God Remembers

On Sunday I preached a sermon entitled "Faithful Remembering." As the title perhaps suggests, it was about remembering who we are in our baptisms, about recalling the new identity we receive when we are joined to Christ and given the Holy Spirit.

Today's Old Testament reading also speaks of remembering, but this remembering is not ours. It is God's. The reading comes from the conclusion of the Noah story. The flood has ended. The very real threat that creation might return to the pre-creation chaos of Genesis 1:1-2 is over. The blessings of creation have been reissued with the call to be fruitful and multiply. And God covenants with all creation, with humans and animals, never again to bring a flood to destroy. Human creatures may have gone their own way, rejecting who God created and called them to be, but God is committed to them.

As a seal on that commitment, God places a bow in the clouds. The sign is the rainbow, but it is also God's bow, a weapon of war. God has hung up God's bow. It will not be drawn in anger again.

I've often heard reference to the rainbow as a reminder to us of God's covenant, but that is not what the story says. In the story it is a reminder to God. "When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh." For good measure, God repeats this assertion almost verbatim. "When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." Everything, it seems, hangs on God's remembering.

This is not isolated to the story of Noah. Repeatedly the Bible speaks of the need for us to remember, and of God's remembering. Because God remembers, Israel is rescued from slavery in Egypt. And as Mary says in her "Magnificat," Jesus is born because God remembers, because God will not forget or give up on creation, including those troublesome human creatures.

In his letter to the church in Rome, the apostle Paul writes of Jesus "who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us." (Rom. 8:34) Perhaps one way to understand Paul is to think of Jesus saying to God, "Remember, remember." Or, to put it in more Trinitarian terms, withing the divine, loving relationship that is God, the call to remember echos always.

God remembers. In today's gospel that is expressed as "For God so loved the world..." Amidst all the difficulties understanding how God works, what God is up to, and how we are called to be a part of it, it is good to stop and remember a central core of our faith. God is committed to all creation, and to us. God will remember; God will not forget us.

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