memory eschatology eucharist-volf

7/28/2019 Memory Eschatology Eucharist-Volf

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MEMORY, ESCHATOLOGY, EUCHARIST

Miroslav Volf

To learn the right lessons from memories of wrongs suffered, we need toplace these memories into the framework of the memory of the Exodusand the Passion. The call to truthfulness in remembering is underwritten

by God’s final judgment of grace, which itself is only an extension of theway in which God treated human sin as God parted the Red Sea and as JesusChrist hung on the tree of shame. The memory of the Passion is at work in thecentral question guiding these reflections: namely, how does the one wholoves the wrongdoer remember the wrongdoing. That question was nothing but an echo of the conviction that God ‘‘proves his love for us in that while westill were sinners Christ died for us’’ (Romans 5:8). From the Christian stand-point, to remember wrongs suffered well is to remember them through thelens of Christ’s death and resurrection.

The Passion

Much as the memory of the Exodus is central to the identity of the Old Tes-tament people of God, the memory of the death and resurrection of JesusChrist is central to Christian identity. But the two are not unrelated definingsaving events. The memory of the Passion is historically and theologicallytied to the memory of the Exodus. The Last Supper celebrated by Jesus withhis disciples was a Passover seder, and the Holy Communion of the Christianchurch, which has origin in the Last Supper, is a celebration of the newExodus of the people of God. It is not surprising, then, to find the memory

of the Passion adopting important dimensions of the memory of Exodus aswell as adapting others.Before we examine the lessons of the Passion memory, let me note two

formal differences between the Exodus and the Passion. First, the story of the Exodus is a story of a single people, the people of Israel, chosen andliberated by God; the story of the Passion is a story of a single person, JesusChrist, chosen by God for the salvation of all humanity. Christ, the new Adam,is representative of humanity as a whole (Romans 5:12–21). What happenedto Christ happened for humanity and to humanity;1 more precisely, ithappened for humanity by and in him.

Second, the relationship of the Exodus to the future is that of enacted

promise.2

As God has delivered the people of Israel in the past, so God willfinally and definitively redeem Israel in the future. Christians, however,



believe that the world to come has not merely been promised in the Passion.Rather, that new world has decisively entered into this present world of sinand death. As a consequence, the future of humanity has, in a sense, alreadyhappened in Christ. The idea of the future taking place before it has taken

place is a difficult one, obviously. Here is no place even to begin to unpackit. I want only to draw attention to one implication of this idea when weembrace it in conjunction with the conviction that what happens to Christhappens to humanity as a whole: When we remember the Passion, weremember the future of humanity redeemed in the world to come.

What lessons does the memory of the Passion teach? How are theselessons related to those of the Exodus memory? In answer, let us begin byconsidering two interrelated sets of issues: oppression and liberation, andenmity and reconciliation.

Oppression and LiberationIn the 1960s and 1970s, German theologian Johann Baptist Metz placed the

memory of Jesus Christ—especially of the Passion—at the center of histhought,3 with the categories of oppression and liberation being the mainfocus of his consideration. Christ suffered in solidarity with those who suffer,and they can find solace in his company, Metz observed. In the memory of Christ’s Passion, all suffering people are remembered. But, he continues,Christ’s solace is not simply one of empathic companionship. If Christ was justa fellow sufferer who understands, he would be ‘‘well-intentioned but termin-ally ineffectual.’’4 The solace Christ gives consists also in anticipated liberation.For when we remember Christ’s Passion, we remember his vindication by God,not only his suffering. As Christ was raised, so also will those who suffer beraised with him. They are not forever imprisoned in their tormented past.Along with Christ they are on the path through death to resurrection, in thislife and the next. What happened to him will also happen to them.

Metzhas described the memory of the Passion as ‘‘dangerous’’—dangerous,that is, for all those who leave behind them a trail of blood and tears insearch of unfair gain, technological mastery, or political power, and danger-ous also for the systems that support such evildoers. The dangers of thismemory reside in its orientation not just to the past but also to the future.

