Reminders: Passover, Easter, Applewatch and more!

My local shopping centre sent me a note confirming my joining their community by downloading their app. In the followup email, I found one of my benefits in joining was that I could:

"Check your parking time and set a 30 minute reminder"

What a good feature. Don't you hate it when you get caught one-minute late and have to pay an extra $4 or whatever they assess? In fact reminders like this are useful in many arenas.

Think about the oil light on your car. To some, it's an annoying little alarm that blinks too often or SHOUTS as a red light while you are trying to drive your normal routes. They say we are supposed to change our batteries on our household smoke alarms when the clocks either spring forward or fall back. And if you don't perform that changeover, those little alarms make some serious alarming beeps until we both notice and respond to their reminder. 

Reminders can be welcomed or rejected, but they exist for us in all our lives. And if we get them right, we will be right. The oil alert will save the engine. The smoke alarm will keep us safe. 

Reminders make sense. Do you set an alarm to awaken you each night? Yes, you may hit the snooze bar and get seven more minutes of 'rest', but the alarm is there to alert us to what's ahead and to help us get into the day. 

Each of these reminders are about future events. But today I'm also thinking about reminders of the past. That is, things or calendar circles that trigger memories of days gone by. For some, it's that old sweater in the closet that you used to wear when you dated your high-school sweetheart. And you still fit in it. For some it's the memory while driving past the golf course where you hit that eagle on the par-5 13th. 

Applewatch has features for memory's sake, like anniversaries and birthdays. Don't forget to remember!

The God of the Bible wants us to remember things also. He has done some significant things in the life and story of the Jewish people, like making us from one man (Abraham) and delivering us from slavery under Moses in the Exodus account. Providing for 3 million wilderness wanderers is no small feat for an army of chefs, but God did this for 4 decades without any help. 

That deliverance is celebrated every year by Jewish people in the holiday named Passover. We eat unleavened bread, spiced with horseradish, and remember the House of Bondage in which we suffered for hundreds of years. Some eat lamb, and most have a lamb shankbone to remind us that we were spared not because we were Jews alone, but by the blood of lambs applied to the doorposts of our homes in Goshen. That perpetual memory is a reminder that God is alive and well, and he saves to the uttermost those who put their trust in him.

Have you done that?

Passover starts this year on 27 March and lasts for 8 days. As Passover finishes in 2021, the holiday of Easter will take place. What is Easter you ask? It's the day on the Christian calendar remembering the death, burial and especially the resurrection of a Jew named Yeshua. According to the story, his death was a crucifixion on a Roman gallows called a 'cross.' The burial near the Mt of Olives in Jerusalem was so severe that a Roman leader demanded his people guard the tomb securely and even sealed the overlaying rock. Then on what has become known as Easter, the Jewish man rose from the dead, and afterwards appeared to 500 Jews for 6 weeks. 

Does that remind you of someone?

In English they call him Jesus. In Hebrew Yeshua.  His birth in Bethlehem brought this Jew into the world, and the world has never been the same ever since. The Bible is full of his memory and his prestige. 

Is Yeshua in your world yet?

Flashback and memories

King Arthur sings a reprise of the title song in the Broadway show "Camelot" as the play comes to an end. The majesty of the scenes, the songs, the triumphs, the never-ending nature of optimism is found in the earlier lyrics, but this is the final number, with a bit of a tear-turned-away and softening of memories, Arthur and Tom sing,
ARTHUR:
"Each evening, from December to December,
Before you drift to sleep upon your cot,
Think back on all the tales that you remember
Of Camelot.

Ask ev'ry person if he's heard the story,
And tell it strong and clear if he has not,
That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory
Called Camelot.

Camelot! Camelot!
Now say it out with pride and joy!
TOM:
Camelot! Camelot!

ARTHUR:
Yes, Camelot, my boy!
Where once it never rained till after sundown,
By eight a.m. the morning fog had flown...
Don't let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment that was known
As Camelot."

That's what I'm pondering today as I read the obituary of yet another of my friends from decades gone by. No one would have doubted that John Rooker, student council or Senior class president or whatever his titles were, would be a success and live long and prosper after we graduated in 1969. Many who remembered him from our class in the requisite Facebook historical revue this last week have commented on his kindness, his energy, his wonderful voice and acting ability. No one is saying, "Oy, I hated that Rooker guy..." because that's not what you are to do in times like these, AND because I seriously doubt if anyone did feel like that about John.

But whatever that season of our lives was when Janis Joplin and Peter, Paul and Mary were singing, when Midnight Cowboy was rated X, when Woodstock took the world by storm and Richard Nixon was still up to his ears in government, for John and most of us remembering, it was a Camelot-type moment.

