Remember

Wednesday March 18

Readings: Dt 4:1, 5-9; Mt 5:17-19

The great Jewish teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel once said “Much of what the Bible demands can be comprised in one imperative: Remember!”

This is clear today.

In Deuteronomy we hear God saying through Moses, “Now, Israel, hear the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you to observe, that you may live…take care and be earnestly on your guard not to forget the things which your own eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live, but teach them to your children and to your children’s children.”

And then Jesus says in the gospel, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets….I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”

If we can read Jesus’ words as a continuation of those of Deuteronomy (and not from a “superior” Christian point of view), we see that there is a strong current of remembering.

Remember who you are.  Remember whose you are.  Remember what God has done for you.  Remember what God has brought you through.  Remember the time in the desert.  Remember to take care of each other.  Remember what is important in your life and who is important.  Remember to return to me.  All words we probably need to hear these days.

It is also worth noting that the reading from Deuteronomy that we hear today was written during one of the worst times for the Israelites.  Israel was captured by the Babylonians in about 586 BCE and Israel thought is was the end of their world.  And in many respects it was. Yet they wrote about hope and a future that was different for them because they remembered the past.

We may feel similarly to Israel these days with the massive social dislocation we’re experiencing, the fear and uncertainty we are feeling and the reality of contracting a very powerful virus.

Today is also a perfect time to breathe and remember.  Breathe and remember.   This is not the first time people have gone through hardship.  Bayo Akomolafe, a wonderful Nigerian writer, reminds us that “the world has ended many times before: in 1526 with the first transatlantic slave expedition; 1607 with the disembarkation of the British colonists on the shores of the ‘New World’; 1945…with the detonation of the atomic bombs in Alamogordo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki; 1995 with the death of Ken Saro Wiwa.”

Remembering connects us to something deeper than our present situation.  As my friends and folk singers Kim and Reggie Harris sing in one of their songs, “There ae things that we know that we don’t know we know….”  Memory gives us access to these.

Lent is a time of remembering.  For today, maybe spend some time remembering what God has done for you and brought you through, say a humble, “Thank you…” and trust that God will bring you and us through whatever we face today.