Sacramental Remembering
May 29, 2011
John 13:34-35, 14:15-21
Have you ever awakened with a start from a vivid dream and wondered where you were? Or ever awakened while on a trip and found the unfamiliar surroundings utterly strange and disorienting? Ever searched for 15 minutes for your car keys – or for your car?
Ever had on the tip of your tongue the name of an acquaintance or a friend or a family member? Ask my kids how often they’ve been called by the wrong name, or worse, by the dog’s name.
More poignantly, have you visited with a loved one who suffers Alzheimer’s or another form of memory loss?
Memory is crucial to who we are. It would be difficult to make it through a single day without the gift of memories. They are as common as recalling a name, a place, a meal, and as extraordinary as the first time you saw your lover, or the birth of a child, or the death of a parent. They are as commonplace as learning to ride a bike or tie your shoes, and as life-changing as remembering your a,b,c’s or that 2 + 2 = 4.
Without memory, we do not know who we are, nor to whom we belong.
That’s why we ask that baseline catechism question all the time: who are you? I am a child of God.
We need to remember who we are, and to whom we belong. Memory makes manifest in our lives the simple grace of that foundational truth: we are children of God.
Memory is clearly crucial to our understanding of sacraments. After all, we gather at this table because Jesus said, “this do in remembrance of me.”
One of my favorite seminary professors, Mac Worford, had a pithy phrase that he impressed upon a generation of seminarians: “the church,” he told us often, “is a house of memory.”
He said this by way of reminding us that the churches we would serve did not and would not ever be “ours.” First, of course, they would belong to God. But second, they would belong to the people who had arrived long before we got on the scene and who would, in most cases, be there long after we moved on.
They – you – have built up the church stone by stone.
Of course, like all phrases that are more than merely pithy, Mac’s observation had a bit of a biting edge to it, as well. For when the foundation stones become stumbling blocks, the house of memory turns into a museum of nostalgia, and the movement of the spirit in the world which is the church of Jesus Christ, becomes an ossified institution unworthy of its namesake or his memory.
So, on this Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend, can memory serve a sacramental function for an institution that is far too often bound to its history such that it is unable to reflect the unbound spirit of the living God? Can memory serve a sacramental function in our individual lives – inspiring us to live into the best of who we are by making newly present in the world the grace of God that we have experienced in the past?
The essence of Ignatian spirituality – named for St. Ignatius of Loyola, father of the Jesuits – rests in the conviction that memory can be sacramental – even if Ignatius, himself, never put it that way. The heart of Ignation spiritual practice resides in the simple, daily work of recalling the day. Of course, it’s not as simple as remembering what you had for breakfast or whether or not you got the milk from the grocery store. It’s more about being attentive to where God is active in your day by paying attention to, and remembering, the moments of the day that fill you up, that remind you of God’s love for you, that witness grace or kindness in the world. Which means, of course, that breakfast or grocery shopping might turn out to be moments of grace, but it’s not just the cereal or the shopping, but rather also the presence of God that you notice in the simple and ordinary moments as well as in the rare and extraordinary.
Our time of confession this morning, for example, was a simple variation on Ignatian spirituality.
We often open session meetings, or other small group meetings at Clarendon, sharing with one another the highs and lows, the moments that lift us up and the ones that weigh us down, places of light and of darkness, from our own lives. This is all straight out of the work of St. Ignatius.
He was convinced that if you pay careful attention, over the long haul, to the ordinary and the extraordinary moments of your life that you will discern patterns. The patterns will reveal what gives you life and what drains life from you, and that will point you toward the presence of God in your life, and toward your own callings in life.
Memorial Day is a fine time to, well, remember, and, in particular, to remember all of the people who have served our nation. Not only that, it is a fine time to remember the moments when you have served the commonwealth.
It is, moreover, a good time to examine our own lives and our common life, to see what we are serving these days.
Are we living sacramentally? Do our lives show forth the love of God? Do our lives make manifest in the world the otherwise hidden grace of God? Are we a means of grace? Do we remember the simple yet profoundly difficult commandment of our Lord – to love one another just as he loved – and do we ground our lives in that challenging word?
Moreover, do we believe that doing so matters? Does it – would it – make a difference in the world to live that way, moment to moment all of the moments of our lives?
