Remembering

In memory (or remembrance) of her (Mark 14:9)… To know how precious memory is, look no further than the reality of forgetting. There is a natural loss of memory as we age. We may all fret at not being able to recall a name or place. But some of that loss is painfully accelerated by dementias, even unto death, where the brain simply forgets how to “be.” This is individual forgetting which we may know in ourselves, in others, or someday will know. Then there is the forgetting of the world, of society, of culture. We want to forget things simply too awful to remember, that we don’t want to face, or try to fix, but thank God, there are voices to keep them alive. Or sometimes our corporate consciousness is just too overloaded to remember things beyond our individual needs.

When we remember, we make meaning of something or someone now in the past. We may not make the same meaning every time. We may make new associations. In fact Jesus encourages this. Whenever the good news is shared, he says, let it not be in old ways where we also learned of God’s love, or in even Jesus’ own way. Let it be shared in honor, in memory, of a nameless woman. Let it be shared in honor of your own experience. Remember and make the association between God’s love and the socially low. To remember is to reconnect and reshape. “Members” are parts of something. When something is dis-membered, it is taken apart, maybe destroyed. When something is re-membered, it is put back together. That is the power of remembrance in the celebration and sharing of communion. As a Body of Christ, we are re-gathered, re-assembled, re-membered. Let us remember that remembering itself is an act of justice for those who would be forgotten. Remembering is God’s work in us.
 

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.