Anemnesis

I got to thinking about this word. It is not the easiest concept to get your head around. So I thought it might be fun to explore a bit in my blog. Hope you agree.

The word literally translates from the Greek as memory raised up. So perhaps we could think of it as ubermemory. Or memory that is brought up into focus. But the sense of that word goes beyond simply focusing - but into something more immersive.

One of the ways anemnesis has been explained to me is through the results of an experience of anemnesis. We know it has occurred when the memory we are focusing on has become a part of our own memories. So when you are recounting the story of Jesus feeding 5000, it is told with phrases like, "remember when Jesus had all those hungry people?" We tell it like this because the story is part of our story.

When we use such phrases we are announcing our own conviction that the event actually occurred and that the event had an impact on us even if we were not among those initially impacted by the event. This can happen with any of the narratives we take into our own story of life, but it has a particular place in Christian tradition. The liturgical forms are built to invoke an experience of anemnesis.

The liturgy of the Word is not just a bible exposition, but the retelling of the God story as the story of the people of God. We are drawn into that story and it becomes our story as well. Which is why the primary focus on the epistles in most Protestant churches is disturbing. Not that Paul and the others are not important - but their teaching is all grounded in the story of God, and it is all too easy to miss that story in our search for knowledge.

The liturgy of the Eucharist, and especially the Mass, is so blatantly anemnesis invoking that it should also disturb us when it is paid so little attention in many of our churches. Here our story mingles with the story of Christ in a way that we literally take the story (narrative if you will) into our bodies and are subsumed into the body of Christ. We become what we eat.

I am excited to find movements in the Church today that are restoring the centrality of the gospels in their liturgies. It is so important, even though sometimes it is so hard. We have been following Matthew as of late (Roman Lectionary) and our Wednesday service has fallen on some incredibly difficult narratives. But they are part of the gospel, part of the story, and meant to be part of our story as well. In wrestling through them I have found great reward, and I am sure you will as well.

Just one more note - story is the most powerful means of communication. As a preacher you soon find out that all your brilliant insights are lost, but that goofy story about the washing machine breaking down sticks. You can either be frustrated at this. Or you can recognize the brilliance of God's design. We are built for story. We are built to be part of an unfolding narrative - the History of Salvation. We respond to story. We bring stories into our own narrative (I love the stories of the Kingdom breaking into peoples lives and they all want to bubble right back out of me when I speak). God has made us this way so that we would respond to His invitation into the God Story unfolding through history and drawing us all towards the Son.