Listening to Peg speak about life here during wartime I was struck – as I always am when I listen to people who lived through those days – by the shared sacrifice and the common purpose that bound people together. You do not have to glorify war nor even agree on whether or not it is or was necessary to recognize and honor the sacrifices made by those who set aside narrow personal interest for the sake of a common cause.
A great common cause binds people together.
Living each day in obedience to the commandment of Christ is a great common cause, and it is the singular cause of the gathered community of the church. Or, it could be.
George McCloud, who founded the Iona Community in Scotland in 1938, as a prophetic witness for peace in a time of war and as a sign of hope in the midst of the despair of the Great Depression, argued that a shared commitment to an impossibly large task is a prerequisite to community. In other words, if you don’t have something worth giving your lives to, then you will not give your life to a community because authentic community is about sharing your life deeply and fully and, let’s face it, at great risk. Authentic community takes hard work and shared sacrifice.
The community that formed around Jesus responded to a singular charge, or invitation, that came to order their lives together. Jesus charged them to live according to a new commandment, and he told them that their lives would be measured by it: love one another as he had loved them.
“If you love me,” he told them, “you will keep my commandment.”
It really is all that simple, and, of course, impossibly difficult, as well. But it is that impossibly difficult common task that binds a community together.
In pursuing such causes we often feel the presence of God powerfully and palpably moving in our midst. On our Rebuilding Together work sites over the past several springs, we have taken on some huge tasks, and we have felt drawn tightly together in working to accomplish them. Indeed, without being drawn together we would never have accomplished them.
In such binding together, we are also bound in the spirit’s tether. That is to say, when we come together to take on a worthy, difficult, common cause we are truly the body of Christ in the world, and are bound together as such by the Spirit of God moving in our midst.
We will not be engaged every day in such work, but we can be empowered by the shared memory of the common cause. That is the sacramental nature of memory – it can make visible in our lives a grace that has been hidden by time.
So this morning, what hidden graces do you need to recollect, to remember, that will empower you again to live more fully into Jesus’ simple, yet impossible commandment. What do you remember that enables you to love as Jesus’ loved?
The work of such recollection, such remembering, lies close to the heart of sacramental living.
May this word be bread for your living this week.
John 13:34-35, 14:15-21
Have you ever awakened with a start from a vivid dream and wondered where you were? Or ever awakened while on a trip and found the unfamiliar surroundings utterly strange and disorienting? Ever searched for 15 minutes for your car keys – or for your car?
Ever had on the tip of your tongue the name of an acquaintance or a friend or a family member? Ask my kids how often they’ve been called by the wrong name, or worse, by the dog’s name.
More poignantly, have you visited with a loved one who suffers Alzheimer’s or another form of memory loss?
Memory is crucial to who we are. It would be difficult to make it through a single day without the gift of memories. They are as common as recalling a name, a place, a meal, and as extraordinary as the first time you saw your lover, or the birth of a child, or the death of a parent. They are as commonplace as learning to ride a bike or tie your shoes, and as life-changing as remembering your a,b,c’s or that 2 + 2 = 4.
Without memory, we do not know who we are, nor to whom we belong.
That’s why we ask that baseline catechism question all the time: who are you? I am a child of God.
We need to remember who we are, and to whom we belong. Memory makes manifest in our lives the simple grace of that foundational truth: we are children of God.
Memory is clearly crucial to our understanding of sacraments. After all, we gather at this table because Jesus said, “this do in remembrance of me.”
One of my favorite seminary professors, Mac Worford, had a pithy phrase that he impressed upon a generation of seminarians: “the church,” he told us often, “is a house of memory.”
He said this by way of reminding us that the churches we would serve did not and would not ever be “ours.” First, of course, they would belong to God. But second, they would belong to the people who had arrived long before we got on the scene and who would, in most cases, be there long after we moved on.
They – you – have built up the church stone by stone.
Of course, like all phrases that are more than merely pithy, Mac’s observation had a bit of a biting edge to it, as well. For when the foundation stones become stumbling blocks, the house of memory turns into a museum of nostalgia, and the movement of the spirit in the world which is the church of Jesus Christ, becomes an ossified institution unworthy of its namesake or his memory.
So, on this Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend, can memory serve a sacramental function for an institution that is far too often bound to its history such that it is unable to reflect the unbound spirit of the living God? Can memory serve a sacramental function in our individual lives – inspiring us to live into the best of who we are by making newly present in the world the grace of God that we have experienced in the past?
