“This day shall be a day of remembrance for you...”, declares the book of Exodus, after describing in exacting detail how the people are to celebrate the Passover. “Do this in remembrance of me”, says Jesus, after taking, blessing, breaking and sharing the bread and the wine at the Passover meal with his disciples on the night before he is arrested. “I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you...that our Lord Jesus said ‘This is my body that is for you…This cup is the new covenant in my blood, do this in remembrance of me’”, writes Paul in his first letter to the church in Corinth.
The word “remember” comes from the Late Latin rememorari, meaning to be mindful of. To remember, then, is to bring something back to mindfulness. The Hebrew in the Exodus passage is zakar, whose meaning is essentially the same. And the Greek in the New Testament is anamnesko, which means “to deliberately recollect in order to better appreciate the effects or intended results of what happened.”
So you see, this idea of intentional, thoughtful practice of remembrance lies deep in the DNA of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is what we are about throughout the church year as we gather Sunday after Sunday to remember our story through the reading of our Scriptures and to remember our deliverance through the celebration of Holy Eucharist.
And why do we do this? Because we believe that our communal remembering not only shapes us; it also transforms us....(read more)
No comments:
Post a Comment