ANAMNESIS

32nd SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (Yr. B)

A Sermon preached at the Church of All Saints, New Eltham on

SUNDAY, 11^th NOVEMBER, 2012 

REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY

*   *   *

Remember me when I am gone away

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you planned;

Only remember me: you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve;

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than you should remember and be sad.

INTRODUCTION

So wrote the 19th cent poet, Christina Rossetti.  Memory is one of our most important and cherished faculties.  The loss of ability to remember, or ignoring the past, can so easily be a cause of pain - and danger.  “Mem'ries,” sang Barbra Steisand,

“may be beautiful and yet

What's too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So it's the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember...
The way we were...”

Memories can cause pain, especially if they recall past hurts.  Events from long, long ago, can exert immense influence on the present for the past has the power to control life now.  But our memories can trick on us.  Over time they can become selective; particular past events haunt us in a way that can continue to cause pain. 

Memories of teenagers causing havoc to the extent the doors of my old church being locked when services began continued to haunt my some of previous congregation for many years long after the problem had passed.  Memories of communal violence have led to endless cycles of war: the ethnic cleansing that went on in the Serbian region of Kosovo was the direct result of the living memory of Ottoman atrocities in the 14th cent.

Personally we are all affected by our memories – sometimes for good but at times creating a sense of fear or leaving us with buried hurts and anger.  Such can be the extent of this that, unless addressed, the lives of some are blighted.  We all need to notice what we tend to hold as a living memory and the effect that has on the way we live now.  Do the memories we cherish enable us to live with greater freedom and joy, or do they have the opposite effect?   Too often memories haunt us and disable us and It’s for that reason that one of the most important of the Healing Ministries is that known as the ‘Healing of Memories’.  Memories of past hurts need to be addressed and the maelstrom of unresolved memories connected with child abuse remind us of the devastating effect that such memories can have unless they are properly addressed and dealt with.

REMEMBERING and the EUCHARIST

Today we particularly remember those who have died in two World Wars and those who have been killed in the many wars and uprisings that have blighted our world since then.  And we do this in the context of the Eucharist.  Week by week, and in many places day by day, it is the same.  The Eucharist is what we celebrate because it is what Jesus told us to do “in remembrance of me”.  But the actual word Jesus is recorded to have used, “anamnesis”, means much more than simply recalling a past event.  The word carries an understanding that, in ‘doing this’ the past becomes present.  We, literally if you like, re-member; bring the scattered members back into one.

Most of us will know that the Eucharist developed out from the Jewish Passover meal: that celebration of the liberation of Israel from their slavery in Egypt through what has become known as the Exodus.   That yearly ritual, mirrored in the weekly Sabbath meal, celebrated for more than three thousand years, has become rooted in the psyche of not only the Jewish people but also provides hope for all who sense they are oppressed and long for their liberation.  As one Jewish thinker has written: ‘Moses, …is writ large on the heart of our people from generation to generation and whose influence on our national life has not ceased from ancient times to now.  … (E)ven if you managed to demonstrate …  that Moses … never lived, … , this would not diminish by one iota the historical reality of the Moses ideal – the one who led us not only forty years through the Sinai desert, but thousands of years, through every the desert we have crossed from the Exodus from Egypt to the present.’
(‘Moses’ by Ahad Ha'Am)

So in celebrating the Eucharist week by week – and, indeed, day by day for our Faith in this remembrance must be recalled in our everyday lives – we are affirming our belief that there is a path to life along which we can be led.  Then one movement that matters is from whatever enslaves us to freedom.  Such freedom can only be gained at a price and many of us are not willing to travel that way towards liberation.  Instead, we are trapped by memories that haunt us and hold us in a life that is controlled by the past.

And so the importance of constantly ‘doing this’, of celebrating this Eucharist, of constantly re-enacting this event, is to enable us to make present the memory of the whole of the dynamic.  Not just the Passion and the Suffering and the Death but also the rising to new life through it all.  By making this offering central to what it means to be a Christian we seek to avoid choosing only those memories which don’t challenge us to move through the pain of the past into our own place of freedom, our Promised Land.  For, as Barbra Steisand sang: “Mem'ries may be beautiful and yet What's too painful to remember We simply choose to forget.”

CONCLUSION

Some years ago I was fortunate in being invited to attend a wedding in a remote village in Upper Egypt.  As part of the street celebrations, in which the whole community joined, there appeared the story-teller, that ancient craftsman whose task is to rehearse the story of the people from generation to generation lest the memory fade.  The communal memory was enlivened and the past made present so that the people knew the story that made them who they were.  That’s why we read the scriptures – to remember the story that enabled a faith and has inspired individuals, cultures and civilisations.  A story out of which the saints live and out of which we find our identity.  We are a people for whom suffering, passion and death is not an end but a movement into life.  And, if we want our faith to grow – if we want it to become part of who we are and how we approach life and not just something we do for an hour on Sunday – there needs to come a time when we claim this communal memory as our own. 

Today’s Eucharist, like every Eucharist, proclaims the memory of an event that continues to inspire.  Not the pious recalling of a long-ago event, but the living affirmation that God seeks to bring us to wholeness.  That is our Faith, a faith that has sustained the Jewish people through centuries of oppression and which has inspired Christians since the day Jesus said, “Do this is remembrance of me”.  The faith that, in spite of suffering and death, God will lead us through if we trust in his love.  “Jesus did not instruct us to repeat the Passover meal,… .  He instructed us to enter into his ‘hour.’ … (the) “hour in which love triumphs” and that we share his hour if we “allow ourselves, through the celebration of the Eucharist, to be drawn into that process of transformation that the Lord intends to bring about.” (Pope Benedict: World Youth Assembly. Cologne.  2005)

To remember the past is, we hope, to learn from it for, as one writer has said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  On this Remembrance Sunday, as we call to mind the sacrifices of women and men and in the face of continual violence around the world, we not only recall the tragedies that led to so many deaths, nor simply recall their lives and our loses.  Rather we are invited to remember the past “allow(ing) ourselves, through the celebration of the Eucharist, to be drawn into that process of transformation that the Lord intends to bring about.” 

