1/24/24

I don’t know how it is where you live, but as of Tuesday evening, there was still some snow on the ground and ice on the roads in Limestone County! Even after this rain and 50 degree temperatures! I remember hearing the old timers (of which I think I now qualify) say that if snow and ice stays on the ground more than 3 days, it’s waiting on the next one. 

I hope they were wrong! 

In our daily Bible study, we’ve been reading Deuteronomy where Moses urged the people to remember. When you forget, you take things for granted. We treasure a person or treasure an event, and we create annual celebrations around them.  That’s why wedding anniversaries are so important.  Husbands, what happens when you forget your anniversary? Your spouse feels unappreciated (and you’ll probably never, ever forget it again!). You remember because what you’re remembering matters. 

So Moses urges the people to remember what God had done for them and then live like it. For example, in today’s reading (Deuteronomy 24), Moses commanded the people not to deprive an alien or an orphan of justice, nor to take a widow’s garment as a pledge for a loan. He told them to leave some grain in the fields, olives in the trees and grapes on the vine for “the alien, the orphan and the widow.” Why? “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this” (24:18, 22).  They were to remember and then let the memory shape the way they lived.

Moses spoke those words to the 2nd and 3rd generation, and these were laws that would be in effect for another 1400 or so years, yet over and over he says to them, as if they were the ones who experienced it themselves, “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you.”

For the Hebrews, to remember something had a different sense than when we speak about remembering something. When I remember something, I’m simply recalling an event that happened years ago. But for the Jews, to remember something was far more than simply recalling the past. For the Jews, to remember was to bring the past into the present. They were to live as if each generation was the same generation God brought out of Egypt.

In the Biblical way of thinking, to remember is to re-live. 

To remember meant that every year the people ate unleavened bread, bitter herbs, and roasted lamb like their ancestors did as they celebrated Passover, and during Succoth (also called “Booths” or “Tabernacles”), they built temporary shelters, camping outdoors just like their ancestors did for 40 years in the wilderness. These were tangible reminders each and every year of God’s great events of deliverance. Their faith would come to life as each generation experienced the taste, touch and smell– all the sensations of redemption. 

The reason? So they would remember. So they wouldn’t take for granted all that God did for them. So they would live lives that reflected God’s redeeming love. 

So much of what I’ve written about Deuteronomy is true for us now.  We live as we do because of our story. We shape our year around the saving events of our story. We remember!

As Christians, we live our lives as reflections of God’s love for us. John tells us in I John 4:19, “We love because he first loved us” and “whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Can’t get any more plain than that! 

And so that we don’t forget, every year we celebrate God’s love. We set aside an entire month, proclaiming “joy to the world the Lord has come.”   For 40 days of Lent we recall – Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness, and we spend the time in fasting and reflection. Every Spring, we set aside an entire week to remember Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. And as the grand climax, we gather on Saturday evening for the Easter Vigil, listening to the stories of God’s redeeming acts in the Old Testament, singing songs of deliverance, and making lots of noise as we joyfully proclaim, “The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!” 

And so we don’t forget, every Sunday we gather together to remember God’s great act of love for us. We read scripture from the Old Testament that looks forward to the coming of Christ; we hear words of Christ from the gospels; we sing the Psalms and the hymns that celebrate a heritage of worship that stretches back nearly 4,000 years; we praise the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who brought Israel out of Egyptian slavery and across the Red Sea, who raised Jesus from the dead, and who delivered us from the power of sin and death and made us into his sons and daughters.

And so we don’t forget, as the climax of every service, we take a bit of bread and grape juice in specific obedience to Jesus’ words, “Do this in remembrance of me.”  

And we remember. Not just recalling an act that happened centuries ago, like a high school student might remember the 490 BC Battle of Marathon for a test, but we remember the act of God’s love we can experience now, in our hearts, in 2024. We remember and that memory shapes the way we live  a life of “Loving God . . . Loving others.”