Remember

Years ago, at First Presbyterian Church in Sarasota, we would occasionally celebrate a Passover Seder together as a congregation. A dear friend of mine, Cy Wofsy, who was Jewish, would help me lead it. It was one of the most meaningful things we did all year.

What Cy helped us see was something easy to miss: that the Last Supper — the night Jesus gathered with his disciples before he was arrested — was itself a Passover Seder. Jesus was not creating something entirely new that night. He was standing inside a story his people had been telling for over a thousand years. And he was saying: this story is about me. And now it is about you.

The connections between Passover and communion run deep — too many to trace here. But one thread connects them both at the root.

Remember.

In both, the people of God are invited not merely to know what happened, but to enact it. To tell the story again. To sing the songs. To say the prayers. To taste the bread and the cup and let the body remember what the mind sometimes forgets.

There is profound wisdom in this. Because in the hardest moments of life — when we are frightened, or grieving, or lost — it is easy to forget. To lose the thread. To wonder whether God has been present at all.

And the ritual says: look back. Remember how you got here. Remember who has carried you.

The story of God's faithfulness does not begin today. It stretches back further than we can see. And we are standing inside it.

Prayer: Holy God, on this night we remember. We remember the Passover — your people delivered from bondage, carried through the wilderness, brought home. We remember Jesus at the table with his friends, taking the bread and the cup and giving himself. We remember the ways you have carried us through our own hard places — though we do not always stop to name them. Today we name them. We are grateful. And we trust that the grace that has carried us this far will carry us still. Amen.

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