I. THE QUESTION THAT HAUNTS THE HUMAN HEART
When I was a little boy, I used to imagine my own death. I didn’t understand theology, I didn’t know Greek or Hebrew, I didn’t know about immortality or resurrection. I only knew the ache inside a child’s heart. I would picture myself buried in the ground, the world going on without me, and I’d begin to cry because I thought: “Nobody will remember me. I’ll disappear. My name will fade.”
I didn’t fear pain.
I didn’t fear judgment.
What I feared was being forgotten.
And that fear, as I’ve learned over the years, is not unique to children. It’s one of the great unspoken anxieties almost every adult carries just beneath the surface of daily life:
Does my life matter?
Will anyone remember me?
When I slip beneath the soil, will the world forget I ever existed?
You can call it existential anxiety.
You can call it mortality awareness.
You can call it neurosis, insecurity, or fear.
But the Bible calls it something else.
It calls it a cry.
A cry that echoes from hospital rooms and gravesides and sleepless nights. A cry that rises from the cross itself — from the lips of a dying criminal who had nothing to offer Jesus but his bare, trembling humanity:
> “Lord… remember me.” —Luke 23:42
It’s the cry of the human race.
And maybe it’s your cry, too.
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Not long ago I moved to Southern California, and soon after arriving, I found the gravesite of my grandfather — Abner Dunn. I was named after him. I stood there among the rows of stones and felt something I didn’t expect: the shock of how much I didn’t know about my own family.
There were stories that had vanished.
Faces I had never seen.
Lives that had ended before mine began.
I realized I knew so little about the man whose name I carry. And it stirred something deep — a longing not just to understand him but to be connected to him. To be rooted in a family that mattered. To not be a wandering soul in history, but someone known… someone remembered.
A little farther back in my family’s story is a baby boy I never had the privilege to meet — my brother Phillip. He died in Surat, India, from pneumonia when he was just two weeks old. He is buried in an ancient Christian cemetery that goes back to some of the earliest believers.
I have stood on the other side of the world and pictured that tiny grave.
I have wondered about the mother’s tears shed over it.
And I have imagined the day when I can meet him in the earth made new and build sand castles with him — the childhood we never got to share.
Don’t tell me the fear of being forgotten isn’t powerful.
Don’t tell me the human longing to be remembered doesn’t shape us.
It touches everything.
It shapes our choices.
It shapes our prayers.
It shapes our faith.
And when you peel back all the layers — beneath the surface confidence and the religious vocabulary and the carefully kept composure — you’ll find a simple, trembling request:
“Lord… remember me.”
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But here’s where our struggle intensifies.
Modern Christianity, especially Western Christianity, tries to solve the fear of being forgotten with a doctrine that feels comforting on the surface: the immortality of the soul. The idea that you cannot really die. That you simply “transition.” That your consciousness floats upward at the moment of death and continues in some form of instant heaven.
People cling to that because it soothes the fear of disappearing. It promises we cannot be lost or forgotten because our souls live on automatically, by nature.
But if you listen closely underneath that promise, you can hear another truth whispering:
It avoids the real question: “What will you do with Jesus?”
If the soul cannot die, then we don’t need Jesus for life — we already have it.
If the soul cannot perish, then resurrection becomes an optional accessory.
If the soul cannot be lost, then being “remembered by God” becomes unnecessary.
Immortal-soul theology tries to silence the fear of death without calling us to the God who raises the dead.
It masks our fear with philosophy instead of healing it with resurrection.
It offers sentiment instead of salvation.
That’s why some people insist on it.
Not because the Bible teaches it — it doesn’t.
But because it feels easier than facing death honestly and running to Christ for life.
But the problem with comforting lies is that they comfort only until you begin to think deeply — until you sit with your own mortality, until you bury someone you love, until you stand by the grave of a grandfather or a brother or a child.
Then you start asking real questions:
“What happens to me?”
“Am I remembered?”
“Where is my hope?”
“Who holds my name?”
And the Bible, thank God, has a real answer.
Not a philosophical one.
Not a sentimental one.
Not a pagan one.
