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Upon surveying the 20-something people gathered in the early evening shade of the Press Tent, Kemper Crabb was heard to remark: 

I picked this subject tonight because I knew it would be of such pressing interest that hundreds would come. Maybe if I had said something like, “A post-modern take on . . . “ or, “Heavy Metal and the Eucharist, Can they Co-exist?” maybe we would’ve had more people, but that’s all right. This is what I know about, so this is what I’m going to talk about.

I pastored a congregation for thirteen years that was predominantly, eighty to eighty-five percent I guess, artists. Mostly, of course, musicians; most of them were in the mainstream and not in the CCM marketplace. At the time, the guys in King’s X were members of the church, Galactic Cowboys, Atomic Opera, which I have now become a member of, as well as poets, dancers, people who were in the Houston Ballet, and so forth. And because of that, and because of the fact that I was an artist, had been an artist before I was called into the ministry, I’ve spent much of my life in sort of a two-lobed approach to things. As a minister, I have been subjected to training and study that most artists probably would not; biblical languages and all that kind of stuff. Then at the same time, I was trying to make a living as a musician, which for most of my adult life, even when I was pastoring a church, that’s how I made my money. So consequently, in my own life, I had to think a lot about the implications of what scripture had to say for artists. Whereas most pastors might have to deal with the day-to-day problems of the church members’ businesses, most of my parishioners were artists so the training and stuff that we aimed at them in terms of their day to day lives was also vocationally oriented primarily towards artists. I’ve thought about these things a long time; for many years, for all of my adult life.

It’s interesting. You find pockets of people who are interested in stuff like this. Of course, most artists are passionately interested in it, at least on some level but I’m just glad that you-all came, because this is what I know about and there are not many people who want to hear about it. But that’s okay. Because it doesn’t take a lot of people. It takes people who are doing key things, who are influencing other people who might not be interested in it, to change things.

Remembrance/Anamnesis
What I’m going to talk about tonight, as I so cleverly named it, is “The Implications of the Eucharist for the Arts.” This is also called, “About the Pattern of Remembrance.” What I’m going to talk about is remembrance, the anamnesis nature of worship.

Matthew 26: 26
As they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat. This is my body.” Then he took the cup and gave thanks and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. For this is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for many for the remission of sins. I say onto you, I will not drink of fruit of this vine from now on until that day when I drink anew with you in my father’s kingdom.”

You-all Do This
A very familiar passage of scripture. Mark 14, Luke 22, 1 Corinthians 10, they all essentially tell the same old story. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul writes about it as kind of a reminder of this part of the gospel account. The story of the institution of the sacrament of the Eucharist, which means thanksgiving, communion, Lord’s Supper it’s also called. In the Baptist church I minister in, they call it an “ordinance,” which most of the time they’re not exactly sure what it is, but they know it’s not a sacrament.  It’s called all of those things, and it’s common to the Christian tradition. In many ways, it is central to it. Saint Luke and Saint Paul record the words of Jesus, as we would say correctly where I come from, “Ya’all do this for my remembrance.” Unfortunately, the English language has been denuded of its second person plural, to its detriment, but essentially, Jesus isn’t just saying “You do this,” he’s saying, “You-all do this,” speaking to all the people who were gathered there, the disciples. “You-all do this for my remembrance.” Or sometimes it is translated, “for my memorial.” The traditional reading in English is, “Do this in remembrance of me,” most of the time, on an altar table, from the King James Version. Because of this, this remembrance, the theologians and the liturgists call the part of the communion rite where the words of Saint Paul and Saint Luke are read the “anamnesis”  It means, “remembrance,” or, “memorial.” 

