Remember - Backward and Forward

Perhaps more than any other time of year, Christians engage in practices of remembering during this week.  We remember Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. We remember a last meal with his followers. We remember a foot-washing, an act of servant-hood we are called to emulate. We remember betrayal, arrest, trial, and execution.  And, of course, come Sunday we will remember the triumph of resurrection.

Today, on Maundy Thursday, we remember Jesus' last moments with his followers, his friends. Many of us will engage in foot-washings and reenact the Last Supper as we remember and rehearse the events of a Thursday long ago.  As well we should. No doubt the gospel writers expect that we will give special significance to the last words Jesus speaks with his followers, his last commands to them.

In my own congregation, we will gather tonight for a fellowship meal. While at tables we will break bread and share the cup, recalling that Last Supper. And when Sunday comes, we will break bread and share the cup again. And, I fear, for some worshipers it will be Thursday all over again.

When I grew up in the church, the Lord's Supper, no matter what time of year it was celebrated, was a somber, ritualized recollection of Maundy Thursday. It remembered back to what Jesus had done long ago. No wonder many members found the move to more frequent observance of the Supper troublesome. (Four time a year was the norm in my Presbyterian childhood.) Who would want to do Maundy Thursday all the time?

But while we rightly remember back nearly 2000 years tonight, this Sunday is a different matter. No longer is our host the memory of one about to die. Our host on Sunday is the Risen One. Echos of Maundy Thursday remain, but the new pattern is the Easter evening meal with disciples on the Emmaus road. Sunday's meal knows the past, but it remembers forward, to the great banquet to come at the full arrival of God's reign.

While we do well to remember backward tonight, such remembering is not enough. Christian faith is rooted in God's saving acts in history, but it is focused on the future. In Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, God's future, God's reign, God's new realm, begins to invade our present. And we are called, by our words, deeds, choices, and priorities, to remember forward, proclaiming God coming kingdom that we already participate in through the Spirit.

Tonight we gather. We eat and drink "in remembrance" of Jesus. But don't forget to remember forward.

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