What will we do with our Remembrances?

I had a dream Monday. I was alone in the parish hall and there were plates of uneaten food on all the tables. I was picking up the plates and taking them to the kitchen. In the kitchen I was scraping the food carefully off each plate into a large bin. As the bin was filling, I stood back – I heard a voice ask, “Why didn’t they eat the food?”

***
Through a burning bush, God called Moses to lead his people out of Egypt. Moses felt inadequate, insecure and incapable of following God’s call. But, God assured Moses that God would be fully present to Moses, giving him the voice he needed to lead.

Moses is now ready to lead the people out of the land of the Egyptians. Egypt, the most powerful and dominant empire of its time, culturally and politically sophisticated, innovative, advanced in religious ideology. Egypt was the superpower and the stutter, Moses, was standing toe-to-toe with the Pharaoh.

God had empowered Moses through the suffering of the people. God has emboldened Moses through his own weakness and failure. God had led Moses to victory, not by using a powerful war machine, but through faithful obedience and discipline.

God tells Moses to mark this event as the new beginning of time. God instructs Moses to establish this monumental event in the life of the people by Remembering God’s saving grace. Salvation means the people are being made whole. The immigrants, the isolated, the desolated people of God were going to be made whole by God.

God guides Moses to instruct the people to prepare a meal of remembrance. The meal is to be of the best lamb from the flock. Each person in the family is given an equal portion of the roasted lamb, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. And they are to eat the meal, standing, fully dressed for travel.

The people would remember the saving grace of God by eating the thanksgiving meal, prepared to take a new spiritual journey, leaving the old ways of the slavery of revenge and the oppression of the empire behind.

In the face of oppression and annihilation, God leads the people with a wispy cloud by day and the flicker of fire by night, without the security of map or the certainty of a plan, delivering the people from the crushing empire of Egypt, across the dangerous unknown water of the Red Sea, into the foreboding desert, and going in a direction away from the promised land.

The people find little comfort while on their journey to the new Promised Land – they grumbled - that while in the throws of the empire they had food and drink - now in the desert they were afraid and hungry. They wanted to go back to what they thought was a better time – back to the good old days, back to the way things used to be. Their desire to go back to the way things used to be was an indication of their being stuck in arrested maturity. They were unwilling to go through the firry harshness of the maturation process. But, they would learn that there is no turning back – it is impossible to return to the good old days. They were where they were – in that time – in that situation – they needed to turn, not to the empire for salvation, but to God.

And in the midst of the angry confused voices of the people, Moses continually cries out to God, “Why – how - what’s next - I can’t do this anymore!” God listens patiently, quietly, attentively, and then God faithfully reminds Moses to Remember, Remember that God never forsakes.

***

Wednesday I saw a vision in the western sky – the west, the direction of autumn, darkness and death. I saw the dragon flying north - the north, the direction of the blue winter, the place of peace and self-reflection. The dragon’s underbelly was the purple of death’s blood. But, the side of the dragon was the patchwork of the multiple colors of rose pink, sugar brown, sparkling gold and marsh mellow white. And at the risen hump of the dragon’s back was the shocking brilliance of a blinding divine light.

This week, as a collective nation, we will be asked to remember – remember the dragons in our lives - pains, emotions, fears, frustrations, angers and deaths in our lives. The question is - what will we do with our memories, our dragons.

Rilke said, “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”