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Inflation is a thing right now, and a pretty serious one.

But let’s talk about another kind of inflation that’s likewise on my mind right now: awards ceremony inflation. I get it, and I’m not really complaining about it. More than anything, I’m bemused by the sheer amount of closing ceremonies that my wife, Emily, and I are asked to attend in relation to the wrap up of the school year. Granted, the graduation season this year is busier than usual, both because the pandemic had put such gatherings on hold only for them to roar back this spring, and also since in my family’s case we currently have four kids in three school buildings, including a graduating senior plus a completing-elementary-school fifth grader.

Sports awards, arts awards, academic awards, citizenship awards, courage awards, entrepreneurship awards, extracurricular awards, who-else-needs-a-trophy awards. Lots of awards, numerous award ceremonies. Then you have the graduations, commencements, recitals, memorials, and toga parties.

Back In My Day: one awards ceremony for everything, with an optional commencement for graduates. And we liked it!

With lots of ceremonies, N.B., comes countless epideictic speeches.

New word alert: “epideictic”! Old Aristotle, who played for the Flyers in the 70’s, developed a system of rhetoric that comprises the three categories (“species”) of deliberative, judicial, and epideictic types of speeches.

With a deliberative message, you’re trying to persuade. Sermons are mostly deliberative!

For judicial rhetoric, you’re either prosecuting or defending an accusation. If the rhetoric don’t fit, you must acquit!

Epideictic communiquès, on the other hand, serve neither of those functions but instead are ceremonial speeches that mark an occasion by way of giving praise (most often) or blame (not recommended). Awards ceremonies and graduations are full of epideictic rhetoric. And honestly, I enjoy those sorts of things.

Fittingly, epideictic speeches are full of remembrance. This morning I just arrived home from my daughter, Clara’s, fifth grade promotion ceremony at which teachers, “alums” (along with my 12th grader), and even the students themselves traced the growth arcs from learning to tie shoes and spelling names to mastering basic grammar and executing complex projects. It was deeply affecting for me to recall Clara’s journey from a stuffy-nosed preschooler to a self-possessed and precocious young lady. Real dads cry!

Here in Collingswood, I’m lucky that our elementary school is only a single block from our house. (I wish it were closer, but there ya go.) This morning, I walked back from the school by myself, having congratulated fellow parents, hugged Clara, and left her and Emily to do a lunch in our downtown. It was a purposely slow stroll. For years at the start and end of the school day, I’d amble with my kids to and from Zane North Elementary, until one by one my little ones would tell me that they didn’t need me to go with them anymore. It’s been years since I’ve brought or picked up any of them from school, and as I sniffled home I tried to remember as many of those former mornings and afternoons as possible. I may never take that short stroll from Zane North to my doorstep ever again.

It’s good to remember. And God agrees. For the last couple of weeks I’ve written in this space about struggling to live through a “flattened reality” and have offered the Christian disciplines of fasting, feasting, and sabbath as potential buffers against the forces that engender within us ambient anxiety and trauma.

Another one is remembrance. It stretches our perspective backwards from the tyranny of the “now” to the recalling of God’s generational faithfulness to his people in Christ. Remembrance similarly reframes our future by recontextualizing our fortunes under the auspices of a loving and sovereign Lord. If grace has seen us safe thus far, grace will lead us home.

Over and over again in scripture, God commands his followers to remember. Some of my favorite examples:
— Woven into the account of the great flight from Egypt in Exodus 12, the institution of the Passover meal is given with the express intent that descendants of the this migration would remember how God had delivered them.
— On the brink of the Promised Land in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses begins his long address to the Israelites with a chapters-long recounting of how the Lord had guided them and provided for them through the wilderness. Remember!
— In Joshua 3-4, the Israelites cross the Jordan River as the waters wall up on either side and they pass through on dry land—echoing the earlier crossing of the Red Sea. Twelve stones bearing the names of the twelve tribes of Israel were placed on the riverbank, again to commemorate God’s mighty rescue.

Consequently, in the midst of your difficult days: remember. Yes, remember the love experienced among your friends and family, the irreplaceable times shared. In addition, if you’re able, consider your past through the lens of a gracious God that has carried you through difficulties in ways both that you’re able to recognize and probably some others that you don’t. Fight the good fight of the present by recalling your past.

Here’s my absolute favorite instance of remembrance in the entire bible. During the period of the Old Testament, the high priest when ministering in the tabernacle would don an “ephod,” kind of like a breastpiece or vestment. Sewed into the ephod were 12 stones, each with the name of a tribe of Israel upon them (Ex 28:17-20). By design, whenever the high priest would make sacrifices of atonement for his brothers and sisters, the stones on the ephod would signify that the Lord in fact remembers with compassion his children. (Cf. Isaiah 49:16: “Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.”)

The New Testament in general, and the book of Hebrews most specifically, identifies Jesus as our great high priest who once and for all made an atoning sacrifice—in his own body—on behalf of God’s people. It’s Jesus that remembers our names before the Father; like the song we sing on Sundays, “My name is written on his heart.”

It’s imperative that we be people who remember. It’s even more essential, however, that God remember us. Which is what he’s promised to do in the Son.

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