But what does that mean biblically to remember something? Of course, huge battles have been fought over this doctrinally, most of them completely missing the point, but the nature of the remembrance is a central kind of argument that continues. We see that Jesus, when they were gathered there, what they were gathered for was the Passover, “Pacach,” and they were specifically celebrating the old covenant rite wherein God delivered the Jews through the Exodus. That’s what the Passover was about. And in that context, Jesus establishes his new covenant sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist. We shouldn’t be surprised to find, that like so many other things, so many aspects of the new covenant, that the old covenant is taken up in that and fulfilled in the new covenant. It is not set at odds, it is not forgotten about, it’s not done away with. The argument of the early church was that the Exodus that God performed in bringing Israel up out of Egypt, taking them through the wilderness to the Promised Land, was deliberately meant to be a great saving act of God that was to point towards the fact that one day Jesus would come and lead his people, take them out of their bondage, into the promised land, to be with Him. That was one of the huge arguments of the early church. 

A remembrance, or memorial, is a dominant concept in the old covenant. As Jesus and his apostles and the people of Israel, during his time on earth, they were aware of this. They all knew this because, of course, they were raised as Jews.  They understood this concept of remembrance. There’s a Hebrew word, “zakar,” and it’s the equivalent of the Greek word for anamnesis or remembrance. The Jews at the time understood because they read a Greek Old Testament that the word zakar was the word “anamnesis.” All across the Diaspora, all across the world of the Jews at that time, when Christ said this particular word, “Do this in ‘anamnesis’ of me,” there was nobody there who didn’t understand what he was saying. (Of course he said it in Aramaic, and that’s another whole question we could talk about afterwards.) Everybody understood that he was speaking about something that was intrinsic to the covenant. 

He was talking about a remembrance. It doesn’t mean exactly what we think in our English that “remembrance” means.  Zakar has a very specific meaning within the given context. The context of the covenant, remember, is more than just thinking of whatever is brought to mind again. It’s a dynamic concept. It’s an active concept as opposed to a passive one. It’s not you just have this idea come into your head. It’s not that you just bring this idea. It’s more than that. In Israel’s worship, in what are called the complaint psalms, Jaweh is invoked to remember (zakar, anamnesis) his covenant mercies from the past as a motive for him to act now to intervene on behalf of his covenanted people on the grounds of what he remembers he has covenanted to do. You can read about this in Psalm 25:6, Psalm 74:2, Psalm 119:49, and even in the intercessory prayer of Exodus 32:13. Over and over, “Remember, oh, Lord, remember your people who you did this for.” These prayers were couched like that to move God to act on behalf of his people in remembering what he had done for them in the past. It was tied in with his covenant. In Psalm 98:3, Psalm 105:8, 42, Psalm 106:45, Psalm 115:12, Psalm 136:23 and many other ones, God is praised for his hassid, his covenanted mercies. To covenant faithfulness in remembering his covenant. 

Hassid, covenant faithfulness, means God being praised for remembering his covenant. This concept of God remembering and acting for his people on the basis of his covenant is an integral part of what is said in scripture when it says, “God is merciful.” When God is spoken of as merciful, he is hassid. That means he acts on behalf of his people because he is covenanted to do so in remembering what he has done. It’s a very important concept. Unfortunately, it’s not a concept that’s much talked of anymore.

Psalm 132:1 says, “remember unto David all the hardships he endured,” which is a prayer grounded in God’s covenant promise to David, which verse 11 and the verses following of that particular Psalm talk about. That God will act for David’s present anointed successor is prayed for in verse 10. In other words, the author of that is saying, God is here asked, on the basis of his covenant promise with David, to bless David’s house because God said, “I’ll bless you and I will bless your descendents.” In that particular Psalm, on the basis, as it says in the Greek Bible, of God’s “anamnesis,” his remembrance of his promise to David in the acts that he did. He’s asked to act now on the basis of that former action to bless David’s lineal descendents. That’s kind of how this term works.

In like fashion, Genesis 19:29 as is written in the Torah, “So it was that when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered (It’s actually a variant of that word anamnesis.) Abraham sent Lot out in the midst of the overthrow.” God saved Lot because he remembered his covenant with Abraham. And on the basis of that remembrance, he acted to save Lot. 

Exodus 2:24-25 says God heard their groaning, God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and God saw the people of Israel and knew their condition. This is actually part of the Exodus, the mainspring that causes God to move that begins the whole process of the Exodus, because God remembered his promise and actions on behalf of Abraham. These were the people of Abraham that shared that covenant. 

Even the pagans understood this concept
Jonah 1:6 recognizes this principal when even the pagans cry out to Johan in the midst of the pursuing storm. Here he is running from God’s will and the storm come up and the pagans know there is something supernatural going on here. They go, “Arise! Call upon your God. Perhaps your God will remember us (anamnesis) so that we don’t perish.” Even the pagans understood this concept, that God would bind himself on the basis of his promises, his actions, to remember mercy and act on their behalf.

The covenant concept of remembrance is also seen in the New Testament when the thief on the cross prays to Christ, Luke 23: 42, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 
Resultant Action Anamnesis is more than just a bringing to mind. Its dynamic is tied to resultant action. It’s a remembrance, a memorial, that’s tied to that action in light of God’s covenant word and previous saving covenant actions. God remembers because he promised, and had acted for someone. He promised that whenever he thought of that, he was bound to act in a particular way for his people.

The New Covenant is Still a Covenant
Folks, if you are sitting there thinking, “Well, that’s great, Kemper, but that was the old covenant,” I would remind you that although the new covenant is new, it is still a covenant. Details, details. The word anamnesis is used for zachar in connection with old covenant memorial sacrifices, in other words, sacrifices offered to remind God of his covenant action in the setting of the Passover seders---such as the one as Jesus used for establishing the Eucharist---which was a covenant memorial of the Exodus when God acted to save his people from bondage to Egypt. The people made a sacrifice, put the blood on the mantle of the door, dressed themselves in a particular way, they went in, they sat down and went through a liturgy, all of these actions were intended to memorialize, to bring to God’s memory that these people were tied to the same people that he had acted on in the first place. They were covenantally one with them. That’s why they did that funny thing that they did. 

In the Pasah ritual, the people dressed as the Hebrews did at the time of the Exodus, they ate a covenant meal, the sacrificed lamb, in haste as a covenant zacharone; anamnesis. A memorial, a remembrance to God of his covenant-saving actions in the past so that he would act on behalf of his people at the time of the ritual to call God’s blessing down on his people as a reminder of his covenant promises. 

That’s why Jesus did that thing think on us, oh, God. We eat the covenant meal that symbolizes Christ’s sacrificed humanity by which God acted savingly to establish his new covenant people when Jesus died. When we reenact these elements in God’s presence, it is a remembrance. It is a memorial of Christ’s saving covenant action which pleads that remembrance of that action to move God to act in covenant blessing to his people.

We’ll get to the art part in a minute, but if you don’t get this, you won’t get that.

That’s why we do that. That’s why Jesus did that thing. That’s why he said, “Do this as, an anamnesis, a remembrance, a zacharone, of what I’ve done, of me.” Because that reenactment of that memorial reminds God to worship him in his presence, “Think on us, oh God. We are the people of the covenant. That Jesus your son acted savingly, and you acted savingly through your son to bless us. We are one with you.” That’s the point. 

The showing of Christ’s death, for an anamnesis until he comes, “. . . shows my death until I come,” as 1 Corinthians 11:26 says, cannot be separated from all that Christ’s death sacrificed in that death. Jesus’ death is not just a death that didn’t have any content. His death was his sacrifice of himself as the incarnated one, of his birth, of his circumcision, of his life, of his baptism, of all of his obedience to the law, of all of his humanity. When Jesus gave himself, it wasn’t just some death. It was the death of a person who had been born as the God-man, had lived a sinless life, who had obeyed the Torah, and obeyed God’s purposes perfectly, and offered all of that perfection as a sacrifice and in return was able to take all our wickedness on himself. That’s what his death means.