‘‘We remember the future of our freedom in the memory of his suffering,’’Metz writes.5

The Christian memory of suffering is in its theological implications an anticipat-ory memory: it intends the anticipation of a particular future of man as a futurefor the suffering, the hopeless, the oppressed, the injured and the useless of thisworld. Hence this memory of suffering does not indifferently surrender thepolitical life oriented by it to the play of social interests and forces. . .. The mem-ory of suffering . . . brings a new moral imagination into political life, a newvision of others’ suffering which should mature into a generous, uncalculatingpartisanship on behalf of the weak and underrepresented.6

The ‘‘anticipatory memory’’ of Christ’s Passion enlists its bearers into theservice of the Crucified for the good of suffering humanity. In their own



way and in their own time and place, followers of Christ remember him byreenacting his solidarity with the victims of oppression.

Important as the political liberation, however, by itself is, it leaves foreverin captivity the unvindicated oppressed who have died, with the possible

consolation that their suffering has contributed to the well-being of futuregenerations and that their story will live in the memory of posterity. But thisis a meager hope. Faith in progress—a conviction that the future generationswill live more fulfilled and more humane lives than the past ones—is no morethan a modern superstition. As to memories, they fade quickly, especially innovelty-obsessed and entertainment-saturated cultures; the tooth of timegnaws even at the monuments made of stone and most of them eventuallydisappear into regions from which they must be unearthed by archeologistsand historians. How will those who have died while under oppression see thedawn of freedom in new life? How will they be vindicated while theirtormentors are brought to justice? And the memory of Christ’s death andresurrection is a memory of liberation to that end, to the future in God’snew world.

In Metz’s account, the memory of the Passion exemplifies the sameredemptive pattern as the memory of the Exodus: suffering and deliverance.Israel suffered at the hands of Egyptians, and God delivered them; peoplesuffer at the hands of the evildoers or evil systems, and Christ’s victory overdeath—the ultimate injustice inflicted on him in solidarity with them—liftsthem to a new life of freedom. Correspondingly, the lessons from the sacredmemory of the Passion for the profane, everyday memories of injustice aresimilar to the lessons from the memory of the Exodus: Remember truthfully

so as to be able to act justly; situate the memories of wrongs suffered into thenarrative of God’s redemption so that you can remember in hope rather thandespair; remember the wrongs so that you can protect those who sufferwrong from injustice. So Metz’s account of the Passion memory shares thestrengths of the Exodus memory—a transcendent framework in whichthe faithful God promises redemption and moral clarity in the service of the downtrodden. But it also shares the major weakness of the Exodusmemory. It is questionable how helpful such memory is in a world permeated by ineradicable injustice.

Enmity and Reconciliation

Has Metz understood Christ’s death and resurrection adequately, how-ever? No doubt, solidarity with those who suffer is an important aspect of Christ’s work on the cross. Sufferers through the ages have found comfortat the foot of the cross and hope in front of the empty tomb. But Christ didnot die only in solidarity with those who suffer but also as a substitute forthe offenders, which in one way or another we all are. He died for thosewho offend, do wrong, cause suffering, for God’s enemies and ours. More-over, in the New Testament, substitution is arguably the dominant dimension

of Christ’s work and solidarity a subordinate one. The sacred memory of thePassion will be flawed if it contains only the pair ‘‘suffering=deliverance.’’ Itmust also include the more dominant couplet, ‘‘enmity=reconciliation.’’7



Consider the Apostle Paul’s explication of the significance of the Passionin Romans 5, the culmination of a long argument that started at the beginningof the epistle. In chapter 5, he writes only of reconciliation with God butclearly has in view reconciliation among people, too. For later in the epistle

he insists that God’s embracing of humanity provides a model for human beings to emulate in their own, human ways (Romans 15:7).

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died forthe ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for agood man someone might possibly dare to die, but God demonstrated hislove for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since wehave now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be savedfrom God’s wrath through him? For if when we were God’s enemies we werereconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more, having beenreconciled, shall we be saved through his life? (Romans 5:6–10, NIV )

Love is at the heart of the Apostle Paul’s account of Christ’s death. Butsurprisingly, even scandalously, love not so much for victims, but for perpe-trators, for those who are powerless because they are caught in the snares of ungodliness, those who are unrighteous (sinners) deserving of God’s wrath(enemies). It is not, of course, that love of those who suffer for whatever reasonis absent in the Apostle Paul’s writings. A quick look at his instructions aboutcelebration of the Lord’s Supper, for instance, will reveal that he considers it afailing of major proportions when the wealthy ‘‘humiliate those who havenothing’’ (1 Corinthians 11:22). And yet, at the heart of his Gospel was a

powerful conviction that God loved the ungodly, so much so that Christ diedfor them and in their place. That is who Paul himself was before he was calledas an apostle—a very pious and yet ungodly person, a wrongdoer persecut-ing the people whose only crime was that they worshiped Jesus as theMessiah. And the God of grace encountered him on the road to Damascus(Acts 9:1–19).

