Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 5, 2007

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Tonight we gather to commemorate that night so long ago when Jesus gathered with his friends to celebrate the Passover and instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist. There has been a lot of ink, and a lot of blood, spilled over the meaning of that sacrament, but one thing is clear. Whatever else the Eucharist may be, it is above all else a remembrance of Jesus. Both our Epistle reading and our Gospel reading this evening make that point. In the Gospel of Luke Jesus tells the disciples to eat the bread “in remembrance of me.” The Apostle Paul reports the same thing in the passage that we heard from 1 Corinthians, the oldest statement of the institution of the Eucharist that we have, dating from the mid 50s of the first century. In it Paul reports that Jesus told the disciples both to eat the bread and to drink the cup “in remembrance of me.” The understanding that the Eucharist is an act of remembering Jesus dates then from very, very early in the Christian tradition. It has been part of the Christian understanding of the Eucharist ever since. Indeed, although we always cover it up with a cloth when we’re actually celebrating the Sacrament, our Communion table, like Communion tables throughout Christendom, is inscribed with the phrase “In Remembrance of Me.” In a few minutes our choir will sing an anthem entitled “And We Remember.” So tonight I want to consider briefly what all this remembering is all about. When we eat the bread and drink the cup in remembrance of Jesus, just what are we remembering exactly, and why would Jesus institute an entire sacrament a major purpose of which is to be a remembrance of him?

Just what we are remembering may seem obvious. Jesus said “in remembrance of me,” so what we are remembering is, obviously, Jesus. Fair enough, but is it really so obvious what it means to remember Jesus? Just what about Jesus are we to remember? What he looked like? What he liked to eat? Whether he was a morning person or an evening person? Things like that are hardly important; and we have no way of knowing them in the first place, much less of remembering them. We aren’t asked to remember such trivial things about him. What we are to remember about him, it seems to me, is the reasons why he mattered to those who knew him, and why he matters to us. After all, why would Jesus want us to remember him? Not out of vanity surely. Although he was fully human, Jesus fully transcended such human foibles as vanity and egotism. Jesus didn’t need us to remember him for his sake. If Jesus is telling us to remember him it has to be because he thinks our remembering him is important for our sake. How can remembering him be important for us? That is the question that Jesus’ instruction to us to remember him raises.

To try to get at an answer to that question, let’s look at what is happening when Jesus gives the instruction to remember him. It is a pivotal point in his life. He has been teaching and healing for about three years, and his ministry has led him to Jerusalem, to the seat of power of the Jewish authorities and the Roman occupiers. He has been warned that enemies are plotting to kill him. He is under no illusions. He knows that his time on earth is up. He knows that that very night he will be betrayed into the hands of the authorities and put to death. He stands at the crossroads where he begins to pass from this life to whatever lies ahead for him beyond this life. As he ends one phase of his mission and moves to another we can imagine him looking both backward over his life so far and ahead to what is coming. I think his instruction to his friends, and to us, to remember him has that dual character as well. It is an instruction to look back and remember his life, his ministry, and his teaching. And it is an instruction to look ahead—ahead from the vantage point of that fateful night—to his death. What do we see when we obey his command, when we remember both his life and his death? What do we see, and what do we remember?

When we look at his life we see human life the way God intends it to be. We see human life committed to the liberation of the poor and the oppressed. We see human life dedicated to nonviolence and to peace. We see God in the flesh including where his society and his religion excluded. We see a radical acceptance of the full humanity of women in a patriarchal and misogynist culture. We see compassion displacing purity as the defining mark of the life of faith. We see courage in the face of threats. We see radical trust in God, a trust that enables us even to face death for the sake of God’s people and God’s Word. Jesus call to us to remember him is first of all a call to remember his life and his teaching, his lessons and his example. It is a call to us in remembering those things to emulate them. Jesus’ call to remember is also a call to follow, because the life we are called to remember is so inspired and so inspiring that when we truly grasp it, it grasps us and moves us to live in the same way.

What do we see when we look forward from this night to Jesus’ death? We see an innocent man unjustly tortured and put to death to be sure, but we see more than that. We see more than that because we Christians confess that Jesus Christ is more than an innocent man. We confess that he is nothing less than God the Son made flesh. In his person he combined perfect humanity and perfect divinity. So on his cross we see not only a man, we see God Godself. We see God Godself suffering and dying. We see God in the person of Jesus entering into and assuming human suffering and death. We see, as I’ve said so often around here, and as I will keep saying around here, God demonstrating

God’s unshakable solidarity with humans in all aspects of human life, up to and including unjust suffering and death.

So when we remember Jesus in the Sacrament of the Eucharist we don’t just remember a person. We remember what we know of that person, but most of all we remember that person’s meaning for us and for our world today. We remember his call for the coming of the Realm of God, that realm of peace and justice for all people. We remember that he excluded no one and that he reached out most of all to those whom his society rejected an unrighteous and unworthy. We remember that he showed us God’s unconditional love for all people. We remember that he died to show us that that love sustains us even when we suffer and even when we die.

So when you hear the words "“Do this in remembrance of me,” don’t just hear some familiar Christian words. Think of what they mean. Don’t just hear the words, follow them. Remember. Remember Jesus Christ, the man whom God became Remember what he taught and showed us about God’s will and God’s way, the way of love, and of peace. Tonight once more we eat the bread and we drink of the cup. And we remember. We really remember. Amen.