What makes a memory? I’m sure that all of us here have memories — some fond and others far from fond — of persons, places, and events that have been significant in our lives. Memories are so significant that we could actually say that individuals are the sums of their memories. Maybe that’s why courses on writing one’s life story always seem to be popular? So one could say that even when we dredge up painful memories, the recognition and the sharing can be both therapeutic and community building. “Building memories” or “making memories” has become part of our popular culture.
What is true of individuals is certainly true of families. There is a continuing interest in researching genealogy, as evidenced by the various ‘how-to’ books, classes, and web-sites on the internet; Ancestry.com has made genealogy rather easy. We have events and happenings that define us and give us direction in how we both think and act. Sometimes we may think and act in accord with the way we’ve been formed by our families, and sometimes precisely the opposite. Close your eyes for a moment . . . now recall a family gathering with me. Who is there? How are you involved? If you think hard enough it’s almost like we’re there again with those people we love, isn’t it? Such is the power of memory.
The people of Israel were told by God that they were to be a people of memory. They were to remember where and what they had been and how they had been delivered from bondage by God’s gracious action. This recalling of history — the Greek word for it is anamnesis — is in itself a profession of faith in God. However, it’s not just something that’s located in the past and not to be forgotten. Rather, this re-membering makes us contemporaries with the events that are recalled; that history is also our history, it brings the parts together again, we re-member who we are and from where we came. To remember what God has done for Israel is to be part of the action because it encompasses the past, speaks to our own liberation today, and assumes the future. Why? Because God, who is “the same yesterday, today, and forever,” is the One who acts. And God “who is, who was, and who is to come” is the One who gives this gift. Thus, for the Christian, T. S. Eliot’s words in his Four Quartets take on new significance, “Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future.”
Every time the people of Israel remembered their history the deliverance they had experienced became real again. This is the case for us, as well. When Jesus had his encounter with evil in the desert it was to bring full-circle the experience of humanity, with a chance to make the right answers to temptation, instead of giving in. What we heard in Luke’s Gospel was only one part of what would eventually be ‘recapitulated’ through the Cross and the Resurrection. Irenaeus of Lyons, writing in the third century, said this is why Luke laid out the generations back to Adam and the Lord did what he did. It wasn’t for him, it was for us; because the whole of humanity was, is, and will be recapitulated in Jesus Christ.
Each time we recall our deliverance, recall God’s gracious action toward us, we are re-membering the Body of Christ. That is, we are being brought more and more into union with the Lord. If you ever wonder why we pray that long Eucharistic prayer, the “Great Thanksgiving” well, now you know. Our action in breaking open the Word together, and then sharing the bread broken and the cup poured out makes tangible what God has done for us in Christ. It does for us what recalling the “wandering Aramean” and the offering of first fruits did for Israel. That’s why I believe that the best definition of Christian worship is, “gather the folks, tell the story, break the bread;” to which I add, go forth to serve. In those simple actions we re-member the Body of Christ and understand why or how memories are formative for us and for our community.
We need to remember that Scripture is the memory of the faith community written down, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is one the things that Rowan Williams, retired Archbishop of Canterbury, points out so beautifully in Why Study the Past? We can’t always assume that things are going to be the same, so we write history, we organize our memories and out of that comes the Scripture, the memory of Israel and the early Church on how God dealt with them and worked among them. When Jesus had his encounter with Satan, “the accuser” tried to take Scripture and use it to justify giving in to temptation. Each time Jesus countered this abuse by putting the Scripture back into its proper context. He called upon the memory of God’s activity and turned aside the arguments to do wrong.
Here is an example for each of us. Jesus confronted temptations that are really common to all of us, like the need for sustenance and the desire for power and control. When we are tempted with these things, sometimes even backed-up with quotations from the Scripture, we can see through them when we tap into the collective memory of our faith, the Christian tradition if you will. It’s not enough to appeal to the Bible if it’s out of the context of God’s love and our response in faithfulness. For example, we can’t use the Bible to promote hate. We need to see everything weighed in the balance of the living Word in the living community of faith. As the late Russian theologian Georges Florovsky wrote: “tradition in the church is not merely the continuity of human memory or the permanence of rites and habits. Ultimately, ‘tradition’ is the continuity of divine assistance, the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit . . . It is primarily an appeal to persons, to holy witnesses.” [St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers] Our Lord gave us an example in his appeal to the “holy witnesses” of Scripture within the context of God’s gracious activity.
Thus, Paul can tell us that deliverance comes among us when we “call upon the Name of the Lord.” It’s not just by believing in the heart, but by the manner in which we live it out that makes the difference. After all, we’re told in the Scriptures that “the demons believe and tremble.” Belief is only the starting point, confessing the faith involves living out our covenant relationship with God and with one another. If you’ve not taken the time to review the Baptismal covenant lately I would urge it upon you as a good Lenten discipline – BCP pages 304-5. Meditate for a bit on what we say we are and if the actions aren’t there to match the intellectual assent, the believing, then there’s a project to be worked on. The “first fruits” that we can offer to God are lives lived in accord with God’s will and God’s love.
For us, memories can sometimes fade, either through physical illness or aging, or because we’ve not kept the memory active and alive within us. However, God’s memory is never-ending. In the Eastern Church, when someone dies the prayer is “Eternal memory grant unto them, O Lord.” Once I asked an old monk why that prayer was made and he said to me, “Ah, if God should ever forget us; well, we’d never existed, had we?” God doesn’t forget and calls each of us to remember who we are and whence we came.
Re-membering the Body of Christ means that we are constantly putting ourselves back into God’s active, living memory. When we gather around the Lord’s Table to “do this in remembrance of me,” we are re-membering the Body of Christ and making it visible again in the world. When we go our separate ways, the Body of Christ goes forth into the world through you and through me. God’s love, God’s care reaches out to the world through you and through me. God’s love, God’s care reaches out to the world through our words, our actions, and our touch. For Christians, this is how memories are made: gather the folks, tell the story, break the bread. Then go to live the story and be the bread.
Sermon preached by the Very Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
1st Sunday of Lent
14 February 2016