Some accounts of what it means for Christ to have died on behalf of theungodly—of what theologians sometimes call ‘‘substitution’’—are deeplyproblematic. If we see Christ on the cross as a third party being punishedfor the sins of the transgressors, we have widely missed the mark. Unlike afinancial debt, moral liability cannot be transferred to someone else.8 But

Christ is not a third party. On account of his divinity, Christ is one withGod, to whom the ‘‘debt’’ is owed. It is therefore God who through Christ’sdeath shoulders the burden of our transgression against God and we arefreed from just retribution. On account of his humanity, Christ is one withus, the debtors. It is therefore we who die in Christ and are thus freed fromguilt. Christ’s oneness with both creditor and debtors leaves only two cate-gories of actors and thus negates the notion of his involvement as a thirdparty.

We also miss the mark if we believe that Christ’s suffering somehowencourages the abused passively to accept their abuse. The message of the

cross is not that it is legitimate to ‘‘force people to serve in functions thatordinarily would have been fulfilled by someone else,’’ as Dolores Williamshas stated.9 Since no third party is involved, in Christ’s passion no one is



forced to do anything for somebody else. Substitution is a gift given to wrong-doers by the One who was wronged, not a burden of service placed on some-one else. And it is a gift that, far from signaling the passive acceptance of abuse, most radically calls into question such abuse. For it condemns the

wrongdoing while at the same time freeing the wrongdoers not just frompunishment and guilt but from the hold of the evil deed on their lives.

The Promise of the Passion

If we take both ways of interpreting Christ’s death—solidarity and substi-tution—together, what happened as Christ died to those who suffered wrong,to wrongdoers, and to their relationship? What do we remember aboutwrongdoers, those who suffered at their hand, and the relationship of thetwo parties when we remember Christ’s Passion?

First, the grace of God toward Israel displayed in the Exodus (a grantingof divine favor irrespective of their worthiness or lack thereof) is extendedthrough the substitutionary Passion of Christ to every human being. The uni-versal scope of the Passion is one way in which it differs from Exodus, whichconcerned a single people. The difference may seem merely quantitative:‘‘all’’ replaces ‘‘some.’’ And yet it implies a change in the very character of the redemptive act. Since perpetrators are part of all for whom Christ died,they also obtain God’s freeing from the guilt of evil deeds and the powerof evil desires. In the memory of the Passion, wrongdoers are rememberedas forgiven and freed from the hold of evil on their lives.

Second, when grace is given to perpetrators, victims are not forgotten. Inshouldering the wrongdoing done to them, God identifies it truthfully andcondemns it justly. As a substitute, Christ may take sin away, but he doesnot distort it or disregard it. For victims, however, Christ offers his ownsaving presence. Christ shields their self so that the wrongdoing can neitherpenetrate to the core of their identity nor determine their possibilities. And hepromises that their life will acquire wholeness, whether the wrongdoing theyhave suffered can be rendered meaningful or not. Finally, Christ who ispresent in them by the Spirit gives victims power to emulate God both inthe embrace of the wrongdoer and in the struggle against wrongdoing. Thememory of the Passion is a memory of the return of those who have been

wronged to themselves as cherished children of God empowered to emulateGod in their own human way.

Third, for complete healing victims need more than inner healing and judgment against those who have wronged them, more even than the powerto love them notwithstanding their wrongdoing. Bound in a perverse bondwith wrongdoers by having suffered at their hands, victims can be trulyliberated and healed from the wounds of the wrongdoing only if the perpe-trators genuinely repent and the two parties are reconciled with each other.That too is what Christ does on the cross. He has reconciled both the wrongedand the wrongdoer to God and to themselves, and he has reconciled them to

each other. Since Christ identified with those who were wronged and took onhimself the burden of wrongdoing, the memory of the Passion is an anticipat-ory memory resurrection from death into new life for both the wronged and



the wrongdoers. But since he reconciled both in his flesh on the cross, thememory of the Passion is also an anticipatory memory of his formation of areconciled community even out of deadly enemies.

Such community is exactly what we commemorate in Holy Communion.

Central to the rite is the solidarity of God with each human being and thereconciliation of each human being with God. Inseparable, however, fromreconciliation with God is reconciliation with fellow human beings. AsAlexander Schmemann puts it in The Eucharist, in this holy ritual ‘‘we createthe memory of each other, we identify each other as living in Christ and beingunited with each other in him.’’10 In the Eucharistic feast we enact the mem-ory of one another as those who are reconciled to God and to each other. Ourpast, marked by enmity, has given way to a future marked by love. Byremembering Christ, we remember ourselves as what we shall be—part of the same communion of love comprised of the wrongdoers and the wronged.

The memory of the Passion is hopeful because it anticipates deliverancefrom wrong suffered, freedom from the power of wrongdoing, and reconcili-ation between the wronged and the wrongdoer (which is mostly reconcili-ation between those who were reciprocally both the wronged and thewrongdoers). The midday darkness of Good Friday that is our sins andsufferings will be overcome by the new light of Easter morning that is ourrejoicing in each other in the presence of God.

Just as liberation seen through the lens of Christ’s death and resurrectionis not only a political event but also, and most profoundly, an eschatologicalevent, so also is reconciliation. If it were not, there would be no hope for thosewho have died in the grip of enmity. Dead victims would never find the full

healing made possible by the repentance and transformation of their victimi-zers. Dead wrongdoers would never be freed from the burden of guilt. Andthe two parties would be marked by unaddressed enmity for eternity. ThePassion culminates in that grand reconciliation at the threshold of the worldto come in which former enemies will embrace each other as belonging to thesame community of love—a reconciliation without which no truly new worldwould be possible.11 That is what we remember when we remember Christ’sdeath and resurrection.

Lessons of the Passion Memory

When we remember the Passion, we remember what God has done for thewhole of humanity, the wronged and the wrongdoers included. Like thememory of Exodus, the memory of the Passion displays God’s action as amodel to emulate and tells how God frees and empowers humanity to doso. Through the death of Christ God aims to liberate us from exclusive con-cern for ourselves and to empower us through the indwelling of the HolySpirit to reach out in grace toward others, even those who have wrongedus. Because the God who justifies the ungodly is present in our lives, whenwe imitate God we do not do it as those who simply observe and do likewise,

but as those whose lives have been made by God to reverberate with God’slife. So what does imitation of what God has done in Christ entail—imitationunderstood not as strictly replicating but as doing in our human way some



of what God does in a divine way? What are the lessons of the Passionmemory?

The first lesson of the Passion memory is: Extend unconditional grace!Since in Christ we were reconciled to God while we were still God’s enemies,

we in turn seek to extend unconditional grace to wrongdoers, irrespective of any and all offenses committed. No offense imaginable in and of itself wouldlead us to withhold grace.

The second lesson of the memory of the Passion is: Affirm as valid theclaims of justice! That lesson, which partially overlaps the lesson from thememory of the Exodus, may seem to contradict the first lesson. And yet, whenunconditional grace is given, demands of justice are not disregarded. Rather,they are recognized as valid, and precisely as such set aside. This tension-filledstance that both honors and transcends the claims of justice is only possible because the Lamb of God took away the sin of the world. In doing so, he justified both affirmation of justice and extension of unconditional grace.

The two lessons together translate into the pursuit of forgiveness. Thosewho forgive forgo the punishment of persons who deserve punishment andthey release them from the bonds of their guilt. Of course, to obtain thisrelease wrongdoers must receive forgiveness of their misdeeds as justthat— forgiveness—just as any person must accept a gift for the gift to be given.Wrongdoers must acknowledge their actions as wrongdoing, distance them-selves from their misdeeds, and where possible restore to their victims whatthe original violation took away. Failure to do so will not result in the with-drawal of forgiveness; that gift is unconditional. But forgiveness will remainsuspended between its giver and the intended but untaking recipient.12

The third lesson of the Passion memory is: Aim for communion! It is poss-ible to forgive and not want to have anything to do with the offender. Forgive-ness that reflects what Christ has done for sinful humanity hopes for more. Awrongdoing has damaged the relationship. We forgive in hope that forgivenesswill elicit repentance and restitution as well as repair the damaged relation-ship. We forgive because we love the wrongdoer, and because we love thewrongdoer by forgiving we make one crucial step in a larger process whosefinal goal is embrace of former enemies in a community of love.