It’s all tied together
So when we do something for a remembrance of his death, it is not just about the death. The death is connected to all that Jesus is and all that he has done. It is an anamnesis, a memorial of remembrance, as he commanded of me. Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me,” all that he’s done, all that was, all that he will be, until the Second Coming. The fullness of the kingdom that he has wrought and completed by his saving acts, it’s all tied together. What Jesus has done, what Jesus has given, what he’s going to do. It’s all tied together. “Do this in remembrance of me.”

Reminding worshipers
Anamnesis is a re-presentation, ritually, or a remembrance, or a memorial, to remind and move God to action. But it’s also a memorial and a remembrance to move us, the worshipers, to act in conformity to the covenant, to what God has asked us to do in light of Christ’s saving actions towards us as a community and as individuals. 

More than bringing something to mind
Anamnesis, like zachar, doesn’t really have a true English equivalent. But let me tell you one thing that it is not. It is not, as Zwingling and his followers would say, simply a passive bringing of something to mind. That’s not what it means in the context of the Covenant. It’s not that alone. It’s meant to be connected to resultant action, both by God and by the worshiper. 

Effected on Every Level
The Enlightenment, which attempted to reduce all true meaning and value to only the things we can comprehend with our minds, has made it extremely easy for us to accept the false notion that all that the anamnesis is meant to do is to bring what God has in Christ to our mind. We are the children of the Enlightenment. Rationalism has infected our institutions and the way we think about reality, therefore it is very difficult for us to see that there would be anything higher than any kind of mental activity, or that there would be anything that goes beyond that. However, the remembrance, the anamnesis, is meant to effect the worshiper on every level, not just the mental level, although the mind is also involved.

An Action, A Reality, A Mystery
Anamnesis denotes not just calling to mind, not simply going back and remembering now something that was done in the past. It’s not a repetition of a past act in the present, doing it over and over again. Anamnesis is a ritual act celebrated now, in the present time, that makes an act an action, a reality, a mystery present in God’s time, now. It’s an invocation.

In anamnesis, the past, the present, and the future are all involved at the same time. The past, because it is remembered, becomes a present reality. The remembrance is a picture in small of the future, and indeed, it realizes that future vision of what we will inherit in Christ in worship. When we go into worship, we see Christ. When we do a remembrance of what he has done, it brings us to mind of where he is heading reality. That’s the future. 

One of the functions of a symbol is to bring the past and the future into the present through remembrance. There’s a prayer in the liturgy called the epiclesis, the invocation of the spirit. That prayer in a ritual symbol is so that the transcendent God will come to enable anamnesis to be more than just something that happens in our mind. That God will come and act and his action will invoke in us a resultant action as we see God’s presence.

Bringing It Home
It’s more obvious to those who still live in an oral culture that anamnesis, the remembering, makes an event really present. It brings the event home. Corresponding to this act of remembering by God, there’s also the remembrance of God’s act by us. This also is not just a mere intellectual act of recalling something. It’s the act of entering into relationship with that God whose earlier deeds say a promise for the present. God acted in the past in this way, and because it’s the same God who acted then and there, and we are his people, he will act in the same way now. That’s what it says. That’s what it is supposed invoke. It is supposed to bring before our eyes the action of a God who acted supernaturally and saved his people and to remind us that that same God is alive, and meeting with his people, he can continue to act savingly in the lives of his worshipers so that the believing community will know that same God. 

It’s a way of us being brought into relationship again and again with God as we are reminded of what he’s done for us and as we see him act in response to that. It’s clearly exposed in Deuteronomy 5:2-4 where it says, “The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. Not with our fathers did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive this day.” Now you realize this had happened generations before this. “The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain out of the midst of the fire.” The story that is repeated over and over by these people remains decisively significant for future generations. 

Remembrance is especially prominent in the celebration of Passover. Every generation in Israel may and will say anew, “And the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us and laid upon us harsh bondage and we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and heard our affliction, our toil, and our oppression, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and with outstretched arms with great terror and signs and wonders and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”  [Deuteronomy 26:6-10] They still say this today, the Jews, as Jesus and his disciples did prior to the bringing of the new covenant. They identified themselves with the experience of their forefathers. They identified themselves so strongly with those people that they dressed up like them and they went through the actions because this involved more than their minds. This involved them on even a physical level, and on a corporate level to tie them into the story of how God had acted savingly for his people in Israel. 

The Hebrews who hadn't gone through the Exodus, by sharing in the Passover, were able to see themselves emotionally, physically, mentally, and so forth, as a part of a covenant people who shared God’s deliverance in all time, from the Exodus onward. 

When we partake, we Christians, of the Lord’s supper, we are supposed to see ourselves as a part of that story that went on there when Christ said, “This is my body, this is my blood, this is a memorial of what I am going to do for you.” We’re supposed to see ourselves as a part of Christ’s story emotionally, spiritually, physically, mentally and so forth, which is a significantly different thing than just bringing something to our minds. 

How can that be? Because the story of Jesus is our story. As Paul teaches in Romans 6:1-14 and in Colossians 2:11-12 and in Ephesians 2:4-10, we are right now joined to Christ’s life; to all of his baptism, his life, his birth, his death, his resurrection, his ascension. If that’s not true, folks, we’re all going to hell in a hand basket. You better get used to the idea. You’re not saved by your life, and I’m not either. We’re saved just because of what Jesus did and because the Holy Spirit graciously, on the basis of Jesus’ sacrifice, drew us into the life of Christ, who is our covenant head, who established a covenant of which we’re all a part. His story is our story.

That’s why we have access, for instance, as Hebrews 10:19-20, and chapter 12 said, we have access to the heavenly worship itself because we’re seated with Christ in the heavenly places. We can come boldly before the throne and present our petitions. We’ve come to the place, as Hebrews 12 says, where the spirits of just men are made perfect and the angels are in festal array and Christ is seated on the throne at the right hand of the father. This is our privilege because we have been joined to the Christ whose life takes us into heaven. And through the veil of his flesh we enter into the heavenly places themselves, which is the great promise of the old covenant pointed to. 

His life is more important for us than our own lives. It should be. We should, by the Spirit’s power, enter into his life and experience his life. And isn't it odd that one of the primary sacraments that Christ established is one that has this concept of the covenantal anamnesis. One which takes us into the beginning of the very critical point when he extended himself to save us and deliver us just as God extended himself to save and deliver the Hebrew people. I don’t think that’s an accident.

This is why the church’s calendar, for instance, is oriented around Christ’s life events. To remind the church over and over again in the context of reading the passages and acting out certain things, waving palm branches or whatever, to remind us his life is our life. Our lives are to be lived in the light of what he has done, what he has accomplished, who he is. His life gives meaning to all the events of our lives. 

In worship, in the anamnesis, we live it again through Him as we enter heaven to the center of all events. We know his life from before his incarnation to the consummation. We do this in remembrance of Him, and that just doesn’t mean when he was on the earth. From eternity past, to the eschatos, and beyond. That’s what we’re celebrating. That’s what we remember. That’s what we’re entering into. That’s what we’re pleading before God. 

“Do this in remembrance of me.”  At issue here is not an act of memory, a recalling of something that happened in the past. At issue is a living relationship, a concern to be re-engrossed by the deeds of Christ. In other words, in the remembrance of the Eucharist, past and future come together as we go into the presence of God. We have a vision from beyond time. What all reality tends toward. The past and the future come together in the present. We remember what Christ has done, where Christ is taking us, and it meets us where we are now. We are united with the risen Lord, and he is with us to the close of the age.

Re Member
Now, maybe it would be helpful if we used the word remember. It’s an English word that is comprised of two smaller words, “re,” which means to do it again, and “member,” like the members of your body. When you re-member something, you put it together again. That’s what it means. The Enlightenment has effected the way we think about that word; the way we think, it is just a mental thing. That’s not what the word means. To re-member something is to put it together again. That’s more than just a mental thing.

