Weekly Reflection – Remember Me

Its’ been my birthday this week! By the time you read this, it will have come and gone. Again! Now I’m closer to seventy than sixty, they seem to come round even faster.

I hope those closest to me remembered it. In one sense, it doesn’t matter. They don’t have to prove their love. Love isn’t about remembering a present on one day a year. My mother’s birthday was on Christmas Day, which should be easy to remember, but with everything else going on, it was also easy to forget.

Anyway, it’s time for a confession. Last week I was presiding at the early morning Eucharist in the cathedral. There were only three of us and it was a normal weekday service, but after distributing the wafers I somehow I managed to forget to give the wine to my two clergy colleagues. Kathryn kindly pointed this out to me afterwards.

The irony of course is that we celebrate communion because Jesus told us to “do this in remembrance of me”. Whatever else we might think is happening, this was Jesus’ instruction and the reason we do it. We are told to remember.

However, if we fail – if we forget – the good news is that God does not forget.

After all the rain we have had recently, we might want to speculate whether it’s time to start building an ark. The flood story in Genesis is a great story for children but it’s also a complex very cleverly structured piece of literature in which repeated words and numbers form what the scholars call a “chiasm” (stay with me here). In a chiasm the author is pointing towards a key phrase or verse at the very centre of a poem or narrative. The story of the flood has such a phrase at the very centre. Can you guess what it is?
“But God remembered Noah.”

As we have more and more birthdays, we might forget more frequently. But God will not. We can say with the thief on the cross next to Jesus, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And we can be sure that he will.

Remember that.

Canon Derek: Diocesan Director of Ordinands and Vocations