A gospel answer.
And that answer begins with the One who cried out on His own cross:
> “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.”
—Luke 23:46
Jesus didn’t cling to an immortal soul.
He didn’t escape death.
He didn’t hover above the grave.
He entered death.
Fully.
Completely.
Unconsciously.
Trustingly.
He entrusted His life not to the survival of His soul, but to the faithfulness of His Father.
And because He died — truly died — He can meet you in your greatest fear.
Because He was remembered — truly remembered — you can be remembered, too.
This is where we begin:
Not with heaven.
Not with philosophy.
Not with theories of the soul.
We begin with a question as old as human grief:
“Will anybody remember me?”
And with a Savior who answers from a cross:
“I will.”
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II. THE GOD WHO REMEMBERS NAMES
No one in Scripture expresses the human fear of being forgotten more clearly than the thief beside Jesus. He had no legacy to offer. No reputation to protect. No future to hope for. He had wasted his life, wounded others, ruined himself, and now hung dying in shame.
He didn’t ask for paradise.
He didn’t ask for salvation.
He didn’t ask for heaven.
He didn’t ask for theology.
He asked for something deeper:
> “Lord, remember me.”
He feared not hell, but oblivion.
Not fire, but insignificance.
Not punishment, but being erased from the story of the world.
And in that simple, trembling plea, he revealed the cry of the entire human race.
We spend our lives asking the same question:
Does anybody see me?
Does anybody know me?
Does my life matter?
For some, that fear is buried under career success.
For others, under relationships.
For many, under anxiety and depression.
Most of the neurosis of our generation — the panic, the cravings for affirmation, the endless scrolling, the constant searching for attention — comes from the terror that we might be invisible.
That we might live and die and vanish.
That the world might go on without knowing we were here.
But when the thief said, “Lord, remember me,” he discovered something profound:
The One remembering him was not a crowd, not a family, not a historian, not a legacy — but the God of the universe.
The One who said:
> “I have called you by name; you are Mine.”
—Isaiah 43:1
That was true for him.
It is true for you.
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Let me take you back to that cemetery in Southern California. I walked slowly through the rows of gravestones until I found the one with my grandfather’s name — Abner Dunn. I leaned down and touched the stone. It was the same name I carry as my middle name. I felt a lump in my throat, not just because he died before I could know him, but because I felt the weight of generations I did not understand.
I realized how quickly names fade.
How fragile memories are.
How even family stories disappear within a generation or two.
Yet in that quiet moment, something steadied me — the realization that God never forgets a name carved into His heart.
My grandfather’s story is remembered by the One who formed him.
His hopes, his sorrows, his prayers — all remembered.
And one day, in the resurrection, I will meet Abner Dunn in the full light of eternity and finally learn the stories this world never preserved.
This is not sentimental comfort.
This is the promise of Scripture.
> “Your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
—Colossians 3:3
“The Lord knows those who are His.”
—2 Timothy 2:19
“See, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands.”
—Isaiah 49:16
You are not forgotten.
You are not invisible.
You are not insignificant.
You are engraved.
Named.
Held.
Remembered.
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And then there is little Phillip — the brother I never met. Two weeks old. A fragile newborn breathing his last in a hospital in Surat, India. My parents grieving a loss that words cannot hold. A tiny grave in an ancient Christian cemetery. And a lifetime of wondering who he would have become.
But the God who remembers sparrows remembers babies.
The God who numbers hairs numbers days.
The God who sees every tear will one day wipe them all away.
And so I look forward — not backward — and I picture meeting Phillip in the earth made new. Running on fields that never fade. Building sand castles along the shores of a world without sorrow. Laughing the way brothers are meant to laugh.
That is the gospel hope:
Not a drifting disembodied soul,
but a resurrected child in the arms of God.
The resurrection does not erase memory — it redeems it.
It restores family, restores childhood, restores identity.
It restores the story death tried to steal.
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And here is where the conversation becomes honest:
The fear beneath all our fears — the fear of death, the fear of aging, the fear of failure — is the fear that we will be forgotten.
