A Common Remembrance

Rutilio Manetti - The prophets Jeremiah and Baruch

Scripture

Deuteronomy 24:17-18

You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pledge. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this.

Jeremiah 2:4-13

Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord:

What wrong did your ancestors find in me
    that they went far from me
and went after worthless things and became worthless themselves?
They did not say, “Where is the Lord,
    who brought us up from the land of Egypt,
who led us in the wilderness,
    in a land of deserts and pits,
in a land of drought and deep darkness,
    in a land that no one passes through,
    where no one lives?”
I brought you into a plentiful land
    to eat its fruits and its good things.
But when you entered you defiled my land
    and made my heritage an abomination.
The priests did not say, “Where is the Lord?”
    Those who handle the law did not know me;
the rulers transgressed against me;
    the prophets prophesied by Baal
    and went after things that do not profit.

Therefore once more I accuse you,
            says the Lord,
    and I accuse your children’s children.
Cross to the coasts of Cyprus and look;
    send to Kedar and examine with care;
    see if there has ever been such a thing.
Has a nation changed its gods,
    even though they are no gods?
But my people have changed their glory
    for something that does not profit.
Be appalled, O heavens, at this;
    be shocked; be utterly desolate,
            says the Lord,
for my people have committed two evils:
    they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living water,
    and dug out cisterns for themselves,
cracked cisterns
    that can hold no water.

Sermon

Earlier this summer, we migrated staff emails from one provider to another. I knew what to expect, but I’m always a little surprised by the process, because an inbox is a little glimpse into someone’s inner life.

Some of us keep inboxes completely clear, filing things away once they’re handled. Some of us never delete a thing, in case we need to look back. Some of us delete as quickly as possible. Even among our small staff, every inbox looked different.

But what was the same in all of them was why we kept emails: because we need help remembering. A schedule, a policy, a to-do list—almost always, we save them because we can’t remember everything on our own. We need the help of others, whether that’s an email inbox, a to-do-list, or someone we love.

This interdependency reminds us that memory is often relational, not individual. That’s true in our daily lives, and it’s especially true in our life of faith. In scripture and in our worship, God calls us to remember together — because in remembering as a single community, we are made whole

…

In the Hebrew Bible, God doesn’t tell the Hebrew people that remembrance is a good idea; it’s commanded. “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt,” God says. The Hebrew people are commanded to communally remember the traumas of their ancestors, not for the sake of white-knuckled self-determination, but for the sake of their communal wholeness.

When we read further in the Hebrew Bible, we learn pretty quickly that in failing to remember corporately—even if a few single persons remember—that things go south. In today’s reading from Jeremiah, God doesn’t hold any punches. Priests were bumbling hypocrites, rulers became corrupt and lawless, and society engages in worthless pursuits. Their world becomes unglued; the pain of their hearts possesses everything around them.

God never gave the command to a single person, but to the people as a whole. Like us and our email inboxes, it seems that the Hebrew people can’t remember on their own. Remembrance required festivals like Passover, meals like Seder. Even if one person remembered, it wasn’t enough. God’s command was corporate — remembrance demanded the entire community.

Then in the Gospels, when Jesus gathered with his disciples at Passover, he didn’t command each of them individually. He didn’t say “one of you, remember me.” In the Greek, we hear Jesus saying, “All of you, do this in remembrance of me.” That’s why, in our tradition, there is no private Communion, because no one can remember Christ on their own.

“The Hebrew people are commanded to communally remember the traumas of their ancestors, not for the sake of white-knuckled self-determination, but for the sake of their communal wholeness.”

Worship is the very foundation of remembrance, especially in those sacraments.

None of us has the whole picture. The nature of our humanity is entangled with an inability to perfectly remember. We are forgetful people, not because it is sinful or evil to forget, but because forgetfulness is a sign and a mark of our dependence on each other. Forgetfulness is a sign and mark of our need for connection and community.

Sometimes we forget out of fear, and sometimes we forget out of convenience. As we all know, sometimes we forget because our bodies and brains lose their ability to remember. Everyone here knows someone who has experienced a traumatic brain injury, psychological trauma, mental illnesses, dementia, or merely the reality of aging. When others struggle to remember, we communally remember for them. When we ourselves struggle to remember, our community helps us to remember the breadth and depth and width and height of God’s love and promises.

All of that happens in worship! In this sanctuary, on YouTube, on Zoom, on wherever we worship, we collectively build a common memory of our Lord Jesus Christ. In worship, we take the fragments of our lives—all of those loose ends and questions and doubts and sorrow—and start putting them side by side, grabbing the modge podge, collaging them together, forming a great big image of a God who shares in our burdens, a God who enters into our pain, a God who enters into our uncertainty and fear and anguish and lets light into every darkened closet.

“When others struggle to remember, we communally remember for them. When we ourselves struggle to remember, our community helps us to remember the breadth and depth and width and height of God’s love and promises.”

Like God’s command in Deuteronomy, our worship practices remembrance not for its own sake, but for the sake of Christ in the world.

After all, the pieces simply don’t fit together for a Christ who wasn’t crucified, or a Mary who wasn’t powerless, or a people who weren’t enslaved. As our shared memory pieces together this collage of faith, we can’t ignore that faith is found in wildernesses; hope is found in the throes of despair; that Canaan never arrives without the pain of Egypt.

And so, to worship Christ, we search for his wounds in the world beyond these sanctuary walls. We remember the crucified Christ whenever we are brought into proximity with his suffering on earth. We remember Christ through serving those who bear the marks of his loneliness, and wandering, and hunger, and weariness, and his ridicule by society. In serving those who are unemployed, or hungry, or lonely, or sick, or injured, or addicted, or disreputable, we are brought into a deeper remembrance of Christ’s own life and ministry.

To remember, to worship, to live as a community of Jesus Christ, we must be willing to stick our hands into the very wounds of Jesus here on earth. We must be willing to keep our attention on the wounds of Christ in the world.

This means that as those on Facebook deride and dehumanize our neighbors who spend time on the green, we know that our neighbors are anything but “eyesores” or “problems.” The call to corporate remembrance means that to remember the crucified God, we must remember those who live with the wounds of humanity. We’ll never be able to remember God calling the Hebrew people out of Egypt while calling for the forced removal of our neighbors on the town green, who are a block away from us right now.

“We’ll never be able to remember God calling the Hebrew people out of Egypt while calling for the forced removal of our neighbors on the town green, who are a block away from us right now.”

Woven in the midst of our worship and life together is a promise. Even when we forget, God always remembers us.

In Jeremiah, even as God is lambasting the Hebrew people for their unrighteousness, it’s clear that God hasn’t forgotten their story. God remembers their entire journey from the waters of creation to Egypt to the wilderness to Canaan to their present moment. God remembers the promises that God made and the faithfulness of centuries past.

Later, as we hear in the Gospels, as Mary lives forgotten by society, after Peter feigned forgetfulness, after humanity rejected him, Jesus still said to the criminal beside him: “You will be with me in paradise.” God continued to remember us. 

Every day, every second, every breath, God remembers every pilgrimage we take, and every winding road through good times and bad.

In life and in death, in wounds great and small, and whether we remember or not, God remembers. God remembers each and every breath, each and every wound, each and every sorrow. We don’t have to fight our forgetfulness. There will surely be a day when God’s memory holds each of us—all of us—fully, and all things will be made whole for all eternity.