DON'T FORGET! REMEMBER

 

November 7, 2023

Luke 22:19

". . . do this in remembrance of me."

I Chronicles 16:12

"Remember the wonders he has done."

We will remember them! This week in our country our attention turns toward the act of Remembrance. On November 11, each year there are held in communities large and small across our Canada, services of Remembrance for those who paid the “ultimate sacrifice” of giving their lives for others, even you and me.

In my own reflections, I was drawn to think about the Old Testament meaning of “remember.” Perhaps in order to fully appreciate the Hebrew concept of “remembering” we would benefit to think about what it means to forget.

To forget, in our day, means simply to have an idea or notion slip out of the mind. To forget a person is simply no longer to have the idea of that person in one’s consciousness. In the Bible to forget someone is much more serious: to forget someone is to annihilate that person, obliterate them, destroy them. When the Israelites cried to God not to forget them they didn’t mean, “Be sure to think of us once in a while.” They meant, “Don’t annihilate us, don’t blot us out.” It’s obvious that to forget has to do not with concepts but with living experiences.

In a similar way, to remember has to do with lived realities. In a word, to remember, for the Old Testament writings, meant to bring a past event up into the present so that what happened back then continues to happen right now. What unfolded in the past with all its meaning and impact, continues to be active now in people’s experiences, resulting in the same experience as those in an original event. An example, the Israelites are urged to remember the deliverance from slavery of their ancestors’ centuries earlier, they aren’t being urged to recollect a historical fact; rather they are being urged to live the same reality themselves, the reality of deliverance, many years later. Just as their ancestors’ knew most intimately a great deliverance at God’s hand, so they are now, hundreds of years later, to know most intimately a similar deliverance at God’s hand.

Now, I am sure you agree that is quite different from the way we speak of remembering today. When we remember we merely bring to mind the idea of an event. But when our Bible speaks of remembering they meant something far stronger; they meant that what had happened in the past continued to be a present, in force, a life-altering experience. After all, isn’t that what we do at the Lord’s Supper? That we are invited to the table to “Remember” our salvation, our being right with God and each other, were obtained only by the sacrifice of the cross. So, Jesus says "do this in remembrance of me."

On Remembrance Day, November 11, 2023 we will remember. I believe it would be an awesome thing if we could remember on this Remembrance Day in the Biblical way. That when we observe those minutes of silence, our act of remembering will be more profound this year. We know, we have learned, that to remember is to make a past event the functioning reality, the determining truth, of our lives now.

What was the past event? It was sacrifice, enormous sacrifice, the costliest sacrifice imaginable, for the sake of justice and peace. The circumstances in the world required that many family members had to bear arms to secure justice and peace, many of whom gave their lives for such a cause. When you think about it, our justification before God, and that peace (shalom) which is our salvation before God; were obtained only by the sacrifice of the cross. I read recently that “Justice and peace have never been obtained without sacrifice, and never will be.”

In “remembering” in the Biblical sense we must ever keep in mind the Remembrance Day statement, “Lest we forget.” “Lest we forget” doesn’t mean, “Lest a recollection of something decades or centuries old fade from mind”; “Lest we forget” means “Lest the sacrifice of those who have gone before, be blotted out, annihilated, rendered of no account.” To remember a sacrifice made for us is simply to pay it forward and make our own sacrifice on behalf of others.