REMEMBER ME

REMEMBER ME

“Remember me?” I find this an irritating question. More often than not I don’t remember the person and I have to scramble around searching for clues as to where we met and what their name might be!  But if I do remember the person is pleased. I have just read the name ‘Geraldine’ and I remember I was told she had cancer but I had forgotten to ask how she is now.

Remembering gives joy and recognition to people. It also gives life to those who remember. I have just had some free time and put together some material on members of my own family and it was a joy to remember them. There was much I had forgotten.  David Bentley Hart, an American theologian, writes;

The reason the very concept of God has become at once so impoverished, so thoroughly mythical, and ultimately so incredible for so many modern persons is not because of all the interesting things we have learned over the past few centuries, but because of all the vital things we have forgotten.

It is good to remember how much we forget! We choose what we want to remember.  We discard the rest.  Are we interested in the past?  It has much to teach us.  Are we interested in visiting our grandparents and hearing their stories?  If we are, we not only give them the pleasure of talking to us but we also come in touch with something about our own selves.  Our family makes us who we are.  

The family of God took form in the foundation stories of the patriarchs.  Abraham, in particular, was asked by God to do things that would stretch any person to the limit. “Leave your home for a place I will show you.”  “Next year you wife, old as she is, will have a son.”  “Take your son and offer him as a burnt offering.”  Impossible demands?  And yet they are part of the story, part of the memory of Israel.  At the very beginning, God traced out the plan he had for his son, Jesus, who would fulfil all these mysterious demands made on Abraham.

And Jesus left us a memorial, a memory.  “Do this in memory of me.”  Do this – the Eucharist – and also ‘do this’ – in the life you lead. If you forget this memory you will wander the earth in barren places.  It is a tough memory. Abraham ‘lost’ his life and Jesus ‘lost’ his and we must ‘lose’ ours. Otherwise we will be only half human. It is simply essential that we transcend ourselves, go beyond ourselves.  Otherwise we are just half dead.   

The thief on the cross next to Jesus was half dead when he begged Jesus to remember him when he came into his kingdom.  In reply he received instant assurance which brought him joy despite the agony he was enduring.

25 February 2018                                Sunday in Lent 2 B

Genesis 22:1…18                                Romans 8:31-34                                  Mark 9:2-20