In one of two chapters on the theological virtue of faith in Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis encourages his readers to see the battle of faith as being between “faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other.”  He is particularly concerned with helping his readers understand that power of mood and the importance of training “the habit of Faith” to combat mood’s power.

At this point in his argument, Lewis asserts that

if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day.  That is why daily prayers and religious readings and church-going are necessary parts of the Christian life.  We have to be continually reminded of what we believe.

“Do not most people simply drift away?” he asks.

Which is why the fourth chapter of Erik Varden’s The Shattering of Loneliness is such an encouraging challenge.  After encouraging readers to remember that they are dust, that they were once slaves in Egypt, and that they should remember Lot’s wife, Varden brings the readers to one “habit of Faith” that most Christians practice regularly (though often at different intervals): Jesus’ “last supper” command to “do this in memory of me.”

In the chapter, Varden begins by “drawing a picture” of the world Christ entered: a world of man’s violence against another.  He writes:

This is the world we live in.  It is the world God came to save.  The world for which Christ suffered was no made-up world.  He had no illusions about it.  He knew what he would suffer on entering Lamech’s territory.  On the night he was betrayed, he anticipated the events that would out him to death.  He did it by means of symbolic action, within the setting of a meal.  He allowed his friends to partake, somehow, of his impending oblation, though the sense of his gestures and words would become clear only much later.

There is much difference, of course between the Catholic and the low-church Protestant view of what is happening every time we reenact and retell the story of that Maundy Thursday meal, where Jesus breaks bread and pours out wine and challenges his disciples to remember as a way of living into the future.  For many of us, we see “communion” through the lens of Paul’s writing in 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul retells the events of Jesus’ last supper and then writes:

²⁷ So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. ²⁸ Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. ²⁹ For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.

I like Varden’s assertion, in my own low-church Protestant way, that “Christ’s performative presence . . . demands a present response” and that “we must live differently now, not proffer past alibis or future conjectures . . . To be worthy is not to be blameless: the Eucharist is not a prize for good behaviour.  To be worthy is to assent to the realization of Christ’s example in my life- to commit to the newness of it.”  I like Varden’s next assertion a lot:

The Lord does not seek instant perfection.  But he requires coherence in the way we live.

Coherence, I think, is a good word for what we strive for (and often fail to achieve in the day-to-day.  I cannot help but think of what James wrote near the beginning of his epistle”

²² Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. ²³ Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror ²⁴ and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. ²⁵ But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

Jesus’ command to “do this in memory of me” is not just word spoken; it is also cup poured and bread broken.  It is an almost-living reminder of the hurt and hope of what Christians will celebrate around the world next week.  It is a vital reminder for us as we go through these days.