When we started this series 4 weeks ago I said that I often wonder, in a gathering such as this, “What are we doing here?”  By that I meant what is going on, or why do we continue to gather with songs and prayers and God’s word and God’s table?  We could put the question another way in the context of the song that we’ve sung about abiding and Jesus' words to abide in him.  Remain in him.  Rest in him.  Live in him.  What does this look like practically?  We heard practically about praising God and of thanking God.   Today, the 77^th Psalm,  we are remembering. Let’s ask for God’s help as we do.

The last two Psalms we looked at were Psalms of David – basically individual Psalms, though we talked about how the Psalm of Thanksgiving was used at a temple dedication.  The Psalm that we’re looking at this morning is part of Book III, which goes from Psalm 73 to 89.  You’ll note that Psalms 73 to 83 these are entitled “Of Asaph”.  The Asaphites were a guild of temple musicians, so these Psalms were composed to be sung in the temple – together. 

Remembering is something that we are called to do together.  The Psalm starts off and the form should look familiar.  The song starts as a lament, which begins with a complaint: “I cry aloud to God, aloud to God that he may hear me.”  The word order here in Hebrew is messed up, just as the singer is.  “My voice to God.”  The language here reflects the state of mind of the singer.  “In the day of trouble, I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying; my soul refuses to be comforted.  I think of God, and I moan; I meditate and my spirit faints.”  The Psalmist is feeling God’s absence.  The idea of remembering is introduced in this lament section, but it brings no relief.  The remembering here is self-focused.  There’s no direct address to God.  “I consider the days of old, and remember the years of long ago.  I commune with my heart in the night; I meditate and search my spirit.” 

A series of questions arise.  There’s nothing wrong with questions.  Please don’t ever think we can’t ask questions of God.  Some of the most God-loving people in the Bible asked questions like “How long O Lord?  Will you forget me forever?”  Or how about, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  The thing about rhetorical questions, and we come back to this time and time again, is the way in which we may be led to a deeper understanding of God in posing them and considering them. “Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favourable?  Has his steadfast love (hesed) ceased forever?  Are his promises at an end for all time?  Has God forgotten to be gracious?  Has he in anger shut up his compassion?”  As one commentator puts it, these questions can be summed up in one – “Is the Lord’s rejection final?”

The questions here do not reflect a rejection of God or even a lack of faith.  The questions here reflect a situation in which the singer finds himself, and we can consider how this situation resonates with us currently, how it has resonated in the past, or how it might resonate with us in the future should we ever find ourselves in a similar situation.  Here is the situation: What the singer believes about God does not line up with what the singer is feeling about God or what the singer is experiencing in his or her life.  Circumstances have the Psalmist feeling dismembered/disconnected.  What the singer is recalling of God does not seem to line up with what’s going on around him.  What’s going on around him?  It’s thought that this Psalm was composed for the Israelite community during its time of exile or post-exile, when their situation looked, to put it mildly, bleak. 

We’ve been talking about the Psalms as timeless expressions of faith that don’t get into a lot of historical details.  The idea of a situation that is bleak is, of course, timeless.  Individually, we may be in a situation whose outcome looks bleak.  Collectively, displacement is one of the biggest geo-social-political realities of the 21^st century.  Voluntary or involuntary displacement.  Some of us may have first-hand experience of it.   As people of faith, we may feel displaced or pushed to the margins of society.  How should we react to this?  Do we simply long for the good old days or wax nostalgic?  There are many different answers to this question.  I believe one is that we are called to serve on the margins.  We are also called to remember.

The importance of memory to our faith cannot be overstated.  When we remember, we think the past into the present.  Our circumstances may not change, but who we are is changed.  For the psalmist, the action to take in the face of his questions is to recall with everyone else what God has done.  Remembrance is something that we do individually, and it’s something that we do together.  There is a movement away from the self in this Psalm.  In the first section, remember, remembering was very much self-focused. I commune with my heart in the night.  I meditate and search my spirit.  There’s nothing wrong of course with communing with your heart in the night or meditating and searching your spirit, or considering days of old, or remembering the years of long ago.  God isn’t even being addressed in those verses.  We are called to remember not with a view primarily of ourselves, but of God.

We come back to this time and time again.  Forgive me if I’m repetitive, but I need to be reminded (and surely I can’t be the only one – we’re talking about remembering after all!).  All that we are/have/may become/remember is rooted and grounded in God and God’s nature. Let us acknowledge that often and meaningfully.  My standing with God is not based on what I feel about God or what is going on in my life.  My standing with God is based on God’s love for me and God’s delivering me.  We call it grace, and as someone has said, “All is grace.” 

