Remembering, Repeating, Reclaiming

“He who forgets the past is doomed to repeat it.”
(American philosopher, George Santyanna)

“Some day we will start to realize that people are as distinguishable from one another by their
memories as they are by their characters.”
(French political writer, Andre Malraux)

"Do this in remembrance of me."
(Luke 22:19)

It is, in the Christian tradition, Maundy Thursday -- the day near Holy Week's climax when events in the life of Jesus, as least as we observe them, begin to speed up. The Gospels vary in their details -- John, for example, focuses on the footwashing and Jesus' identification of it as the model for observing the "new commandment" of love for which the day has come to be known (Maundy, Latin for 'commandment'). But the backdrop of the Jewish Passover is a constant in the several versions, as is the poignant sense of intimacy in that room. Paul came to summarize those moments in words that have become formulaic:

"...the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'this is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way he tallk the cup also, after supper, saying, 'this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.' (1 Corinthians 11:23-25)

In remembrance. Because those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Because it is our memories that distinguish us.

So what is this "past" that our spiritual amnesia dooms us to repeat? What is this peculiar identity that forgetfulness causes to blur?

Walking through an old country cemetary recently I stood studying an ancient grave marker. Weathered and worn, the face of it has smoothed with the years and the elements to the point that the wording was no longer readable. Lost, over time, are the name and the dates and familiar little references that often color such stones -- ("beloved wife"; "faithful husband and father"; or my personal favorite, "Crowned Queen of the Parsonage"). Lost, in other words, is who that person was. Male or female, adult or child, hero or soldier or mother or spouse. Forgotten -- not only the person buried beneath the stone, but any connection we or anybody else may trace.

We will gather around a table tonight, as a community in worship, to eat, and drink, and remember. We will remember, of course, that night when Jesus did the same with his own community of worship; we will, to be sure, remember him. But we will also remember something about ourselves -- about being loved, sacrificially so; about being sought, relentlessly so; about being cleansed, tenderly and humbly so; about being useful, creatively and transformationally so. We will, in short, remember something about what makes us the people we are, and why we ought to care.

And remembering, we will hopefully steel ourselves against forgetting, requiring us -- and God -- to start all over again.

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