I enjoy, and often use, the resources at Mars Hill Audio (no relation to Mars Hill Church). I have written about the impact of their Audio Report on the life and thought of Michael Polanyi, especially his theory of Tacit Knowledge. Their Audio Report on courtship, dating, and marriage (see Audio Report link above) has also proved extremely helpful to me in conversations with young adults.

One of the more thought-provoking items I have purchased from Mars Hill was a collection of essays on the theme(s) of Community, Place and Memory. I am in the process of trying to work out a biblical theology of ‘memory,’ and a particular essay in this collection was quite helpful. The essay is by Gina Bria, and is titled, A Theology of Things. Her thesis is as follows:

Experiences and memories are composed of the place and things which populate them. Yet, in our hast to spiritualize experience, we are apt to lose these very memories by the loss of our sensual touchstones. The things that surround us have a theological power to lead us to recollection, thereby deepening our apprehension of the spiritual.

The author points out the mysterious fact that our memories are often ‘contained’ in objects or senses. I suppose everyone can relate to this fact. For me, the smell of freshly cut grass brings me back to football two-a-days and the sight of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles brings childhood memories of Saturday mornings and Christmas presents into my mind. Pictures do much the same thing. This is why they say a picture is worth a thousand words – a picture can evoke so many specific memories that might have remained dormant had the picture not been seen. Jamey Johnson’s song, In Color, comes to mind as an example of how this process rings true.

The author also cites the strange phenomenon that nursing home residents often rapidly lose their memory, even when no medically documentable change has happened to their brains. The issue is not usually that they have suddenly become senile. Rather, the issue is often that they have been removed from the objects which ‘hold’ many of their memories. Take the object away, the memory disappears.

Bria then engages an interesting line of thought about the Lord’s Supper. This is where the rubber meets the road theologically. And this is where I want to linger. But first, let me begin with an important Old Testament text on the subject of memory:

1 Samuel 7:12 ¶ Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, ‘Till now the LORD has helped us.’

The Israelites were living in fear of the Philistines. God came to their aid and provided deliverance and victory. Samuel wants to memorialize this event for future reference to God’s mighty act of deliverance. He raises up a memorial stone, a stone of remembrance (i.e. Ebenezer). Many other landmarks and acts are recorded in the OT as ‘reminders’ of God’s mighty acts. Jacob’s monument at Bethel comes to mind, as well as the institution of the Passover. These memorials were meant to ‘hold’ the memories of God’s revealing of himself and delivering his people.

Yet these monuments and rituals were not merely ‘memorials’ in the cold sense that we often use the term. They were not tombstones. They were not marking the end. They were marking the beginning.

The case is much the same in the Lord’s Supper. Jesus says that we are to eat and drink ‘in remembrance’ of Him. The Greek term anamnesis (‘remembrance’ or ‘reminder’) has been the subject of much debate, but it would be difficult not to conclude that this term entails remembering something with a view to the present. That is, the Lord’s Supper is not like a tombstone. We don’t simply eat and drink to remember a death. Rather, we eat and drink to remember the present ramifications of that death – namely, eternal life in the presence of the resurrected Christ.

Bria makes a profound observation in her essay (which I will paraphrase): The issue in ‘this is my body’  is not simply the age-old debate of Transubstantiation vs. Consubstantiation vs. Memorial vs. Real-Spiritual-Presence. Rather, the issue is this: ‘Is Christ present in the world at all?’ Communion is meant to point us to the ongoing power and presence of Christ now – not in the elements themselves, but in reality in general.

Consider this fact: our happiest memories are not happy. Rather, they are melancholy. They are like C.S. Lewis’ ‘Joy’ – they are a melancholy longing to enter into a certain state.  Happy memories are those memories that we wish we could reenter, or summon up, in the present. Memories remind us that we are temporal, finite, and mortal. The fact that the past is always ‘the good old days’ points us to the reality that the present is never as we would have it be.

Our kids grow up. Our parents die. Loves are lost. And, a second reference to country music, we ask, ‘Are the good times really over for good?’

Memorials, rituals, pictures, and memories in general, in their melancholiness, are meant to point us to a memory that is never truly a memory – an eternal Now. The risen Lord, Jesus Christ, is our Ebenezer, our Passover, our Communion. He is the ever-present Now.

He is the LORD – I am what I am, I will be what I will be.

He ‘was and is and is to come,’ the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last.

He is the memory that is always present in the present.

Grown up kids, lost loves, tombstones, faded memories, all point us to One who is Now, and will be. In Christ the family never parts, for there is a communion of the saints. In Christ lost love is never lost, for life is eternal. In Christ tombstones are markers for resurrections sites.

In Christ, memories have not only present power, but present reality. Ebenezer – ‘hither by thy help I’m come’ – extends to ‘his grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.’  Beware of nostalgia. Memories are not meant to terminate in the past. Those longings are meant to point us to the only One who can fulfill those longings in the present and future – they are meant to point us to the One who changes not. So don’t spurn your memories, but don’t idealize, or idolize, them either. Rather worship the One to whom all true longing points.