Remember

Yesterday, the sermon was about Communion and how it challenges us towards community, memory and hope. What I can’t get over is my pastor’s description of what it means to “remember.” As we looked at the passage of scripture in 1 Corinthians 11, he explained that when Paul exhorts the church in Corinth to take the bread and wine of The Lord’s Supper “in remembrance” of Christ, just as Jesus commanded, the definition of remembering is a bit more carnal than we may think at first.

In fact, if we were to look at the original Greek of the word, we would find its definition as being closer to the opposite of “dismember.” So what we’re doing when we eat the bread and drink the wine in the Lord’s Supper is less like recalling and more like fusing an appendage: sewing a lost arm back on to our body.

I love how physical that description is. I love thinking that when Jesus said to drink the wine in remembrance of him, he meant to drink it because he wants to sew us back together. I love the thought that it’s not just about my recalling what I believe, but the reality that in the sacrament I experience healing.

Psalm 105:8 says that God “remembers his covenant forever, the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations.” The more I’m considering “remembering” today, the more I’m coming back to the thought that we can remember because God remembered us first, in the midst of our having separated ourselves from His body. Through Christ, he reattaches us to the place we’ve spent our lives longing to belong.

It’s Laundry/Grocery Monday! So, I’ve got to get to work, friends. But I’ll leave you with that small thought in hopes that you have some lovely reflections to add to the comments. Now, go fuse some missing limbs back on.