And the reason the Passover meal is all about remembering is because God wanted it to be so. At the end of our passage, after giving specific instructions to Moses about what the people were to do in preparation for the first Passover, God says, “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as an ordinance forever.” In other words, don’t ever forget this.

God wanted the people to remember the Passover forever because it was THE defining moment in the relationship between God and God’s people. No matter what happened next—or ever—whatever trials the Israelites might face, if the people remembered anything about God, it was to be this moment when God was the one who delivered them from trouble.

God knew then, and knows now, that what humans remember, what we hold on to, becomes definitive for us, it shapes who we are right now and what we become. Because of memory, the past we retain influences the future we live into. And not that God needs a neuroscientist to confirm the truth of that, but you and I might.

Ashish Ranpura is a researcher at University College London, and has this to say about our memory—not short term memory so much, the kind of mental scratchpad we have that allows us to makes sense of long sentences, or where we left our keys, but the kind that really penetrates our brains and lasts over years. He says, “Fundamentally, memory represents a change in who we are. Our habits, our ideologies, our hopes and fears are all influenced by what we remember of our past. At the most basic level, we remember because the connections between our brains' neurons change; each experience primes the brain for the next experience, so that the physical stuff we're made of reflects our history like mountains reflect geologic eras. Memory also represents a change in who we are because it is predictive of who we will become. We remember things more easily if we have been exposed to similar things before, so what we remember from the past has a lot to do with what we can learn in the future.”

For people of faith there are two extremely important ideas in this. The first is, what we choose to remember, over time, becomes a physical part of who we are. As we remember the same events and experiences over and over, we solidify those mental pathways, in a sense they get laminated into our brains. In being very specific with Moses, God was ensuring that Jewish brains would have well-formed neural pathways that would always lead to the recollection of how much God had done to help. The Jew who has enacted that Passover Seder say, 30 times, is never going to forget the Passover story, never going to forget what God did.

But secondly, what Ashish Ranpura is also saying in a 21st century way is that what you and I choose to remember really will shape our experience of the present, and influence what kind of future we’ll have. Again, God knew that if the people of Israel only had memories of God that were sketchy, or only gave them doubt about where God was or what God was doing, they wouldn’t be able to endure the Exodus from Egypt, and wouldn’t be able to tap into God’s constant presence to all the generations that followed.

So for us, let’s just consider the ordinary to start. However old you are, what memories from your past play over again and again for you most frequently? Do you tend to most remember the wrongs that were done to you? Do you remember those moments of high anxiety, like an illness or car accident? Does your mind lead you to recall instances of disappointment about work or relationships? Do you replay those awkward blunders you made, like the time this week I stood up at a dinner meeting and knocked everyone’s glass over? OR, are you the kind of person who tends to remember the high points—every day you recall people from years ago who made a positive difference for you, or who were present at moments of great happiness. You tend to replay moments of the successes you have had, or the feelings that came with games you won, or compliments or good grades you received.

Obviously it’s some of each for all of us, but what both God and neuroscientists seem to be saying is that if you and I tend to remember the hard times, we are laying down the wiring to anticipate and experience more of them; and if we choose to remember the good times, we’re more likely to encounter those going forward.

And of course this very human quality is even more important when our memories of God come into play. When you remember your past experiences of the holy, the divine, does your memory lead you to mountaintop moments, or of a strangely-warmed heart, or of exhilarating experiences of Sunday worship, or being carried forward by the Holy Spirit, or of personal saints who just oozed the presence of Christ? OR, do those well-established pathways lead to recollections of times when God didn’t answer your prayers, or seemed to be playing a game of hide-and-seek with you, or of encounters with people who claimed the faith but acted in another way altogether? I know all of us can remember ups and downs in our relationship with God over the course of our years, but the point of the Passover story and the point of the sermon is that you and I have choices about how and what we remember, and so, in real life, can change how we will experience our future, including the future of our faith and discipleship.

Now we can’t erase that part of our memory that holds hard times or moments from the past when God didn’t seem to deliver, but we can choose to put the brakes on when that neural pathway to negative memory beckons. We can be diligent in disciplining our remembering so that we end up going to the memory bank that holds all the good deposits. We can choose to remember in ways that build us up, not the ways that keep us down.

As you know, this Thursday is the 7th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, and we can’t and shouldn’t forget those events. It is important to honor the memory of those who died and those who served and died in the days following; it is important to remember there are those who are still suffering because of it; and it is important to remember the meaning and implications of that day for the life of this country and its people. But what we must resist remembering is a vivid, lurid, sickening replay of the terror, as we saw it and as we felt it—because that kind of remembering only reinforces feelings of vulnerability, feelings of anger and the desire for revenge, feelings of suspicion and cynicism. Choose first to remember the senseless loss and the result might be resolve to move forward bravely; choose first to remember the terror, and the result is most likely just more terror.

God wanted the people of Israel to never forget the divine love and power unleashed in the wonderful freedom God gave in the Exodus, and so made sure the people had a vivid way of remembering, a discipline to keep the moment perpetually on positive replay. And so too has Christ given you and me this vivid memorial, a way for us to laminate our minds and souls and then even our bodies to the love Jesus had and still has for us, to this connection we always have but which does so often drift away from our memory. On this table is spread our Passover meal, our tangible, concrete reminder that helps to shape our minds and hearts so that we become more and more able to go out into the world and remember and rely on the grace we encounter here. Even before acts of compassion and justice, diligent discipleship begins each day with choosing to first remember grace, and not fear.