A Night for Remembering
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue gave this sermon from his home
on Maundy Thursday, April 9, 2020
A Night for Remembering
1 Corinthians 11:23-26 and Luke 22:14-30
Tonight is a night for remembering.
Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” I want to go deeper with our understanding of what it means to remember, because as I prepared for this liturgy, I saw how remembering connects meaningfully to sheltering in place.
Remembering is bound up tightly with the Holy Eucharist, the central act of remembrance of the Christian community. Jesus instituted the Eucharist the night before he died. Through the Eucharist, we remember Jesus as our Passover lamb, whose death and resurrection set us free from bondage to sin.
Through the Eucharist, we retell how our Lord made a new covenant with us on the night he was betrayed. But in the Eucharist, we don’t simply remember the meal, in the sense of recalling that this is something Jesus did one night a long time ago. We take part in that Eucharistic meal. Even now when those worshipping online can’t receive the consecrated bread and wine that are Christ’s body and blood, we all enter into the story to make Jesus’ story our own story.
I remember so clearly one day when I experienced this idea being lived out so seamlessly. I went to Folkston, Georgia to visit Rhoda Maxwell. Her son was King of Peace’s Treasurer, Neil, who I relied on so much when planting the church. Rhoda was in rehabilitation for a broken hip. As we visited, Mrs. Maxwell told me about her life, about her family. But more than once she seamlessly switched from stories of how God had acted in her own life to Jesus’ story.
She could effortlessly go from a story about Neil growing up to say, “Do you remember that time when Jesus was cooking fish on the beach and his disciples did not recognize him at first, then Peter jumped in the water and swam for shore once he knew it was Jesus?” Her quick transitions caught me off guard at first. On subsequent visits with her I found that the story of God’s love shown through Jesus’ life was so integrated with her own story that those sudden switches in conversation came natural for her.
I have thought in the years since, that when I grow up, I want to be like that. In fact, when we all grow up spiritually, we will be something like that. We will weave the story of God’s love through our lives so that our lives and God’s ongoing story of reconciliation found in scripture might form one tightly woven narrative.
On the night he was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, “Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.”
After supper, he took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, “Drink this, all of you: This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.”
These words of Jesus come from both of our readings for tonight. In Luke’s Gospel and in the First Letter to the Corinthians we get this word “remembrance.”
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Anamnesis is the Greek word here for remembering and it should sound familiar as it connects closely to the better know amnesia. Amnesia is to forget. A seemingly common diagnosis on Soap Operas, true amnesia is a medical term for memory loss caused by significant brain injury, repression, shock, illness, or fatigue.
Anamnesis is un-amnesia or put another way remembrance is an unforgetting of something already known. In that sense, we all are all beloved children of God, loved by our creator who created us out of love for love. We were formed to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. But in a world turned from God we can forget that we are known and loved. In the Eucharist we remember, or in this case, un-forget this central truth.
I recall Bishop Louttit teaching me the greater significance of remembering. We were at dinner and he was describing how in the late sixties and early 1970s he wanted the prayer book then being written and tested to not translate the word anamnesis, but to have that Greek word in our Eucharistic prayer as he found that we had lost the powerful meaning of remember.
He said that if we think of dis-member can mean to have an arm or a leg amputated we are getting closer to what is meant here. For when a surgeon operates to reattach that arm or leg, they are re-membering the person, adding that member back to the body. “That” Bishop Louttit said, “is what we mean when we say do this in remembrance of me. We are bringing the Body of Christ together.” He said he eventually realized that what we need to do instead is just be better about teaching what remembrance means.
That discussion has been on my heart as we can no longer gather for in-person worship. And strange as it is, I am going to celebrate the Eucharist in just a moment and I can’t invite you to receive the physical bread and wine, which will be Christ’s Real Presence in this Eucharist. Yet here is one place where this Pandemic has helped the church recover something vital.
Bishop Benhase mentioned in his Palm Sunday sermon the all but forgotten direction on page 457 of the Book of Common Prayer in the section on the Ministration to the Sick. It reads:
If a person desires to receive the Sacrament, but, by reason of extreme sickness or physical disability, is unable to eat and drink the Bread and Wine, the Celebrant is to assure that person that all the benefits of Communion are received, even though the Sacrament is not received with the mouth.
The situation is different, but the theology is the same. You will receive all of the benefits of communion. For the deeper truth is that you are already in communion with everyone with whom the Holy Trinity is in communion. That connection is real, but sometimes we can forget it. The Eucharist is when we un-forget how much God loves us and in so doing, we are re-membered, brought back into connection with the whole Body of Christ.
By the need to remain physically distant in order to stop this disease from killing the most vulnerable among us, I can’t place the host in your hands and give you the chalice from with to drink. Yet as we gather to remember Christ’s presence among us in the Holy Eucharist, the Body of Christ comes together just the same. You can see it in this liturgy. For this is as far from a private Eucharist as one can get. I will pray the prayer for communion with you. Yes, after this service has ended, Victoria and I will consume the bread and wine as always to not have any sacrament in reserve as we head into Holy Saturday. But, in this online worship, we will be with you in praying the prayer for spiritual communion. While worshipping in the time of COVID-19 might help us recapture the importance of the Word in Word and Sacrament as we study scripture and pray the Daily Offices, this time need not hinder a greater devotion to Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood.
You have already heard Benjamin Varner singing Watch, O Watch as we gathered for worship. And Pierce Baker joined us from his home in Valdosta while Deacon Jim Strickland joined us from his home in Hawkinsville. We will pray our Prayers of the People with the Bianco Family in Savannah and hear music from Eli Irvin and Tom Purdy coming from their homes. This is the Body of Christ, with each one serving from the gifts God has given them. Tonight is a night for remembering, for joining together once more.
The love of God that connects us is far more powerful than the pandemic that has us sheltering in place. We are not separated by fear, but staying apart physically out of love. So let us continue this Eucharistic Feast. For in the very night in which he was betrayed, what Jesus most wanted was to give us the gift of remembering who we are and whose we remain.
Amen.