The essence of Ignatian spirituality – named for St. Ignatius of Loyola, father of the Jesuits – rests in the conviction that memory can be sacramental – even if Ignatius, himself, never put it that way. The heart of Ignation spiritual practice resides in the simple, daily work of recalling the day. Of course, it’s not as simple as remembering what you had for breakfast or whether or not you got the milk from the grocery store. It’s more about being attentive to where God is active in your day by paying attention to, and remembering, the moments of the day that fill you up, that remind you of God’s love for you, that witness grace or kindness in the world. Which means, of course, that breakfast or grocery shopping might turn out to be moments of grace, but it’s not just the cereal or the shopping, but rather also the presence of God that you notice in the simple and ordinary moments as well as in the rare and extraordinary.
Our time of confession this morning, for example, was a simple variation on Ignatian spirituality.
We often open session meetings, or other small group meetings at Clarendon, sharing with one another the highs and lows, the moments that lift us up and the ones that weigh us down, places of light and of darkness, from our own lives. This is all straight out of the work of St. Ignatius.
He was convinced that if you pay careful attention, over the long haul, to the ordinary and the extraordinary moments of your life that you will discern patterns. The patterns will reveal what gives you life and what drains life from you, and that will point you toward the presence of God in your life, and toward your own callings in life.
Memorial Day is a fine time to, well, remember, and, in particular, to remember all of the people who have served our nation. Not only that, it is a fine time to remember the moments when you have served the commonwealth.
It is, moreover, a good time to examine our own lives and our common life, to see what we are serving these days.
Are we living sacramentally? Do our lives show forth the love of God? Do our lives make manifest in the world the otherwise hidden grace of God? Are we a means of grace? Do we remember the simple yet profoundly difficult commandment of our Lord – to love one another just as he loved – and do we ground our lives in that challenging word?
Moreover, do we believe that doing so matters? Does it – would it – make a difference in the world to live that way, moment to moment all of the moments of our lives?
Listening to Peg speak about life here during wartime I was struck – as I always am when I listen to people who lived through those days – by the shared sacrifice and the common purpose that bound people together. You do not have to glorify war nor even agree on whether or not it is or was necessary to recognize and honor the sacrifices made by those who set aside narrow personal interest for the sake of a common cause.
A great common cause binds people together.
Living each day in obedience to the commandment of Christ is a great common cause, and it is the singular cause of the gathered community of the church. Or, it could be.
George McCloud, who founded the Iona Community in Scotland in 1938, as a prophetic witness for peace in a time of war and as a sign of hope in the midst of the despair of the Great Depression, argued that a shared commitment to an impossibly large task is a prerequisite to community. In other words, if you don’t have something worth giving your lives to, then you will not give your life to a community because authentic community is about sharing your life deeply and fully and, let’s face it, at great risk. Authentic community takes hard work and shared sacrifice.
The community that formed around Jesus responded to a singular charge, or invitation, that came to order their lives together. Jesus charged them to live according to a new commandment, and he told them that their lives would be measured by it: love one another as he had loved them.
“If you love me,” he told them, “you will keep my commandment.”
It really is all that simple, and, of course, impossibly difficult, as well. But it is that impossibly difficult common task that binds a community together.
In pursuing such causes we often feel the presence of God powerfully and palpably moving in our midst. On our Rebuilding Together work sites over the past several springs, we have taken on some huge tasks, and we have felt drawn tightly together in working to accomplish them. Indeed, without being drawn together we would never have accomplished them.
In such binding together, we are also bound in the spirit’s tether. That is to say, when we come together to take on a worthy, difficult, common cause we are truly the body of Christ in the world, and are bound together as such by the Spirit of God moving in our midst.
We will not be engaged every day in such work, but we can be empowered by the shared memory of the common cause. That is the sacramental nature of memory – it can make visible in our lives a grace that has been hidden by time.
So this morning, what hidden graces do you need to recollect, to remember, that will empower you again to live more fully into Jesus’ simple, yet impossible commandment. What do you remember that enables you to love as Jesus’ loved?
The work of such recollection, such remembering, lies close to the heart of sacramental living.
May this word be bread for your living this week.
posted by David Ensign at
7:27 AM
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