The authors of Deuteronomy were anxious people. The generations that had experienced God’s deliverance from Egypt and God’s provision of manna in the wilderness were aging and dying, and no one was sure whether the next generations would remember what God had done, or trust God in the future. So they wrote Deuteronomy, literally a “second law” or “copy of the law”, a book that simply restates the four books that have come before it, but with an urgency, a distillation of what is most important: “love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul and your mind, and therefore keep God’s commandments. Remember, it is not your children who experienced God’s miracles. Write these words in your heart, and teach them to your children, so that they may remember God’s story and live by God’s law.” Those words sound over and over again as a refrain throughout the book of Deuteronomy.

But every time I hear this passage from Deuteronomy, a different refrain pops into my head—the kind with a tune. It’s a tune I’m sure many of you know well, and some of you have never heard at all. It’s Crosby, Stills & Nash: “Teach your children well, their parents’ hell, will slowly go by, and feed them on your dreams, the one they pick, the one you’ll know by…” Graham Nash seems to be channeling the message of Deuteronomy: “You who are on the road must have a code that you can live by, and so become yourself, because the past is just a goodbye.” His song is all about communication across generational lines, about transmitting codes we can live by from parents to children and children to parents, about each generation’s unique historical struggles. It’s Deuteronomy, all over.

Even after spending several weeks meditating on the text, even after listening to Eleanor Jenson’s graceful proclamation, Graham Nash’s plucky tune explodes in my head every time. “Don’t you ever ask them why, de de de de…” And let me tell you, this tune does not leave one’s head quickly and easily. In an effort to replace it with something else, I started contemplating other songs that expressed these Deuteronomistic themes. First I remembered my church camp days, with endless singing of “Pass It On” – “I wish for you, my friend, this happiness that I’ve found…” Then I remembered some of my favorite hymns from my childhood, songs I used to sing with my grandmother and great-grandmother at the piano in the living room: “Tell me the stories of Jesus, I love to hear, things I would ask him to tell me if he were here…” and “I love to tell the story, twill be my theme in glory, to tell the old, old story, of Jesus’ endless love,” and, of course, the hymn we just sang together about “beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life.” Realizing I had jumped too quickly into church music, my rebellious side emerged too, and I hummed Pink Floyd’s immortal “We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control. … Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone!”

The songs that flood my mind are songs near and dear to my own identity. The words and music evoke memories. My associations with the all those songs—whether the rebellious 1960’s rock or the arm-in-arm swaying of campfire songs or the family piano cranking out southern gospel hymns—these songs connect me with a shared history, with events and struggles that inform my identity, with people living and dead. And the messages in those familiar words shape my values. These songs shape the content of my soul, its identity, its values, even its connection to the Divine. They are what I know by heart.

My mind always churns out lists of songs like that, and I draw on them to express my thoughts and feelings all the time. I am a song person. I have other friends who are movie people, with heads full of one-liners and movie scenes, saying things like, “It’s just like that scene in The Godfather when that guy … (fill in the blanks).” Closely related are the TV people, who compare everything to an episode of something. Then there are poetry people, who punctuate their conversations with verse; Shakespeare people, who recite a line from the bard as naturally as if it were their own; literature people, who parallel the folks they meet and the characters of great literature; or history people, who see in us Nero or Napoleon or Nancy Reagan. And, of course, the sports people, who interpret life through the lens of a trick play from last week or dramatic at-bat from 50 years ago. You all know what I’m talking about.

People interpret the world around them through the contents of what they know by heart. No matter what their particular metaphorical currency, it serves as a means of understanding the universe, a means of interpreting and making meaning out of the world around them. That metaphorical currency, whether songs or movies or poetry, forms our identity.

Which is exactly what the authors of Deuteronomy were concerned about—making sure that the stories of God’s great deeds and the patterns of God’s great commands remained the metaphorical currency that shaped future generations. Making sure that the identity of their descendants was shaped in the love of God and the love for God. We do not aspire to be sports people or history people or TV people, but God’s people—people who know and interpret themselves inside of God’s story of redemption and dwell inside God’s commandments for life. Remember, Deuteronomy urges us. Know it by heart. Write that on your souls.

I recently attended the service of Yom HaShoah, a Jewish holy day service commemorating the millions who died in the Holocaust, and I marveled at the way our Jewish brothers and sisters have followed this teaching from Deuteronomy. At the heart of every Holocaust commemoration is one simple theme: Remember. Remember, and never forget, so that this might never happen again. The generation that experienced the Holocaust is slowly aging and dying, and those first-hand witnesses are fewer and fewer. But at this service, children—the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those survivors—children took the lead roles. They sang, they spoke, they read essays and lit candles. They told the tragic story of the Holocaust, and they remembered. It was clear to anyone present that the very souls of these young people were known and understood through their Jewish identity. They were young people, who interpreted their lives through the story of God’s chosen people, from Abraham and Sarah on through the centuries to the Holocaust, and God’s story continued unfolding in their own lives. God’s story had been written on their hearts.

How deeply is this story of God written on our souls, and on the souls of our children? How do we come to know it by heart? Every week when we gather here at worship, we come together to remember. While we may occasionally hear an obscure passage from the Old Testament, most of the time our scripture contains a story we all already know. If you attend regularly enough, you will rarely even encounter an unfamiliar hymn. We say the Lord’s Prayer together, most of us from memory. In our sacrament of baptism, we remember Jesus’ baptism; at the communion table, we repeat Jesus’ words, “Remember me.”

But once a week for an hour or two is not enough to write on our hearts, just as this one Memorial Day weekend a year is not enough to remember and comprehend the millions who have lost their lives to war. Heart-memory is shaped by repetition, saturation. If we wish to become God’s people, we must learn to live and breathe inside the story of God. I did not become a “song person” by spending an hour a week with headphones—I have surrounded myself with music for as long as I can remember, singing in choirs, listening to the radio, learning instruments, contemplating lyrics. Becoming God’s people requires the same kind of dedication. As the authors of Deuteronomy instruct, we must talk about these words when we are at home and when we are away, when we lie down and when we rise, write them on the doorposts of our homes and gates, so that they make up the very foundation of our self-understanding, the metaphorical currency in which we traffic, the way we know and understand our own soul’s identity. That means lifelong learning of the scriptures, daily study of the story of our faith and regular time spent absorbing the words and commandments of God.

This is not simply an intellectual pursuit. We do not seek head-knowledge, facts, figures, names, places, the ability to recite the Ten Commandments and Twelve Disciples on command. We are not cramming for some spiritual MCAS test. We come to the scriptures, to prayer and to worship to build our heart-knowledge, the words and values and images that shape our very souls, our identities and ways of interacting with the world. My mother wrote that message to me in an inscription to a Bible she gave me in high school. It says, “Read devotionally. You are not seeking information when you read the Bible. You are seeking to meet God.” When we seek to meet God, in devotion to prayer, study and worship, God’s story comes to be our story, what we know by heart, what is written on our souls.

So I leave you with a challenge: whether you are a song person or sports person or Shakespeare person, seek also to be a God person, one whose very world is known and interpreted through God’s story. In some new way, whether large or small, seek to meet God. Take the time to remember all that God has done. Study, pray, worship daily. Write the words of God on your souls and teach them to your children. Come to know God by heart, for that is the only way to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind, and therefore keep all God’s commandments. Amen.