by Ann-Elise Koerntjes
When I went back to Melbourne in the holidays I saw my Grandpa for the first time since Christmas. But he didn’t see me... I walked into the room but there was no flicker of recognition, no spark of joy at my presence. Instead he kept the same bewildered look on his face, the same look that has been on his face for weeks…for months. A look that reveals nothing but emptiness…
Doctors call it Alzheimer’s, a crippling disease that renders an individual with no past, no present and no future. A tragedy yet nothing can be done about it. Family are left helplessly watching the devastation that this disease ravages on their loved one returning them to the helpless stage of infancy.
Watching this forced me to think. How many people around me have spiritual Alzheimer’s? Do I? Just as there is spiritual blindness and deafness perhaps there is an equivalent to the tragedy that destroys the man of joy, strength and laughter that once was my grandpa. I think I have suffered from it myself. If not then why was Jesus so passionate about us commemorating a tradition whenever we fellowship in memory of Him?
When you have lost your memory, you lose your identity. My Grandpa has no idea of where he has come, or where he is going, and even the people who mean most to him are becoming total strangers. If we forget what Jesus has done on the Cross we lose our identity as Children of God, we lose our future as part of His coming Kingdom and we lose our family, fellow heirs in Christ. We lose all ability to worship, to acknowledge who God is and celebrate what God has done, is doing and will do in us and others.
When Alzheimer’s begins no one is aware, it subtly enters and begins its destructive course. In the same manner, we can easily allow ourselves to forget what God has done, who He is and who we are in Christ. When facing tough times, sometimes the only way to get through is to live on the memory of what God has done in the past, and a knowledge of His character as revealed in Christ, otherwise we will fail.
History proves this true. When the children of Israel were wandering through the desert, they continually forgot these very things. Despite God’s continual reminder of His presence in the tabernacle, a routine of worship and a system of laws involving every aspect of life, they continually forgot the mighty miracles that God has worked among them and for them and his great provision and longed for a life they remembered, their spiritual infancy of Egypt. It is as if their encounter with God had been wiped from their memory, Alzheimer’s of a spiritual variety.
I think that one of the most poignant aspects of communion is its call to remembrance. A call that God made time and time again to the children of Israel. A call that Jesus was sure to ensure that we received loud and clear. "As often as you come together do this in memory of me."
As any act of worship, communion is a choice. A choice to remember, to focus on Who God is, what He has done in Jesus and our new identity as His Child an inheritor of the love and grace of God. If there is any form of antidote to spiritual Alzheimer’s it must be found in our worship, and what could be more appropriate than the very action that Jesus initiated to sustain our memory?
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