Do this in remembrance...

So, I said in my last entry that I'd get to this in my next, and I already have something else I wanted to write, so I have to write this first.... Go ahead, say that three times fast! Ha!

My Pastor is involved with the planning of this year's community Holocaust Remembrance Service. I think it's actually in May??? But the point is that the service is held in remembrance of the day that Auschwitz captives were freed. They will have age appropriate readers reading letter from inside and outside the camp... Like if a letter was from a 13 year old captive girl - a 13 year old Jewish girl will read it at the service and so on....

And it just hit me in mid conversation with my Pastor as he was saying the committee would really like our youth to greet and hand out bulletins.... that we - I suppose I mean American Culture - don't do things like that to remember.

I mean, you go back to Moses and they are already doing this and that in remembrance - retelling the stories over an over so that all will know just where they came from. At Pesach (Passover) the Seder dinner is the epitome of experiential learning.... I mean.... they read the story and you taste things to remind you of the mortar of the bricks of slavery, to remind you of the many tears they shed....

And I realize that every time we take communion the Pastor quotes Jesus as saying, "Do this in remembrance of me." But I don't REALLY think about it all the time. Like, I'm usually in repentance.... and I say thank you a lot - I think a lot about the last supper.... and what that would have been like to recline and dine with the Son of God. I don't think so much about the torture. I don't think so much about the earthquake, the darkness, the despair...

Maybe it's the grape juice, or the way we wait until EVERYONE has bread in hand to take it together in our church.... or the way we let kids take it b/c we wouldn't want them to feel bad.... I don't know.... but I don't feel like we always do it in remembrance. Sometimes I feel like we take communion b/c it's the first Sunday of the month and that's just what you do.

Then you walk into your local synagogue and every year they celebrate the Passover remembering how God spared them in Egypt and delivered them from slavery..... Does it become empty for the average Jew? Do they go through the motions? Is it more special b/c it's only once a year?

I would definitely think that Communion might be more "special" were it once a year - but man! What if you missed that week??!! That would be horrible.

Some of the most meaningful communions/Eucharists I have ever been a part of have been....
1) When I went to Australia on Campus Crusade summer project we were staying in a hotel across the street from this quaint little park with an amphitheatre style stage. We sat on the stage in a circle and sang together. Then we spread out all over the seats of the amphitheatre and prayed. If there was anyone we needed to reconcile with we were to go seek them out and do our business.... THEN we all came back down to the little stage and took communion together. It was SO powerful to take it together - it was reconciling us as a team, there together, to do God's work.

2) Sometimes I got to help serve Communion at the Methodist Church I used to work at. If no "lay leaders" were there - the Pastor would be like, I'm gonna need your help. I would get to serve the bread... and my Dad came up for communion. And all these people I had come to know and love during my ministry there. Something about being able to look at your father's face (not able to make eye contact, but his face) and saying, "Dad, this is the body of Christ, shed for you." That was very cool.

3) There were some weeks I got to serve wine at Camp Arrowhead - to staff and campers I had built such a relationship and rapport with - there's something very humbling about helping guide the cup for someone to sip from it. "The blood of Christ, The cup of salvation."

4) During a trip to London, and only b/c I was snowed out of flying back to America, I had the time to go to a Eucharist Service at Westminster Abbey. Anyone can - you just have to be there at the correct time and be able to find the right place! In the middle of the service they encouraged everyone to say the Lord's prayer in their native tongue. It was so overwhelming. Of course I cried. Go figure. But I didn't just cry - I wept at the thought. God's truth is universal - in Zambia, in China, in Russia, in England, in Mexico - we all spoke out in different languages and yet said the very same thing. It was one of the most beautiful noises I ever heard. It made me feel a part of something SO MUCH larger than me, or my church. And it was amazing.

5) And at the National Youth Workers' Convention one year, we took communion on the last day in small circles of people that were sitting around us. We would hold it for and serve the person next to us. It was so intimate - even with strangers.

Yet, not in a single one of those experiences did remembering Jesus' sacrifice make it the most moving/meaningful. Why is that? In such a disposable world, has the rich and glorious inheritance of the saints before me been disposed? (Who knew I was nerdy enough to write that?!?!)

Yeah, so I was thinking about that.... ha ha ha.