As Matthew pointed out last week the readings for these final Sundays of the Easter season have a poignant resonance with this stage in the life of this parish. They are taken from what is called the farewell discourse which Jesus gave to his disciples at the last supper. Last week Matthew focussed on the ideas of glorification and imitation; this week the text asks us to think about remembrance and about peace.
Memory is a curious gift; sometimes things flit into your mind – a scene form a film or a recollection from childhood – which are totally unrelated to your present activity; sometimes things flit out of your mind just when you need them – the name of the person you are talking to or the answers to the exam paper in front of you. Some people have good memories; some people strengthen their memories by using special techniques like Sherlock Holmes’ memory palace. Some times I have been rather shocked by friends’ capacity to remember things I said years ago which have completely escaped my memory.
St Augustine spoke of memory as a vast and infinite profundity and multiplicity – our memories are far greater than we can comprehend – we cannot know ourselves because we cannot know the totality of what our memory contains.
At the Last Supper, Jesus tells the disciples to keep his words, by which he means not only remembering them but acting on them as well. His words aren’t just for learning they are for demonstrating. But the disciples have shown a remarkable incapacity for remembering or understanding. So Jesus also tells them that the Father will send them the Holy Spirit and the Spirit will ‘teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you.’ So the Spirit is to be the source and guarantor of Christian memory. You are in the Spirit when you are remembering Jesus in a way which then leads to Christlike action.
We might explore a little further how that works; it doesn’t I think mean developing a capacity to quote Jesus’ words accurately. Remembrance is built up by prayer, reading, worship, listening, group study and caring service and in all these things by attentiveness. As I’ve said often before, obedience means literally ‘listening to’ – so that the more closely we listen or attend to something, the more likely it is, that it will take up residence in our memories and influence who we are – even when we are not consciously remembering it. It is the equivalent of what Paul means when he tells his readers to let the word of God ‘dwell in them richly.’
The study of memory in the modern age has been rather one sided. Freud concentrated on explaining people’s neurotic and pathological behaviour by revealing their bad and buried memories. We do not spend nearly so much time attending to the way in which our generous and heroic actions are caused by our good and buried memories.
The disciples are afraid that Jesus’ departure will mean that they become scattered and forgetful. Jesus reassures them that the Spirit will enable them to remember and understand. And in that way he promises them also that they will have peace. This kind of peace means far more than an absence of activity or hostility, far more than an absence of psychological tension. It means what elsewhere can be referred to as salvation or eternal life. It is what Hebrew tradition means by ‘Shalom’ – total well being. Such peace implies wholeness and fulfilment, the tranquillity which arises from the achievement of justice and harmony. Such peace is the way things are meant to be. It is what we are created for.
And so when Jesus departs, the church becomes the focus of remembrance and peace – a place where you do not have to keep looking back to the past but where the past remains alive in you. The present becomes what the past is doing now – as Rowan Williams once put it, loosely translating St Augustine. The present is what the past is doing now: if the fruitful experiences of the past have embedded themselves in you, you do not have consciously to try to remember them, you can give your whole attention to the present, confident that those past experiences are still working themselves out in you whether you remember them or not. The past becomes fruitful for peace now.
Perhaps for that reason the Eucharist is at the heart of Christian practice. We do this is remembrance of him; not in a conscious effort to recreate the last supper in order to remember it more completely. Our Eucharist is what the Last supper is doing now, making us part of the living presence of the risen Christ – so that we can be sent out with the blessing of that peace which passes all understanding.
I have reflected on these notions of remembrance and peace because today is a day for many memories of the last fifteen years – a day for much remembrance. But remembering doesn’t have to be a sad experience, even though a stage in our lives is coming to an end. It is a time rather for celebrating the things that dwell in us richly because they have become embedded memories which build up who we are now. These memories ensure that the good we have done will become the matter of the future. And all our memories of the time we have spent together will I hope enable this church to enact the prayer written by Thomas Ken for St Stephen’s Walbrook:
O God, make the door of this house wide enough to receive all who need human love and fellowship; narrow enough to shut out all envy, pride and strife. Make its threshold smooth enough to be no stumbling-block to children, nor to straying feet, but rugged and strong enough to turn back the tempter’s power. O God make the door of this house the gateway to thine eternal kingdom, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen