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Chris Taylor’s Sermon – 9/7/08

Remember

Exodus 12:1-4

The focus of our text this morning is this charge to celebrate Passover – a defining event for the people of Israel. It is about choosing to remember that moment when God reached out and delivered them from slavery.

There are so many memories in our lives that we don’t get to choose; memories both good and bad that have been formed by our life experience. They shape the way we feel about ourselves. They create the lens through which we view this world. We’ve all met people who experience this world as a place of beauty and renewal, and those who see it something far more forbidding; those who feel it is full of opportunity, and those who believe it is just waiting to slap them down – a world of suffering and injustice. Those very different perceptions are shaped, in large measure, by our different life experiences. Our memories, in short, have an enormous hold upon our lives.

Our passage doesn’t deny the power of such memories. What it does, rather, is offer the possibility of bringing yet another one into that mix. Unlike the others, this is a memory we get to choose. And unlike the others, this memory can help set us free.

The other night I was out walking one of our dogs. I usually try to get out before dark, but this particular evening I had been busy right up to 9:30 or 10:00. I would have preferred going to bed, but Roxie needed her walk so I pulled the leash down and took her out.

It was pitch black – the kind of darkness you can only find in Fox Chapel. Here, of course, we eschew anything so city-like as sidewalks or street lights. What this meant is that I was feeling my forward as much as seeing it. As I was rounding the corner back onto Glen Haven a couple of dogs started barking up ahead. This wasn’t the labs who live on that corner. These were on the wrong side, and their barks were different. Roxie began pulling at her lead; eager for the encounter. I knew that someone must be up ahead, but I had no idea who or how many. I started to cross the street to avoid a confrontation when a woman called out, “Who’s there?”

Now like me, that woman no doubt couldn’t see a thing. Like me, the behavior of her dogs signaled the presence of someone ahead. But unlike me she would have had no idea that it was just someone out walking a dog because Roxie doesn’t bark. All she would have known is that someone was there. I responded in what I thought was a warm and friendly voice, “It’s me.” That didn’t help. The next thing I knew two huge dogs were swarming around me and Roxie. This woman, whoever she was, had let her dogs go.

I never did see her. I was too focused on my own dog, and pulling her away. Later on, though, I thought about the encounter. There was a certain logic in her choice to let those dogs ago. A dark night. A strange man. Letting them would keep me at a distance until she had a chance to assess the situation. So there was logic there, but there was also fear. After all, it is not every day you let your dogs loose on some stranger.

I found myself wondering about her and about that fear. I wondered if she was one of the enormous number of women in this country who have been victims of sexual assault. Close to eighteen million have had that experience; one in every six. The statistics are staggering.

How do you ever get past an experience like that? I don’t think you can. I think it is one of those memories that haunt you; a memory that moves at a deeper, more primal level than logic alone. It is the kind of memory that would always lurk there at the back of your mind and that would fill you with an instant dread at the sound of a strange man’s voice emerging from the night. That’s the kind of hold our memories have upon us. We don’t get to choose them. They are simply there; thrust upon us and a part of who we are.

But here in our text we find a different kind of memory; a memory not of terror but of deliverance; a memory filled not with fear but with the promise of God’s presence and God’s power.

God is calling the people of Israel to remember the Passover -- once a year, on the tenth day of the first month, to remember that night when God moved through all of Egypt to set God’s people free. Verse 14, “This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.”

Why remember? Because there are some memories that can break the shackles of fear; there are some memories that offer comfort and encouragement and hope no matter what we might be facing.

“Hold on to this memory,” God is saying, “pass it on to your children, and your grandchildren, and their grandchildren after them. Remember that I am the Lord, your God. Remember that I will never abandon my people. Remember that I am at work, that I am moving in even the worst of circumstances. Remember that my will for you is good and perfect. Remember.”

In a very similar way, that’s what we do when we gather around this table. We come here with all these other memories that are a part of our lives – the good and pleasant ones; but also those broken and hurting one that all of us have accumulated along the way. We come here and we gather around this table, and we make the conscious choice to take hold of this one memory that belongs to every one of us; this one memory that possesses the capacity and the power to change and transform all the rest.

What we remember here is that moment when God became one with us; that day when God died for us; that hour when Jesus hung there upon the cross – the visible and concrete expression of God’s presence and God’s fathomless love.

Have you ever found yourself doubting whether God is here and moving in this world? Remember the cross! Have you ever wondered if God still loves you after everything that you’ve done? Remember the cross!

There are so many memories that can fill us with fear or shame; there is so much in this world that would have us believe that we don’t matter; that our lives are meaningless and insignificant. But here is one memory that can set us free. Here, we are reminded of just how much we mean to our creator; reminded of just how precious our lives are to him.

We are not alone. This sacrament speaks to us of God’s presence; as real and near as these elements of bread and cup. And we are deeply loved. This sacrament reminds us of just how far God is willing to go in order to draw us back to himself once more.

“This is my body… this is my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.”