ways to tell a story. The media offers us countless methods we can use.

Stones can tell a story speak, too. Stones speak. When the priests asked Jesus to quiet down those who were shouting Hosannas, he replied, “I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out” (Luke 19:40).

Recitation of poem by Jack S. Hagopian entitled, “Who Will Tell?”

To be continued in English.