But God responds not with philosophy but with a promise:
> “Can a mother forget her nursing child?
Even if she could, I will not forget you.”
—Isaiah 49:15
The gospel does not begin with our immortality.
It begins with God’s memory.
Not that we naturally live on…
but that God Himself refuses to let us disappear.
Not that our souls cannot die…
but that Christ will not leave us dead.
And that leads us to the heart of the message — and the heart of your question — and the heart of the cross.
We are not asking to be made immortal.
We are asking what the thief asked:
“Lord, will You remember me?”
And Jesus answers:
“I will remember you.
I will raise you.
I will call your name.”
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III. THE RESURRECTION THAT REMEMBERS YOU
The Christian hope is not that the soul is naturally immortal.
The Christian hope is not that we drift upward at death.
The Christian hope is not that we survive by nature.
The Christian hope is resurrection.
A resurrection where God remembers your name, your story, your childhood, your tears, your scars, your dreams — and then restores you whole.
This is why the thief asked not for heaven but for memory.
Because resurrection is not mechanical.
It is relational.
It happens because God remembers you.
That is why Jesus said:
> “The hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice…”
—John 5:28
Not “all who are in heaven.”
Not “all who are consciously floating.”
Not “all who are immortal.”
All who are in their graves.
Because resurrection depends on something deeper than immortality:
It depends on being known by God.
The question is not:
“Does my soul continue?”
The question is:
“Does Jesus know my name?”
And if He does…
then death cannot hold you.
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This brings us back to the cross — and to the thief whose prayer becomes our own.
Both men hung on crosses.
Both were dying.
Both faced the same silence, the same darkness, the same fear.
The thief’s hope was not in the immortality of his soul but in the memory of his Savior.
And Jesus answered with a promise that holds all of us:
“You will be with Me.”
Not because the thief’s soul survived.
Not because the thief’s consciousness continued.
Not because the thief had anything to offer.
But because Jesus — the Remembering One — took notice of a forgotten man and claimed him as a son of the kingdom.
---
And now, as strange as it sounds, that thief becomes our teacher.
Because in our own way, we are on a cross too.
We hang between life and death, between memory and forgetting, between meaning and insignificance. We face the questions we try to hide:
Does my life matter?
Does God see me?
Will I be remembered?
And in that moment, we learn to pray the same prayer:
“Lord… remember me.”
It isn’t a prayer of theology.
It isn’t a prayer of philosophy.
It isn’t a prayer of immortality.
It is a prayer of trust — the kind of prayer a child makes when he feels lost.
A child who imagines his own death and cries because he fears being forgotten.
A man who finds his grandfather’s grave and aches for what he never knew.
A brother who longs to build sand castles with the baby he never met.
A soul who wonders if God sees, if God knows, if God remembers.
And the gospel answers in the voice of the One who went into death and came out the other side:
“I remember you.
I know you.
I will raise you.”
This is the hope that drives away existential anxiety.
This is the truth that heals the fear of insignificance.
This is the promise that gives courage to the dying and identity to the living.
Not that we cling to God —
but that God clings to us.
Not that we preserve ourselves — but that Christ preserves us.
Not that our names are written in history — but that our names are written in His book.
> “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” —Luke 10:20
Written there.
Kept there.
Treasured there.
Remembered there.
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So here is the question this sermon leaves you with:
What is your prayer today?
If your prayer is:
“Lord, make me immortal,”
you will end up chasing shadows.
But if your prayer is:
“Lord… remember me,”
you will find the God who remembers sparrows and stars,
who remembers children and the elderly,
who remembers the forgotten and the afraid,
who remembers the thief on the cross…
…and who remembers you.
And on the morning of the resurrection —
when graves open and stories are restored and relationships are healed —
you will hear a voice that knows your name better than you know it yourself.
A voice that calls you into life.
A voice that brings back your childhood hopes.
A voice that reunites you with the ones you’ve lost.
A voice that proves beyond all doubt that your life mattered.
Because you were remembered.
--- By Him. --- Forever.
IV. APPEAL
As we come to the end of this message, I want to invite you into a moment that every heart in this room understands—because every one of us has asked, at least once, “Lord… will You remember me?”
