Year B — Proper 14

The Rev. Gerald W. Keucher

Deuteronomy, from which the first lesson is taken today, is all about remembering. In Deuteronomy the people of Israel are about to enter the Promised Land. They've wandered for forty years in the wilderness after they were delivered from the Egyptians at the Red Sea. They're camping at the River Jordan, and they're about to go over the river and take possession of the land that, hundreds of years before, God had promised to their forefather Abraham.

They've gone back and forth in the wilderness for an entire generation, being fed day by day with the manna. The people have been grumbling and murmuring against Moses and Aaron most of the time, even though God has seen to all their daily needs.

Now, before they cross over into the Promised Land, Moses wants them to Remember, Remember.

Wandering through the wilderness, waiting for God's promises to be fulfilled, grumbling a little and being a little fearful, even though daily needs are being met, with someone standing up calling the people to remember — it sounds like every parish congregation I've ever known.

Some people talk about the priest as the “bearer of the tradition,” which to me is an eloquent way of saying that the priest is the person who stands up like Moses and says, "Remember."

All right, remember what? Moses wanted the people to remember their history — to remember
their slavery in Egypt,
the plagues that convinced Pharaoh to let the people go,
the Passover meal eaten in haste on the night they escaped,
the parting of the Red Sea waters,
their deliverance from the Egyptian army that was pursuing them,
the 40 years that the Lord had led them and fed them in the wilderness.

Moses wanted the people to remember how God had acted in their history.

I'm here with the same message. Remember, remember. Remember all those mighty works of God in the history of Israel. Remember how, long after David and Solomon, the people went into exile in Babylon, and the Temple was destroyed. Remember how God brought them home again. Remember how God promised a Messiah who would inaugurate a New Covenant that would be open to all, closer to Him than ever.

Remember how the Virgin Mary cooperated with God to make possible the birth of the Messiah — Emmanuel, God with us. Remember how shepherds and kings recognized Who the Baby was. Remember how Jesus gave Himself to people — teaching, healing, feeding, sharing. And remember how Jesus gave Himself for people, an offering and sacrifice to God.

Remember how God conquered sin and death by raising Jesus from the dead.

Remember how God sent the Holy Spirit on those who responded to Jesus, baptizing them into His Body.

Remember how each of us was brought into His fellowship at our own baptism.

Remember. Remember the mighty works of God.

OK, that's what we remember. But how do we remember? This is a crucial question, because there are different ways of remembering, and they have different effects on us. There are three ways of remembering that I want to talk about today.

First, there's remembering the past as information. Do you remember who Pontius Pilate was? Do you remember the stories from the Bible? Do you remember what day the Feast of the Transfiguration is?

That's one kind of remembering, and it's useful and necessary. We need to know the stories in order to speak of God's mighty works. And it was one of the ways Moses wanted the people to remember. And it's one of the ways I hope you will remember as well. We need to know some of the facts, and we need to know the stories.

Second, there's a way of remembering I'd like to call remembering the past as past. Do you remember what things used to be like? Do you remember what God used to do in your life?

This kind of memory is tricky and a little dangerous, because we grow older the past always tends to look better than it really was, and the present tends to look worse than it really is. Every generation has thought the world was getting worse and worse, and if we think about it, that just can't be right.

During their 40 years in the wilderness, the people of Israel over and over again longed for the days when they were slaves in Egypt. They forgot the oppression and brutality of those days and remembered only the security they had known.

When we remember the past as past, it’s tricky because we are likely to forget the problems and fears from the past and romanticize what things were like. Remembering the past as past is a little dangerous because it tends to blind us to what God is doing now. Even if the past really was better in some respects than the present, remembering the past as past can make us unable to face the reality of where we are now.

But there's a third way of remembering that we might call remembering the past as present. We do this kind of remembering when we say, "Remember who you are," because it's all of those past experiences that have given us our present identity. We do this when we look at family pictures, or tell family stories, and feel those past relationships and past events become present again in our lives, so that we feel connected with what has gone before.

When we remember the past as present, we bear in mind what God has done to make us who we are now. It isn't just that God did things in the past that we know about, or that God did things that we look back at wistfully to try to recreate. It's remembering God's past faithfulness so that we expect God to be faithful now, whatever our present circumstances are.

Remembering the past as information is the beginning, but it keeps us distanced and separated from the event — like remembering that Julius Caesar was killed in 44 BC. It's just information.

Remembering the past as past keeps us feeling defeated and overwhelmed by our current circumstances, because when we remember the past as past, we always feel that things will never be as good as they once were — Oh, we wish we were slaves again in Egypt!

But remembering the past as present gives us confidence and strength to meet our situation right now because we know God is with us as He has always been with His people since Day One.

Moses wants the people of Israel to remember the past as present — He wants them to know that the mighty works God did in the past for their ancestors were done for them. Still today, at the Passover Seder, Jews say, "The Lord brought us out of Egypt. Not our ancestors did the Lord deliver, but we were slaves in Egypt, and the Lord delivered us."

So, too, every week here at the Eucharist, we remember the past as present. What God has done in Jesus Christ God is still doing in us. The teaching, healing, feeding and sharing that Jesus did is still happening. Not just our ancestors in the faith, but we stand at the edge of Jordan, with one foot still in the wilderness and one foot in the Promised Land, and I say, "Remember."

Remember all that God has done to make us who we are. Remember your own experiences of God — your experiences of love and fellowship and God's faithfulness. Keep in mind that God is still faithful. Remember so that you have the strength and vision to go forward into His promises. Remember that Jesus is still living bread, and we are still the faithful members of His Body.

“Taste and see that the Lord is good” — and remember.