Exodus 14:19-31
Romans 14:1-14
Matthew 18:21-35
“Remember when God…”
We have recently re-populated our fish tank at home. As it turns out, the life expectancy of small fish reduces drastically when they share a home with two cats and a small child (not that I’m accusing anyone of illegal fishing, it just seems an odd coincidence). We had five, then one, and now we have several again. What was striking was that as soon as the extra fish were added, the lonely survivor knew what to do: he was immediately back to swimming in perfect harmony with his new school.
And so this makes me think that maybe it is unfair to talk of a short memory as being like a “goldfish”. Because this little fish was back to being a normal fish after weeks of confusing isolation. Perhaps we should call it “human” memory, since we are the ones who are so easily distracted?
Today’s readings cover very different topics across different authors, audiences, and eras of human history. And yet they all have something in common: that we benefit from them when we remember them. Consider your own life, when God has done something. “Remember when God.” Is that not important to your faith? Does that not change your behaviour for the better?
In the first reading, we heard the event from which the book gets its title: the Exodus. This was the great defining moment of the ancient people of Israel. Their whole identity as a people came from this moment, when they escaped through the dry land, while their slave-masters drowned in the water behind them. It is of utmost importance to the spiritual health of God’s people that they “remember when God saved us”. The unfortunate news is that they did not remember. Over the generations, they didn’t so much forget, as stop remembering. The prophets, one after another, reminded them to turn back to the God that saved them from slavery in Egypt – and yet they would not let the memory of this change their behaviour. And this is why I think it is important we “remember when God”. Because it changes us for the better.
In our second reading, the Apostle gives some instructions on specific questions which don’t have any clear answer in Holy Scripture. He reminds us of some basic principles, which if we are to remember them, we will be able to figure out how we ought to live. Remember to whom you will have to give an account of your actions. Remember when God will bring you to his nearer presence and you will speak to him face-to-face. By remembering what is important, our behaviour changes for the better.
Then we come to our Gospel reading. I preached last week on the importance of forgiveness; this week, our reading continues with our Lord giving The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant to reinforce the point. Here, we have a servant who owed the king an impossibly large sum. Yet, when he begs for mercy, the king forgives him completely. No sooner as he has tasted his freedom, he finds one of his fellow servants who owes him a pittance, and demands immediate repayment. Upon hearing this, the king recalls the forgiven servant, and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’
If that servant had remembered what the king had done for him, and allowed it to change his behaviour, he would have forgiven his fellow. Not only does our Lord instruct us on the importance of forgiving one another, but also how our remembrance of God’s forgiveness ought to influence our behaviour for the better. Remember when God forgave you; remember how God has forgiven your fellow Christian.
Finally, I want to mention a place where remembrance is most striking: the Holy Eucharist. Here, we have an act of “remembering”. Remember when God incarnate, the Lord Jesus Christ, gave himself in a meal to his friends, on the night he was betrayed, after which he gave himself on the cross for our redemption, and rose on the third day. “Do this in remembrance of me”, he said, and I say, every time we share this holy meal. When you go out to your week, I want you to remember when God did something, every day. But today, at this table, we “remember when God” in an even more powerful and mysterious way.
When we pray to God and remember before him what he has done for us and how that remembrance might change us, we experience something of God’s grace working through our prayers. But when we come to this table, we experience something of God’s grace to such a degree that it becomes unspeakable in its glorious mystery. For here the act of remembrance is more than just an act of the memory, or the intellect. Indeed, you do not even need a working intellect for God’s grace to work through this type of remembrance. At this table, time and space fold, and we are brought through the veil to the eternal places of the heavenly kingdom, really worshipping at the throne with the saints and angels. Christ is really present here in this meal, and he is really working through the bread and wine. By doing this “in remembrance of”, we experience God’s grace in the most powerful way this side of eternity. Allow God to work through this remembrance to change you for the better.
And so I would encourage you to spend this week “remembering when God”. Remember when God brought you out of slavery, and what your response to him ought to be. Remember when God will bring you to his immediate presence, and therefore what your priorities in this life should be. Remember when God forgave you, and therefore how you should treat those who are in debt to you. And remember when Christ gave himself for you on the cross, remember when he rose from the dead so that you too may live eternally, and how he gives himself to you so freely and so often in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Remember when God – and let that remembering change you for the better.