Amen

SERMON for 32nd SUNDAY IN ORDINARY - Sunday, 9th November 2008

INTRODUCTION

I wonder how many of you stayed up to midnight – or beyond – to listen to the American Presidential Election broadcast? I began writing this sermon during that Tuesday afternoon when it seemed that Obama was out there as a clear favourite with poor John McCain dragging way behind. And so it proved. What interested me was the way both candidates were preparing massive parties for the end of the process. But, clearly, one party would be more of a wake than a celebration. Yet both had to make the preparations – it would look very bad if you didn’t prepare for a win and who would want to be caught not prepared if you did!

Today’s gospel is, of course, all about preparedness. The parable of the Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids (or virgins in other translations) speaks to all who hear it and has given rise to countless expressions in art, poetry and song. There’s a very graphic watercolour in Tate Britain, for example, by William Blake showing the five foolish women cowering before the wise ones as they realise they’re not going to get any oil for their lamps from these virtuous ladies. It all seems so unfair!

But, hang on; shouldn’t Jesus have created a parable to illustrate how those with enough share what they had with the less fortunate? Isn’t that what Christianity is all about? And that final response from the Bridegroom, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you” leaves us with a sense of exclusion rather than inclusion.

At this point I must speculate. Although I know little of first-century Palestinian culture, common sense tells me that this last feature of Jesus' story was probably meant to make his listeners react. To be excluded from a wedding would have been deeply shocking – so why did Jesus make the point? Well, once again, it’s probably aimed at the Jewish hierarchy and it can be understood as an attack on them – the foolish bridesmaids who will be excluded from the coming Kingdom of God.

The parable is told to the disciples as a wake-up call. Who will keep their lamps lit for the great event? Are they going to keep the eye of their heart fixed on the bridegroom? Are they seeking to serve him in their daily life? And so it is also aimed at us. Do we open yourselves to him in prayer each day and look out for him in the needs of others? Do we seek to put our faith into practice? Or are we getting a bit sleepy? “It doesn’t matter if I don’t come to Mass this week.” “I used to make my confession, but does it really matter?” “I’d like to make a retreat, but haven’t got round to it yet.” “I keep meaning to read the bible and get hold of a Daily Missal, but …”

There are so many excuses we can make for not keeping our Christian faith alert and active both spiritually and practically.

REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY
Today, of course, is also Remembrance Sunday; the day when we are mindful of all who have given their lives in fighting for their country and, at the end of Mass, we shall lay our wreath at the War Memorial.

But we also remember those whose lives are in danger, now. In particular we remember those serving in Afghanistan and Iraq who cannot afford to be like those foolish bridesmaids. Rather, they have to stay awake, keep alert and be prepared. We remember them, too.

One of the images used for Christians is that of the ‘Soldiers of Christ’. The great 18th century hymn writer, Charles Wesley, wrote one of the most well-known hymns using this image:

Soldiers of Christ, arise,
and put your armour on,
strong in the strength which God supplies
through his eternal Son;

To keep your armour bright,
attend with constant care,
Still walking in your Captain’s sight,
and watching unto prayer.

Some, of course, may find such military imagery jarring. But whatever imagery helps we need to be reminded to keep awake, stay alert and be prepared for the coming of the Lord.

Many years ago I read C. S. Lewis’ epic story of ‘The Last Battle’, the seventh and final novel in ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’. You may know the story. In its concluding chapters all those who have ever lived pass before Aslan after the final battle of good and evil. With the end of the Narnia saga, Aslan invites all who would, to follow him into his own land. "Come farther in! Come farther up!" His call reverberates in the minds and hearts all who have come to recognize the true nature of Aslan and they pass into a re-created Narnia: others simply don’t ‘see’ Aslan, they don’t recognise him and they pass into darkness.

This parable of the Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids is a warning to all of us because Jesus knows that there will be an end and a final judgement. These weeks leading up to Advent all focus into that reality and chapters 24 and 25 of Matthew’s gospel, from which we are reading, present the Church with parable after parable dealing with the end times. They’re all about being prepared and, in essence, show that our good works do matter to God.

Today we can at least take heart from the fact that both the wise and the foolish women fell asleep as they waited for the long overdue bridegroom, but there is a critical difference between the two. The Wise ones kept a reserve of oil ready for the time when the Bridegroom came: the foolish ones didn’t. No forward planning, especially as there’s no 24 hr Tesco round the corner! It’s a parable that’s meant to make us take note and reflect on how we can stay prepared for the coming of Jesus, the eternal Bridegroom. And our Faith proclaims he is just that, our lover and our intimate who will come, in time.

And it is our hope in his coming and in the new age that will dawn that needs to occupy our attention. So, perhaps that one word, ‘hope’, is something we can take from today’s readings. The wise person is filled with hope in the future: the foolish person lives only for the day. The Jews personified Wisdom as a Bride all could seek: Jesus, our Bridegroom, is that personification of Holy Wisdom and to be ready for his coming into our lives is to seek to seek wisdom.
And that hope we have is reflected by St. Paul as he writes to the Thessalonians those encouraging words about the Coming of Christ at the end times:

‘For the Lord himself, with a cry of command,
with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet,
will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
Then we who are alive, who are left,
will be caught up in the clouds together with them
to meet the Lord in the air;
and so we will be with the Lord for ever.’

Amen, let it be so.