I am bound by my sin to the silence Christ found ...

Remember your word to your servant, in which you have made me hope. Ps 119:49

The Psalmist does not fear a failure in the Lord's memory, but turns to the promise and speaks of his need according to His promise.

The Psalmist doesn’t plead for the Lord to remember in his words, but that the Lord remember His own words. 

I like the psalmist, am under the bondage of sin have no word, no promise of my own. 

For I am bound by my sin to the silence Christ found Himself in the midst of my sin before the wrath of God. 

The only word, the only promise that I have is that which is given to me of the Lord. 

Even as in creation, so now in the living as a creature, He must speak His word before I or anything in all creation can respond.

While my hope arises from my Lord’s promise, my hope is fulfilled in my Lord’s remembrance of His promise to me. 

For when He remembers His promise to me, He will participate in me and with me according to the word of promise. 

This plea to remember is no mere request that the Lord “think about me.”

No, it is a request for the Lord to participate in and with me according to what He has said He will do. 

Inasmuch as Jesus Christ is the Word of God,

the promise of God, incarnate,

He is the Lord’s living and participating remembrance of His promise to me and to all of fallen creation. 

Jesus being the Lord’s remembrance of His promises to me is set boldly down in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians,

“For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” 2 Cor. 1:20-22.

My hope therefore is not that the Lord “thinks about me”, but that He remembers, He participates in me and with me according to His Word.

Jesus Christ came to remember me, my words, my actions, my thoughts. 

He came to remember me, to participate in all that was, that is, and that will yet be me in this fallen world. 

No matter how painful or how absolute Hell it became for Him in His remembrance of me on the Cross, He never stopped participating in my sin, my penalty or me. 

Even when the Father forgot Him, stopped participating in Christ because of His remembrance of me, Jesus never backed away from remembering me, never backed away from fully participating in me. 

In the blessed sacrament of the Lord’s Body and Blood, I have received His command, “Do this in remembrance of me.”  Surely this is no mere mental recollection, but a participation in His Body and His Blood, and by that communion the receiving of all His Body and Blood had participated in to secure my salvation. 

To remember Christ in the Sacrament is to participate in His participation in the promises of God’s Law and His Gospel so that I might have, I might receive the forgiveness of our sins and participation in eternal life.  

The Lord’s remembrance of me began in my baptism as He participated in my life by uniting to the crucified, dead, buried and risen Jesus Christ – through His Word. 

In His remembrance of me in baptism He participates in me by the work of His Holy Spirit who fills and works in me the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ.

Surely I understand the words of Jesus – apart from me – you can do nothing.

- pmwl