So, the Psalmist resolves in the face of the question that has been asked to turn to God and to continually remember.  “I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord.  I will remember your wonders of old.  I will meditate on all your work, and muse on your mighty deeds.”  Call to mind, remember, meditate, muse – all verbs of remembering.  But now the object of remembrance is named - the deeds of the LORD, wonders of old, all your work, mighty deeds.  Note too that the movement here is from individual remembrance to collective remembrance.  Look at v 13.  “Your way, O God, is holy.  What God is so great as our God?”  God’s way is holiness.  What does this mean?  One commentator puts it like this – “Holiness is the basic attribute of deity; it is all that contrasts with and transcends the human, the marvellous, the mysterious, the incomprehensible.  In holiness the Lord is incomparable.”  God’s way is holy.  Where did this way lead for the ancient Israelites? 

Through the sea.

The event which the psalmist is recalling along with his faith community is God’s saving acts in bringing the Israelite nation out of Egypt and making a way for them through the Red Sea.  You’ll recall the story.  After the Passover, the Israelites are fleeing.  Pharaoh commands his army to hunt them down and destroy them.  They come up against the Red Sea and it seems all is lost.  God makes a way. This is how God has displayed his might among the peoples.  This is how God redeemed his people with his strong arm, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph. 

This event was also marked by a song.  Known as the song of Moses we find it in Exodus 15.  It starts out like this – “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.  The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation;” Later on - “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?  Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendour, doing wonders?”

Calling the past into the present together is vital to our faith.  One writer puts it like this – “The hymn does what praise and confession are meant to do – to represent the God of revelation as the reality and subject of truth in the face of all circumstances and contrary experience.”  Calling the past into the present was a reminder for the Israelites that the God they served was a saving God.  That the God they served was a delivering God, even when their circumstances seemed to indicate otherwise. That the thing to do in the face of these circumstances was to call to mind their saving/delivering God.  To be reminded that their salvation was not to be found in a system or a person or an ideology or a political party or wherever it is that we look for our salvation when things are bleak.

It seems that we need reminding of this, don’t we?  Where do we look for our salvation?  In our competencies?  Talents?  Strength of will?  Experience?  Money? 

When we get together to remember our saving/delivering God, we are reminded that our salvation comes from him alone.  We are coming ever more to realize that our salvation is found in him alone.

This saving event at the Red Sea affected an entire people – the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.  God used people to bring it about.  The brothers.  Moses and Aaron.  The great prophet and the great priest. There was no king yet in those days, but how can the followers of Christ not read this and think of our own prophet and priest and king?  The one who would institute an act whereby we would remember him as the one who saves us?  The act that we will gather around this table to enact in a few moments.

“Do this in remembrance of me,” were Jesus’ words.  There are different aspects to gathering around this table – the unity that is ours as one bread, the sharing in Christ’s death, the looking forward to the heavenly banquet that is to come.  The aspect that we’re focusing on here this morning is remembrance.  Bringing the past into the present.  Bringing God’s great saving act on the cross to mind in the midst of an uncertain present in which God is sometimes perceived as absent.  I was watching a TV show recently in which a character asked “How can you believe in an invisible God?”  The thing is, God made himself visible. When we lift up these visible elements we are reminded of this.

Why do we do this?  We do this because the salvation story is not over.  We do this to remember the divine act that forms the basis –the foundation - of our community of faith.  We do this because of the role that memory plays in our faith. 

Friends, being a follower of Christ is to a large extent an act of memory.  This do in remembrance of me.  In remembrance we call God’s saving acts of the past into the present; the creation of the world; bringing order from chaos; the Exodus; the crossing of the Red Sea; the making of a way through the sea; the making of a way through his Son for all people; a way through the sin that kept us apart from God while Pharaoh’s army was bearing down on us, bringing nothing but death. “O Mary, don’t you weep,” goes one old gospel song, “Didn’t Pharoah’s army get drowned?”  Mary don’t you weep, because deliverance is at hand in the person of our risen Christ.  This is what we remember here today friends.

You led your people like a flock, by the hand of Moses and Aaron.  You led us, you’re leading us, Lord, like a flock, by the hand of your Son our shepherd.  The salvation story is not over.  We await the day of Christ’s return.  We live in this kind of pre-dawn time.  The dark becoming greyer.  The stars slowly disappear.  Looking to Christ, our morning star.  We bring these great saving events to mind as we wait.  I want to note one final thing.  V 19 – “Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen.”  It can be hard to see salvation sometimes.  In the midst of all the things that go on in our world, all the things that go on in our lives, God’s footprints aren’t always seen. 

Yet he’s always making a path.  He’s always bringing us back.  One day we’ll sit around that banquet table which this table also looks forward to.  May he give us hearts in the meantime to seek him.  Hearts to remember him together. May this change us?  God grant that this might be true for us all. Amen