Not just in some distant theological sense.
But in the deepest, most human way possible.
We ask it when life breaks us.
We ask it when we lose someone we love.
We ask it when the grave feels too big, and our hearts feel too small.
A few years ago, our family walked through a loss none of us ever expected.
My nephew, little Dallas, only four years old, was taken in a heartbreaking accident. A bright little boy with the whole world ahead of him. A child who loved his Teddy Ruxpin bear—held it close, carried it around, talked to it the way four-year-olds do when the world feels magical and safe and full of wonder.
And when he died, our family entered that ache that has no vocabulary.
The question that no parent or uncle or grandparent ever wants to face.
The question that echoes from Calvary to this very room:
“Lord… remember him.”
“Lord… please remember us.”
In moments like that, no doctrine is big enough.
No philosophy is comforting enough.
Only a Savior who has conquered death can speak hope big enough to hold a broken heart.
And here is the good news today:
Jesus remembers.
Not vaguely.
Not symbolically.
Not metaphorically.
Jesus remembers by name.
Jesus remembers with intention.
Jesus remembers with a promise sealed in His own blood.
When Jesus turned to the thief on the cross—a man who had ruined his life and was dying beside him—He didn’t give him a lecture. He didn’t give him theology. He didn’t give him debate.
He gave him a promise:
> “You will be with Me.”
Not because the thief had much to offer.
Not because he had time to fix anything.
But because he whispered those three desperate words:
> “Remember me.”
Today, maybe that’s exactly what your heart is saying.
Maybe you’re carrying grief that’s older than you know how to talk about.
Maybe you have an empty chair at the table.
Maybe you have a grave somewhere far away—like the graves in India and in California in my own family—that you’ve stood over with more questions than answers.
Maybe you’ve been awake at night wondering the same thing I once wondered as a child:
Does my life matter? Will anyone remember me? Will I slip into silence and be forgotten?
And today Jesus is leaning toward you the same way He leaned toward that dying thief—
not with judgment, not with distance, but with a heart that says:
“I remember you. I always have. And I always will.”
And friends… there will come a day when Jesus calls the sleepers from their graves.
A day when He remembers every name, every story, every tear, every child, every parent, every wound, every longing, every piece of unfinished life.
On that day, graves will open.
Children will run again.
Little boys like Dallas will laugh again.
And yes… they will carry their teddy bears.
And you will hold them, and they will know you, and all that was broken will be whole.
But that promise is not automatic.
It’s not generic.
It’s personal.
It comes to those who—like the thief—simply say:
“Lord… remember me when You come into Your kingdom.”
So here is my appeal today:
If your heart is longing to be remembered—
If you want your name written on the heart of the One who conquered death—
If you’re carrying grief or fear or guilt or loneliness—
If you want to see the children you’ve lost and the family you miss—
If you want Jesus to call your name on resurrection morning—
Then today… simply whisper the same prayer the thief prayed.
“Lord, remember me.”
Whisper it for yourself.
Whisper it for your children.
Whisper it for the ones you’ve buried.
Whisper it for the ones who’ve wandered.
Whisper it for the ones you hope to see again.
Jesus hears it.
Jesus honors it.
Jesus answers it.
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PRAYER
Let’s pray.
Father in heaven,
Today we come to You with the same trembling words the thief spoke on the cross. We come from our grief, from our questions, from our loneliness, from our fears about death and our longing to matter. And we say, simply and honestly: Lord, remember me.
Remember our children.
Remember our Dallas.
Remember our loved ones who sleep in the dust.
Remember our families, our stories, our brokenness, our unfinished lives.
Thank You that in Christ, not one name is forgotten. Not one tear is lost. Not one child is missing. Not one promise has failed.
Thank You for the hope of resurrection—
for the day when Jesus calls the sleepers from their graves,
the day when we will hold our children again,
the day when every broken story is restored,
the day when love is stronger than death.
Until that day, hold us close.
Keep our hearts faithful.
Let the words of the thief be the prayer of our lives:
“Lord, remember me.”
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