The Memory of the Passion and the Memory of Wrongs

Take now the memory of what happened in the death of Christ to thewrongdoers, the wronged, and their relationship, put it together with the les-sons to be drawn from that sacred memory, and add it to the framework forremembering everyday wrongs suffered that I have been building. What doesthe memory of the Passion do to the memory of the person who has beenwronged? By reflecting on my own interrogations at the hands of CaptainGoranovic from some twenty years ago while serving in the YugoslavianArmy, I will consider its consequences upon the remembering victim, theremembered wrongdoing, and the relationship between the wrongdoer and

the wronged.13

First, when I remember a wrong committed against me at the foot of thecross I do not remember it as a righteous person but as a person who has been



embraced by God, my unrighteousness notwithstanding. In relationship withCaptain Goranovic, I have certainly been the recipient of most of the wrongdo-ing. But I, too, have wronged him, not in any outward way, for that was imposs-ible, but in my imagination which, nourished by the feeling of humiliation and

impotence, on occasions gave in to the desire for revenge. Then there is a moun-tain of my unrighteousness that has nothing to do with Captain Goranovic. Ihave sinned against God and neighbor, and continue to do so. Though heunjustly interrogated me, I do not stand in the light and he enveloped indarkness. We stand together as sinners before the righteous God, and my sin,precisely to the extent that it is sin, is totally inexcusable. My being countedamong sinners together with him takes nothing away from his wrongdoing. Itsimply places truthfully the story of my own sin alongside of his.

Second, as seen through the lens of the memory of the Passion, anywrongdoing committed against me is, in a significant sense, already atonedfor. Forgiven. Even hidden by God from God’s own eyes. It is a wrongdoingfor which Jesus Christ died on the cross. Has the wrongdoing then ceased toexist? No, it has not; but it owes its continued existence only to the unwilling-ness of the wrongdoer to receive forgiveness, be transformed, and to bereconciled to God and the fellow human beings whom she has wronged.Since Christ died for the salvation of Captain Goranovic, Christ atoned forthe very sin that is the wrongdoing that Captain Goranovic committedagainst me. If I remember that wrongdoing through the lens of the Passion,I will remember it as already forgiven. More precisely, I will remember itin its paradoxical existence as that which both is and, at the same time, has been overcome.

It may seem that such remembering takes wrongdoing too lightly. But thelightness is only apparent. The terrible weight of the wrongdoing has in fact been borne by God, and therefore I can, indeed in some sense must, treat itlightly. If I remember Goranovic’s wrongdoing simply as a wrongdoing with-out any further qualification I do one of two things: I either fail to see thewrongdoing through the lens of the Passion or do not appreciate sufficientlythe effect of the Passion on wrongdoing. I do resist the idea of wrongdoingagainst me being forgiven by God in the death of Christ, I even rebel againstit. The cross is a scandal for me too, an affront against a sense of justice with-out which life would hardly be possible. Yet I embrace it as God’s strangely beautiful solution for the ill effects of human sin. How then could I not see all

wrongdoing as divinely forgiven in the sense just discussed?Last, since the memory of the Passion is an eschatological memory of the

anticipated final reconciliation, I will remember every wrongdoing in thelight of the hopeful horizon of future reconciliation with the wrongdoer. Hereanother scandal tops the scandal of forgiveness: in Jesus Christ and apartfrom my own say in the matter, God has made both me and Captain Gorano-vic to belong in one community of love. That realization is the direct conse-quence of the conviction that humanity as a whole is united with Christ inhis death and resurrection, that, as the Apostle Paul says, when Christ died,all died in him (2 Corinthians 5:14). When I remember Captain Goranovic’s

wrongdoing against me through the lens of the Passion memory, I rememberit in trust that we already are, in a sense, reconciled and in hope that we willone day be seated together at the table of friendship whose host is Christ.



The Memory of Passion, the Memory of Exodus

The Passion does not set aside the implications of the Exodus memory forour profane memories. It reframes them.

