(The content for this blog began with the Easter Sunday sermon of Rev. Julie Peterson, Associate Pastor of Faith Lutheran Church, Glen Ellyn, Illinois. These ideas continue from her thoughts about remembering and telling, important Easter themes worth considering.)
“Remembering” usually describes the tasks surrounding recall: Following a mental clue towards an experience, fact or face the has collected around itself a host of details—a family of memories. Remembering involves a number of interrelated brain structures, spread throughout the brain’s various capabilities. Neurobiologically, memory is one of the foundations for decision-making, self-identity, relationships, well-being and space-time orientation. At any age, we retain a lifetime of knowledge and experience ready for recall.
There’s more to remembering than the recollecting, sorting and storing of experiences or emotions. In Pastor Julie’s recounting, “remembering” marks a memory as significant—how it fits into the larger scheme of life. People who remember—including those of us who have a lot of noteworthy life-events to recall—are stewards of meaning.
When “Go tell!” gets added to “remember”, we can determine what’s next. By our telling—especially about spiritual matters—we are carriers of holy truth that compels us beyond our alleluias towards attitudes and actions that are part of God’s grace, part of whatever is good about the Good News.
“Remember this” is an invitation or blessing. “Remember and tell” might also be a kind of commissioning mantra for those of us who are older. Because we have all these memories—an amazing blessing of old age—we may be especially well-equipped for handing down the lasting truths of God’s own revelation. Our telling may take the shape of story-telling, appreciative conversations, assuring advice or life maxims. And as we live out the truths we’re telling, we can become examples of resurrection living.
To all my kindred rememberers-and-tellers: Together we comprise a vast company of lively truth-tellers, more powerful and life-giving than we may know.
Let’s keep at this work, okay?
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