Story and the Act of Remembering in Ancient Israel
by The Rev. Melissa A. Chappell
1 Samuel 12: 20-22
“…because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself”.
–1 Samuel 12: 22
In reading Samuel’s farewell address, I am struck by the prophet’s reiteration of the ancestral stories: “…and I will declare to you all of the saving deeds of the Lord that he has performed for you and for your ancestors…” (1 Samuel 12:7). They are stories which not only permeate Israel’s life—they are the essence of Israel’s identity. Stories that are vibrant, raging with life in Israel’s ever-unfolding, ever-happening life with God.
From the slurry of a brickyard, to the brutality of battles won and lost, the long return of the exiles, these are but a few parts of the one story of God’s great drama of salvation in the life of his people.
In telling this story, the act of remembering is an integral task of Israel. In Deuteronomy 6: 4-9, we have the Shema, which means “hear”. In Jewish liturgy, the faithful are instructed to recite this twice daily:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
A significant shift in Israel’s complex understanding of the act of remembrance may be seen in the minor prophet, Hosea 13: 4-6:
[The Lord said], “Yet I have been the Lord your God ever since the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no savior. It was I who fed you in the wilderness, in the land of the drought. When I fed them, they were satisfied; they were satisfied, and their heart was proud; therefore they forgot me”.
This passage is striking since the perceptive reader might see in these lines the fundamental problem of all humanity revealed. When we have nothing, God is all our remembrance. When our needs are satiated by God, how soon we forget! This is the deep sorrow and grief of God, and the root of our own self-destruction.
And the faithful have not just forgotten from where their good comes, but we have forgotten the history enmeshed in our history. We have become uprooted from the ground of our being. In doing so our ability to navigate this world is akin to not recognizing one road sign from another, looking up in the night sky, unable to distinguish Orion from the Big Dipper, or a planet from a star.
The act of remembering is not simply the recollection of a moment in history and bringing it into present awareness. My understanding from my reading of the Hebrew Scriptures and the sacramental theology put forth in the New Testament scriptures is that remembering is an “arc of presence” that is continually with history in a sacramental, “in, with, and under” sense, as Martin Luther would have said.
As I put this reflection piece together, my own memory was drawn to a doctor I met many years ago, with whom I was privileged to have several meaningful conversations with. He was Jewish. When I first met him and learned of this, I told him of my deep respect for the Jewish people. Quickly he shrugged it off as though it were some coat he did not care to wear. We conversed about this, and he confided that he resented the term “chosen people”. He said that he did not feel like a “chosen people”. When I asked why, he recited stories. Stories of wanderings in the wilderness, constant defeats of the Hebrew people on biblical battlefields, rapes and pillaging of Hebrew women, devastating exiles, diaspora, pogroms, Holocaust, discrimination. “How,” he asked, “can I call myself a chosen people?”
I cannot remember what I said, but as I reflect, I am struck by several things. First, my doctor friend referred to himself as a “chosen people”. A singular person who identifies as a collective. Stunning. In addition, he told the story. Not the story in all its fullness, but he told the story. The only part of the story that he could relate to at this point in his life. I witnessed a person engaged in the holy act of remembering. It was a brief time of suffering for me, but untold spans of time of suffering for him.
I have no nice bow with which to tie up this ending. The story and life of God are present with us sacramentally within our own stories, as they unfold in the slurry, the battlefields, and the homecomings of our daily lives. The witness of the Hebrew Scriptures are not some boring old tales from a faith of which we know little. As a people grafted onto the branch of David, these stories are our stories.
Because all of this is true, we can be unafraid in our telling of them, in our vulnerability, our humanity, our loves, broken and won, our contrition and the joy of a God who is unforgetting in his love for us.
It is a peculiar story of a peculiar people. The love of such a peculiar God, beyond all reckoning, is nothing that we have deserved. But God has remembered us, and is remembering us, and will remember us. We who have died on our battlefields to the death of sin will awaken in the fields of rejoicing.
This is most certainly true.[1]
[1] Luther, Martin. The Small Catechism