As to the commitment to truthfulness, the memory of the Passion rein-forces it. Just like the Exodus memory, the memory of Passion grounds truth-fulness by insisting that God is the God of justice and therefore of truth, andtakes away the main motivation for untruthfulness by certifying deliveranceand therefore undercutting the need for deceit. In addition the Passion mem-ory helps form persons capable of being truthful in situations marked bywrongdoing. I can purify my memory because my identity is tied neitherto the guilt of the wrongdoer and therefore to my accusation of her, nor tomy own innocence and therefore to my self-justification. I am not merely a beloved of God; I am a beloved of God notwithstanding my sin. The same

holds true of the person who wronged me. At the foot of the cross I can accepta differentiated view both of myself and of the wrongdoer, a view not sche-matized by the stark polarity of light on one side and darkness on the other,and therefore be truthful, whether I am thereby accused or justified.

Second, the Passion memory reaffirms the commitment to rememberwrongs suffered in the service of opposing wrongdoing whether directedagainst me or someone else. But that opposition now takes the form not of retribution, and certainly not of vengeance, but of grace. I will rememberan offense so as to condemn it and so as to be able to work for just relation between the wrongdoer and the wronged. As the wronged person, I willalso remember it so as to release the offender from the consequences of

condemnation and from guilt incurred by wrongdoing. The memory of thePassion urges me to place the memory of wrong suffered in the service of reconciliation.

Third, the commitment to remembering out of concern for protection andwell-being is reinforced and recast. Recall that seen through the lens of thePassion memory, violation endured is not an intrusion of darkness into the bright light of my innocence, but a condemnable injustice committed againsta person who, in his own way, is condemnably unjust. For the wronged, theconsequence is freedom from resentment (a temptation of the weak) and fromvindictive destructiveness (a temptation of the strong). For resentment and

destructiveness are fruits that grow on the soil of memories defined by thestark polarity of total innocence and total culpability. The Passion memoryhelps me use the shield of memory responsibly.

Finally, as to healing, by inserting the wounding event and the woundedself into the story of divine judgment and vindication the Passion memorywards off the dangerous tendency toward exclusive care of the self at theexpense of others. The memory of the Passion indicates that the ultimate goalof divine judgment and vindication is God’s formation of the community of love, which includes both me and the person who wronged me. My healing isno longer simply my own affair taking place in my interiority without refer-ence to the wrongdoer or to the larger community of which I am part. I heal,

but I heal, in community and with the wrongdoer, rather than at theirexpense.



Memories of Wrongs, Communities of Memory

Let us assume for a moment that my argument so far was persuasive: it issalutary to filter memories of wrongs suffered through the lens of the sacred

memories of the Exodus and Passion. Memories of these redeeming events inthe history of God’s people help us redeem mundane memories of wrongssuffered. Most of what I have written so far was about what might be goodfor us to do and even what we should do. But to know what we should doto remember well, is not yet to remember well. The question still remainshow it is possible for us to remember well. Does what I have written here sim-ply pile onto the shoulders of victims the burden of remembering well on thetop of the burden of having suffered wrong? No doubt, remembering well is adiscipline that demands work. Those who have suffered wrong undertake itnot simply for the sake of the wrongdoer, but for their own sake—so that they

can live as persons created in the image of the God who loves the ungodly,and they do not undertake it on their own. I already mentioned the presencein their lives of Christ in whom God took the sin of the world. With Christ inthem, they become Christs to their neighbor. I want to conclude by highlight-ing the importance of belonging to a community that remembers wrongssuffered through the lens of the Exodus and the Passion.

As Maurice Halbwach argues, remembering is a communal activity. Wedo not remember as isolated individuals, even if the memories that each of us has are very much our own—in fact, so much our own that it is hardfor us to think of anything as being more our own than memories. And yetwe remember as members of communities. This is true of profane, everyday

memories. It is even more true of sacred memories. The conclusion, then, isstraightforward: to remember wrongs suffered through the lens of the sacredmemories of the Exodus and the Passion we need to be members of sacredcommunities.

