The Lord”s Supper: The Power of Memory, the Power of Presence

 

By Paul Blowers

  
• This article is no longer available online, but articles about the Lord’s Supper that appeared in the July 12/19, 2009, and June 10, 2007, issues of CHRISTIAN STANDARD–plus more–are available for purchase as a single, redisigned, easy-to-read and easy-to-use downloadable resource/pdf (a fuller explanation is below).

 

The Lord’s Supper: A Memory and More

Item D021535209  “¢Â  $2.99

If you keep doing something often enough, long enough, it will change you. Take, for example, the Lord”s Supper.

If we practice the Lord”s Supper in a meaningful way, week after week, it will change us for the better by helping us grow closer to God. If we treat it as a ritual largely devoid of meaning, however, it can damage us by causing our faith itself to become a meaningless ritual.

In this 14-page resource, eight writers look at the Lord”s Supper (Communion) past, present, and future””its power, purpose, and promise.

As one writer puts it: “Nothing delivers the death of Jesus like the Lord”s Supper!”

The articles previously appeared in CHRISTIAN STANDARD (primarily in the issues of June 10, 2007, and July 12/19, 2009).

All downloads include permission to reproduce material up to 10 times for ministry and educational purposes. To sample the first few paragraphs of Paul Blowers’s article, continue reading below . . .   

 

 

Memory is a powerful thing. As many of you know, that fact was driven home very personally for me in the decade that ended in 2004, when my mom at last succumbed to the insidious ravages of Alzheimer”s disease.

Watching my mom slowly lose her short-term memory at first and long-term memory later on . . . watching her become increasingly unfamiliar with the familiar . . . watching her in the end look at her family like we were perfect strangers . . . was like watching her lose her very self, her very identity, her very being.

After all, in one sense, we are what we remember.

A COMMUNITY OF MEMORY

 

During that very difficult period, I was greatly comforted, believe it or not, by an intensely theological book written by David Keck, a fellow church historian, whose mother also died of Alzheimer”s, a disease he calls “deconstruction incarnate.” In his book Forgetting Whose We Are: Alzheimer”s Disease and the Love of God (Abingdon Press, 1996), Keck paints a picture of the church as one magnificent community of memory, which is able with its collective memory of the gracious action of God to remember vicariously on behalf of those Christians who, because of disease or senility, have lost their ability to remember the gracious God.

In reflecting on Keck”s book, I was especially comforted by the idea that, while my mom was so very ill and had lost her memory, her family””indeed her larger church family””were all along not only remembering her as a beloved saint, but remembering for her the Lord Jesus. Vicariously they were remembering that God loved her, that he gave up his only Son for her, to redeem her from her sin and to offer her the grace of everlasting life. Her memory may have dissipated, but the church”s memory remains strong and powerful and effective . . .