A few months ago I preached at my church's South Campus in the middle of our series titled, "BaseCamp: Tools for the Journey." (see above for sermon audio) The topic I was given was "Family." Deuteronomy 6 offers the clearest and most explicit instruction to the nation of Israel in how the story of God is to propagate throughout the generations. It is known as the Shema and was a central element of every observant family within the people of Israel. The instruction from God is to continually tell the story of God's movement in his people as the animating story of their life. Because God understands our propensity for amnesia. Listen to the way Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann talk about the importance of this text. The quote is a bit long, but worth reading to the end...
It is only in verse 12 that one arrives at the main verb of the sentence. Everything before has been a temporal, dependent clause. But now the imperative: "take care." Pay attention! Moses knows that satiation produces amnesia, and amnesia is the great threat to a community whose defining relationship is grounded in a concrete, nameable memory. Satiation banishes the past and obliterates the future. Everything is reduced to an endless present tense, rather like the absence of clocks in the casinos of Las Vegas. No one any longer knows what time it is, and no one can any longer recall a time other than this time that appears, with gorging, to be without beginning and without end. In a state of satiation, Moses anticipates, Israel will lust for the gift but be uninterested in the giver. Israel will be tempted to forget the Exodus as the defining disclosure of this God, will forget the slavery and the wondrous act of deliverance from slavery. YHWH will no longer be remembered or known as the God of transformation; the distinctiveness of YHWH will evaporate into a religious plethora of the gods of stability and equilibrium. - Walter Brueggemann
For the people of Israel, family stands at the front lines of remembering, of telling and retelling the story and faithfulness of God. Because the centrality of this story is where our identity is formed. Family, in all of its messy brokenness is the means through which God has chosen to pass along our story and counter the ever present threat of amnesia.