Fall Series: Re-Member
To remember. To be remembered.
We remember birthdays and anniversaries. We remember loved ones departed and friends far away. We are humbled when someone sends a note or a text to say “I was thinking of you today.”
Sometimes the power of memory – of remembering and being remembered – is a gift.
Sometimes this power unseats us. Our memories can drag us back to a painful event. We encounter a person we had tried to forget. We recall choices made in haste or anger or fear or frustration. We are tormented by traumas past – harm done to us or harm we have caused others.
To remember. To be remembered.
Sometimes it’s a gift. Sometimes it feels like a curse.
Reading the Bible is a kind of remembering, of being remembered. The readings selected for the Narrative Lectionary this fall invite all sorts of remembering. On God’s part. On the part of God’s chosen people and those they imagined would some day encounter their stories. The Bible’s memory – its acts of remembering and injunctions against forgetting – pull us into an ancient vortex of celebration and shame, of joy and sorrow, guilt and grace, of liberation and slavery. These old, old stories invite us to recall and regard and re-assemble them and ourselves in new ways – ways that shine lights on, and open paths through, our current moment in history. Worldwide, it seems, we occupy an era awash in the difficulty of remembering honestly, addicted to the truth-distorting mirror of nostalgia, and tempted by the daily urge to separate the present from what has gone before.
In the seven weeks of our fall series, we will explore the complex and varied Hebrew and English vocabulary that clusters around the human and divine experience of memory and forgetting. We are particularly intrigued with the Hebrew word for remember, zakar, which appears in four of the seven selected readings. Whether it takes the form of the subversive resistance of the Hebrew midwives as they disobey Pharaoh’s murderous edict, appears at the heart of Moses’ admonishment of the people as they prepare to enter the land of God’s promise, or rings the bell of God’s mercy amidst the chaos of the creation-reversing flood, the power of remembering and being remembered is a rich vein and a major chord in these primal stories.
In order to pursue our chosen theme, we have diverged, on two Sundays, from the appointed narrative lectionary texts and added a few verses to a third. On the 16th Sunday after Pentecost (September 25) we have replaced “Joseph in Prison” with “The Midwives are Remembered.” On the 19th Sunday after Pentecost (16 October) we replaced “Covenant and Commandments” with a passage from Deuteronomy. On the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, we enlarged the selection from Genesis 12.
Sunday, September 11 (14 Pentecost)
God remembers
Genesis 6.5-22, 8.6-12, 9.8-17
Sunday, September 18 (15 Pentecost)
Abraham forgets
Genesis 12.1-17*
Sunday, September 25 (16 Pentecost)**
The midwives are remembered
Exodus 1.8-22**
Sunday, October 2 (17 Pentecost)
A memorable day at the beach
Exodus 14.5-7, 10-14, 21-29
Sunday, October 9 (18 Pentecost)
Israel is reminded
Exodus 19.1-9, Leviticus 26.40-45*
Sunday, October 16 (19 Pentecost)**
It will be easy to forget
Deuteronomy 8.11-19
Sunday, October 23 (20 Pentecost)
David’s regret
2 Samuel 11.1-5, 12.1-12*/Psalm 51
*revised text
**alternate text