“Remember Me,” (Luke 23:33-43), 3/30/25

            A couple of weeks ago, I was on Facebook and I saw a name I thought I recognized. I was looking at the group for the camp I went to a long, long, long time ago. It was a post from a person named Henrietta. I wrote in the comments, I think I remember you! She responded, Julia! I think I remember you too! It was so fun to reconnect. She posted a picture of our cabin group, (we were in the same cabin.)  In fact I remembered the day that the picture was taken. We were in a pyramid, kneeling on each other’s backs and I was on the bottom. All of a sudden I was 13 years old again, at least for a few moments.

            The word “remember” carries a lot of meaning, especially if you’re prone to nostalgia. When I’m trying to calm my mind at night, before sleep takes over, I’ll often imagine I’m in a certain place from the past, like our old house in NY, or Cape Cod, or Star Island, NH. And then I’ll walk around that place in my mind. It’s very calming and usually puts me to sleep pretty quickly.  To remember means to bring something or someone to mind. It also means to be mindful. What are you mindful of? What do you remember to do every day and what does it say about you? The things and people that we remember are often the most important gifts from God that we have.

            In the Bible, the word “remember” has a deeper meaning. There’s a spiritual dimension to the experience of remembering in the Bible. When the Bible says that God remembered someone, it means that that person has been singled out in God’s eyes, like a God wink or a blessing. Like for example in Genesis 8, it says that God remembered Noah and his family. And then the flood waters started to go down. In Genesis 30, it says that God remembered Rachel, Jacob’s wife, and then she was able to conceive. And how about Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel. She couldn’t conceive either. Until she made a vow to God. She said, “Lord Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life…” 

And then there’s the whole big story of God rescuing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. It all starts with God remembering the covenant promises made with Abraham and others on behalf of all of the Israelites. And then the plan is hatched and the story unfolds. A thousand or more years later, Jesus sits at the table with his disciples on the night before his crucifixion, with the bread and the cup in front of him and tells them, “do this in remembrance of me.”  Let’s sing… [Jesus Remember Me].

            All of this remembering points to the cross. Do you know what a scapegoat is? A scapegoat gets unfairly blamed for something and then takes the punishment on behalf of the whole group. Like for example, when a baseball team loses and they blame the shortstop because he missed a ball. They turn their backs on him and leave him out of the next group huddle. Or on a larger scale, when certain groups, like immigrants or minorities get unfairly blamed for problems in society, in order to distract people from what the real issue is. Humans have been scapegoating each other forever, even before the Israelites came up with the idea of the sacrificial lamb, what they saw as the ultimate scapegoat. Once a year they laid all of their sins on that one animal, and then sacrificed it and gave thanks for God’s forgiveness. Today that’s the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, the day of atonement.

            We’ve been reading this book called Forgiveness, by Marjorie Thompson, for Lent. This morning we read this. “Judgment without mercy is brutal; mercy without judgment is anemic.” Anemic means weak and pale. When we’re anemic we don’t have enough red blood cells to carry oxygen throughout our body. And so we feel weak and we look pale. But God’s love is never anemic. It’s strong and powerful. It can hold up anything in any situation, because of the cross, which was a once and for all deal. The cross does the holding and holds the power when it comes to mercy and judgment. Does that make sense? In this book she writes, “God holds the balance [between a harsh judgment and a judgment that means nothing] in a love beyond comprehension, incarnate in Christ” (p.36.)  

            On the cross Jesus remembered his love for all people. His experience and understanding of suffering is very different from, for example, Job. Job’s story is not one that any of us would like to duplicate. Job lost everything, his children, his livelihood, his health. And then Satan tries to tempt Job to curse God. Job doesn’t but he certainly sounds like he’s close to it when he says to God,  “If only you would hide me in the grave and conceal me till your anger has passed! If only you would set me a time and then remember me! (Job 14:13.) In other words, look favorably on me. That’s very different from Jesus who asks God to forgive the people who did this to him, even as they seem to care more about his clothes than about him.  And then Jesus is even able to reach out to the criminal next to him who asks to be remembered. Like much of the time in the Bible, it’s the outcasts who seem to understand things that the people who are closest to Jesus, like the disciples, don’t get. This man says “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Let’s sing… [Jesus Remember Me…]

            In the responsive reading from Psalm 25 today we read: Remember, Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you, Lord, are good. This is a good psalm to read on days when life feels challenging, when things aren’t going so well. I’d say it has a melancholy tone to it. Yet sometimes, melancholy is just what we need. Here’s a story that was told by Stephen Colbert, the late night talk show host. He told it to Anderson Cooper on his podcast a few years ago. The subject was grief. Stephen Colbert knows a lot about grief as his two brothers and his father died in a plane crash when Stephen was 10 years old. Anderson Cooper also lost his older brother, to suicide. This is what Stephen said…

“We think grief is going to shut us down and we’ll be sad forever. But in fact, addressing your grief and sharing your grief and telling that story and you telling me about your brother and me telling you about my brothers, actually opens us up to other feelings and other possibilities. And we often in the modern world think that excitement is the path toward feelings, you know, happy music or happy stories, and that’ll lead us to joy. When in fact, grief, the thing we most don’t want to experience, I would say, we often shut that door with anger, which is not actually an emotion. It’s actually an attempt to not feel an emotion. Anger is an armor against how we actually feel. But if you can share your stories and if you can address your grief through that storytelling as you’re saying and hearing from other people, then it turns the cave into a tunnel and there’s some way to get on the other side. It adds oxygen to your life. It doesn’t cut you off. It opens you up. And I think people are afraid to talk about grief because they think it’s a trap of depression or something like that. When, in fact, grief is a doorway to another you.” (Stephen Colbert, interviewed by Anderson Cooper, “Stephen Colbert: Grateful for Grief,” All There Is with Anderson Cooper podcast, episode two, September 21, 2022.)

            Remembering is a part of grief and it’s also a doorway. Jesus answered that criminal who was asking to be remembered with these words: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” That’s not only an offer of forgiveness, but also of friendship. There’s Jesus, saving the whole world, but also not forgetting that each individual matters. Each person’s story is unique. That’s the power of remembering. It holds new life. Let’s close with our song… [Jesus Remember Me…]