Christian churches are communities that keep themselves alive—moreprecisely, that God keeps alive—by keeping alive the memory of the Exodusand Passion. Their identity is wrapped up in the memory of the death andresurrection of Jesus Christ, which resounds with the echoes of the Exodusredemption. Churches are then communities who can therefore offer thememory of the Exodus and Passion as a lens for memories of wrongs

suffered.Churches can offer the lens of sacred memory, I write advisedly. Oftenthey do not. They do remember the death and resurrection of Christ as theycelebrate Holy Communion; there is no avoiding of that. But often they sim-ply fail to incorporate remembering of wrongs suffered into the celebration of the Holy Communion. And even when they do, they often keep it neatlysequestered from the memory of the Passion. The memory of the Passion istwisted when it is about what God has done for us, without any consequenceon how we should remember wrongs suffered. We then remember wrongssuffered only to seek comfort or lend religious legitimacy to whatever useswe want to put these memories. The potential for misuse is great. No wonder

that we sometimes find thirst for revenge celebrating its victory under themantle of a religiously sanctioned struggle for faith, for protection, for nation,



for our way of life—and all of that in the name of Christ who died on thecross! Such a twisted memory of the Passion then helps make the memoriesof wrongs we suffer into an abomination, to use Elie Wiesel’s term.

Imagine the alternative! Imagine what would happen if during Holy

Communion I celebrated with the people of God the Lamb of God, who suf-fered with all those who suffer and who took away the sin of the transgres-sors. It is not only that both Captain Goranovic and I would now be in theliturgy precisely in our capacity as the wronged and the wrongdoer, evenif only indirectly. Equally importantly, the whole community would becelebrating my transformed memory of his wrongdoing—that I name thecaptain’s wrongdoing as wrongdoing; that it does not elicit in me only con-demnation and disgust; that in receiving Christ in the sacrament of his bodyand blood, I am receiving myself as a new creature, made in the image of theGod who loves the ungodly, and with identity greater than anything anybodycould ever do to me; that I am freed from the hold of wrong suffered on mylife and open to extend the reconciling hand to the captain who has beenembraced by Christ’s open arms on the cross; that I remember with hopeof final reconciliation; and more.

When I am in a community that nurses resentments so that it could exactrevenge, or keeps score so just retribution could befall the wrongdoer, thepractice of remembering through the lens of the Passion falters. For one, itstarts making less and less sense. It seems implausible, even when I havegood reasons for it. And then, like a tropical plant in a desert climate, it failsto take root in my life. The immediacy of the violation overwhelms desire andimagination, and nourishes memories that fix wrongdoing on wrongdoers,

seek their punishment, and drive them away from my presence. To remember in a reconciling way I need to observe the community struggle (and some-times fail) to embody those same practices, and above all I need Christ whocomes through the community in faith to indwell me and live his life throughme. Mediating Christ the reconciler and embodying reconciling rememberingis the double gift that the community of sacred memory gives both to thosewho suffer wrong and those who commit it.

At their best, communities of sacred memory are the schools of rightremembering—remembering that is truthful and just, that heals individualswithout injuring others, remembering that motivates struggles for justiceand the grace-filled work of reconciliation.

Miroslav Volf is Director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture and Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School in

New Haven, Connecticut.

Notes

1. See Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics gen. ed. Wayne Whitson Floyd, Jr. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,2005), 84–85.2. For a treatment of liturgical enacting of ultimate redemption in Jewish tradition see Lawrence A.Hoffman, ‘‘Does God Remember? A Liturgical Theology of Memory,’’ in Memory and History in Chris-tianity and Judaism, ed. Michael A. Singer (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 41–72.

3. On memory in the thought of Johannes Baptist Metz, see Bruce T. Morrill, S.J., Anamnesis as Danger-ous Memory: Political and Liturgical Theology in Dialogue (Collegeville, MIN: The Liturgical Press, 2000),19–72.



4. David Kesley, Imagining Redemption (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 55.5. Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, trans.David Smith (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), 111.6. Ibid., 117–118.7. On the relation between the axes ‘‘suffering—deliverance’’ and ‘‘enmity—reconciliation’’ see

Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: Theological Reflections of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 22ff.8. Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. trans. and ed. Allen Wood andGeorge, DiGiovanni. (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 89.9. See, for instance, Dolores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), 60.10. Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom, trans. Paul Kachur (Crestwood,NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988), 130.11. See Miroslav Volf, ‘‘The Final Reconciliation: Reflections on a Social Dimension of the Eschatolo-gical Transition,’’ Modern Theology 16 (2000): 91–113.12. See forgiveness, God’s and ours; Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a CultureStripped of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 121–224.13. For the background on this experience with Captain Goranovic, see my forthcoming book onmemory tentatively titled The End of Memory.

memory eschatology eucharist-volf

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