Anamnesis happens not only in the Eucharist, but in Scripture readings, and it also happens in the other sacramentals as well; baptism, which is a picture of us being taken into the life of Christ, “Don’t you know,” Paul says, “those of us who have been baptized into his death, into his resurrection and into the glory to come.”  [Romans 6:3  4] Paul wasn’t just shooting smoke there, folks. He had a solid concept behind what he was saying. We have become a people who are so individualistic that we don’t understand that this is so much bigger than any of us individually. But it’s that bigness that gives each one of us individually meaning. It is his life that gives everything in creation meaning in the first place, the one who made everything to begin with. It shouldn't be surprising to us.

A dangerous memory
When we worship, we see the future consummation. We see a vision of where God is taking reality. It gives us in the now, when we walk away from it, a memory of what will be, what God wants to be and what we should work towards. The anamnesis gives us a dangerous memory. I say that because it is dangerous to the world system. It’s dangerous to Satan’s kingdom. It’s dangerous to systems in society, in relationships, in inward thoughts of everything that would set themselves up against Christ because it gives us a standard against which to shoot. We must remember the future because that’s what we are headed towards. And we go there again, and again as we come before God’s face in worship, as we reenact his saving action for us. We’re supposed to memorialize it and act it out.

The Pattern of Creativity
Okay. Now let’s talk about art, now that we've had the introduction. This is much faster.

Jesus does a five-fold action. 
Jesus does a five-fold action in the sacrament. He takes bread, he gives thanks, he breaks it, he says, “This is my body,” connecting it the symbolic value, and he shares it to effect change. The same thing with the wine, essentially.

He Takes the Bread
You need to see that five-fold action as a microcosm of the world as it relates to our call, artistic and otherwise. First thing Jesus does, is he takes the bread. He grabs hold of something in reality, not something super-spiritualized that doesn't have anything to do with reality. Something that’s common, it’s central to our existence, that’s material. 

He Gives Thanks
He takes this material thing and he gives thanks for it. He recognizes that all good things come down from the Father of Lights, as James says. [James 1:17] He recognizes the world for what is in it, for its potential. He thanks God for it. He recognizes that the world is what it is in God’s estimation. That it exists and defines its meaning in God’s creative purpose. God made it, he sees the value in it, “Thank you.”

He Breaks It
Then, he broke it. He changed it by deconstructing it and by subjecting it by reshaping according to his will and purpose. Takes the bread, thanks God for it, he breaks it and changes it. It’s not the same. It’s different. 

He Renames It
Then he says, “This is my body.” He renames it and shapes it, changing its reality to shape its accomplishment of its highest destiny. The highest destiny of a piece of bread is that it symbolizes Christ. Now brothers and sisters, the highest destiny of everything that is created is that it symbolizes Christ. As Genesis 1 and Psalm 19 and Romans 1 and many other places tell us. So he deconstructs it and subjects it to the interpretation of God and he names it what it is, what it has the potential for. 

He Shares It
Then he says, “Take it and eat it,” and he shares it to help reveal Himself and to show the possibility of its transformation into what he proposes. And he effects change in the people that he shares it with. 
 

This is the pattern of creativity for the people who are created, in this order, who share the fallen state of humanity. Christ has shown this to us. We are, as artists, to take hold of something in reality, whether it be a physical form, or a musical thing or whatever it might be, or a program for a computer or whatever it might be, we are supposed to take hold of that. We’re supposed to thank God for that because he’s given it to us as an opportunity to reveal who he is. We are supposed to deconstruct it, reinterpret it, shape it, change its shape so that reveals fully the glory of God in the way it was intended to and then we are supposed to share it.

Every time the church comes together and does this central sacrament, this memorial, this anamnesis, isn’t it funny a creative act is at the heart of it? It’s the pattern of creativity.

We Become what we Worship
What we worship, we become like. Whatever we worship we are going to become like. What we see in worship, we’re going to do. That’s just true