Arthur and the chorus sang earlier, "In short, there's simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here In Camelot."

This is the stuff that fairy tales are made of. And yet, in the end, they sing about this being one "brief shining moment." Those moments don't last-- neither in their activity, nor in their resultant accolades. In modern days we use the phrase, "15 minutes of fame" and no matter how long on the clock they actually remain, it bears witness to the reality that all of that glory is a "fleeting wisp."

If that be so, then why bother? If our energies for honor and history are but for a moment, then what's the point?

The point is to make the world better, one person at a time. We don't have to be encircled by the millions at the Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC. We don't need accolades then nor now. What we need is to have purpose in life, and strive to make that happen, to the betterment of the world and its people. Then our sleep will be sweet, Then we can look the (wo)man-in-the-mirror each day with something better than smugness or shame. We can look with rigorous honesty and thank the Creator for making us such, and get on with the plan.

Memorials (Part 2)

I wrote the other day about remembering and the power of memories. And now today we look at the central activity of the people of God who are nicknamed "The church" in their memory prodding, the event called 'communion.' This is that ceremony in many churches where a piece of bread and a sip of grape juice or wine is used. The actual ceremony begins with a reminder of a reminder. Paul wrote this to the Corinthian believers: "Now I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold firmly to the traditions, just as I delivered them to you." (1 Cor. 11.2) By keeping a good record of what Paul taught the believers there, they received a high commendation from the apostle. Like every student who learns well, when his teacher commends him, there is great joy. And the praise of the apostle is especially good given his earlier criticisms of the Corinthians.

The apostle tells them he is glad they remember him. But, as you would imagine from a humble apostle, he switches to the main thing they remember... "For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Yeshua in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me." In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes." (11.24-26)

This idea of receiving and remembering is crucial. You cannot remember what you never heard (received) and receiving alone is almost useless if you don't remember what you have heard. So the apostle says that he received something from Yeshua (Jesus) and passed that to the believers in Corinth. And that they should remember as they perform a ceremony. The ceremony itself in fact, is the call to remembrance.

It all goes back to Passover. Yes, the Jewish seder meal which my people have conducted for over 3,000 years in homes in Israel, the US, Russia, here in Australia, and around the globe. And one particular night, about 30 CE (AD) or so, Yeshua had seder with his friends and did some unusual things. He said that the matzo they were eating had a special significance, not only in relation to the exodus from Egypt, but also in relation to what was going to happen to him the next day. He knew, but the disciples did not know, that he was going to be killed by crucifixion by Roman soldiers. And he took the unleavened bread and gave it even deeper meaning saying that it was 'my body given for you." What? A piece of bread is likened to a physical body of an adult human?

In the seder's haggadah (the prayer book and order of service we use each year), we say of the unleavened bread, "This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt." So the bread Yeshua took in hand was already a symbol of something else. And then He changed its meaning to yet another concept-- His body, which would suffer and be afflicted the next day on a Roman cross. The idea of affliction was certainly known to the Jewish people. And it was also a characteristic of the messiah to come as Isaiah the prophet declared, "in all their affliction he was afflicted....so he became their Savior" (chapter 63) Sure enough Jesus suffered deeply the next day and took on Himself the suffering of the Jewish people, and according to the story, all people.

The cup of salvation which we drink is the "new covenant in My blood."  When approached by the two sons of Zebedee, the following took place. Yeshua asked them, "Are you able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" They said unto him, "We are able". But Jesus answered and said, "You know not what you ask." The cup of baptism was really the cup of suffering. And certainly Yeshua suffered the next day, spilling His own blood to save us, each one of us, from our sinful nature and our activities of sins. As the prophet Isaiah also predicted 700 years earlier, "he was wounded for our transgressions. The chastisement for our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed." (chapter 53)

The phrase 'new covenant' is something which is used only one other time in the Tenach. Jeremiah the prophet said, "Days are coming (says the Lord) when I will make a new covenant with the Jewish people, not like the one I made with them when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. This is the covenant I will make: I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”  

The new covenant will be a memorable one and the sins of Israel will not be remembered.  God will write the new covenant on our hearts and on our minds. That's about memory. And when Yeshua took up the cup on Passover night before He was crucified, He instituted the new covenant, a perpetual memory of His forgiving us of our sins and putting His Torah in our hearts.What a Savior!

So when the Corinthians who were pretty good at sinning and envying and living wrong got the remembrance of the Messiah right, that deserved high marks from Paul. And when you get it right, God will attest to your heart that you are His. that's worth everything. Remember this. 

For more on Passover and blood and bread, see http://jewsforjesus.org/judaica/passover.