Remember

Remember.

Six times a year, our family lights candles for Gram, and for Grandma and Grandpa Tawel. Birth and Death. Life and Love. Remember all who have come before you and made you who are.

The Hebrew Bible is full of loving reminders, admonishes, and encouragements to Remember. The God that appears in the Genesis is One Who would like us to believe that He/She would like to be remembered and that we can nudge Him/Her to remember us when we are in need. “Hello, here I am, YHWH. Remember me?” “Why yes, but don’t you think, little human, you might have forgotten something? Me. Here, IAM.”

Next week two great faith traditions begin a season of remembrances. Passover, when we remember the God who “delivers”, the God who “saves”, the God of covenants of love and mercy and commitment. “I am the LORD. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD — a lasting ordinance.” (from Exodus 12)

Next week we remember a Jew named Jesus who celebrated that covenant with the God of his ancestors by reworking it so that people in a new time and new place could evolve a new understanding and begin to understand what internal…