Some years ago a book was published with the intriguing
title, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.(1) It sounds like
something from Dr. Seuss but was written by a neurologist, Dr.
Oliver Sacks. It recounts the history of a man whose memory had
been obliterated by Korsakov's Psychosis, a mental disorder
(often prompted by acute alcoholism) which may or may not get
better. When Sacks would visit Mr. Thompson in the hospital, he
writes, the man "would identify me -- misidentify, pseudo-identify me -- as a dozen different people in the course of five
minutes...He remembered nothing for more than a few seconds. He
was continually disoriented. Thompson built bridges across the
"abyss of amnesia" that opened continually beneath him, Sacks
recalls, "by fluent confabulations and fictions of all kinds, one
moment speaking as the delicatessen-grocer he had once been, the
next as an imaginary Reverend, continually improvising a world
around him..."
The destruction of Mr. Thompson's memory drove him to this
strange, desperate tale telling because, as Sacks theorizes, "to
be ourselves, we must HAVE ourselves -- possess, if need be re-possess, our life stories...a man NEEDS such a narrative, a
continuous inner narrative, to maintain his identity, his self."
Human nature appears to be so structured that without a
continuity with the past, our lives would feel random and totally
topsy-turvy.
To be sure, all amnesia is not drug- or alcohol-related.
Some is due to injury or disease...Alzheimer's. Some comes
naturally with age as a brain becomes stuffed with so many
memories that, like an overloaded computer, some of what we try
to access is no longer easily located on the disc - in my own
life I call it a "senior moment." Some memories are too painful
to recall, so we engage whatever mental powers at our command to
keep them buried. But as Dr. Sacks' work says, when some of our
history is blotted out, some of US is lost in the process.
I wonder if that might not be a problem in the church. What
brings that to mind is the word we read in scripture from the
Apostle Paul concerning the Lord's Supper. It seems from what he
writes that the good folks at First Church, Corinth were having
some trouble in the congregation. Cliques had formed. Divisions
between rich and poor had sprung up. As they gathered for
worship from week to week and sat down to the common meal they
regularly shared to commemorate the Last Supper, there was no
sense of "communion" - it was a caricature of the big family with
everyone diving toward the fried chicken at the same time with
the one with the short arms being left with the empty plate.
Hardly appropriate for a church, would you say? Paul thought
not. He blamed it on a sort of spiritual amnesia - they had
forgotten what the Lord's Supper was all about. "This is my
body...this do in remembrance of me...This cup is the new
covenant in my blood. Do this...in remembrance of me. Whenever
you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's
DEATH until he comes."
In a way, Paul's choice of words might be surprising. Why
would he not have said, "In eating and drinking, you proclaim
Christ's RESURRECTION?" After all, is not the resurrection the
focus of our hope? Do not the modern liturgies open the
Communion service with "This is the JOYFUL FEAST?" Where is the
joy in emphasizing something as morose as DEATH? We would rather
focus attention on something more pleasant.
The modern church needs Paul's reminder. True, no one is
elbowing his way past another to get to the table as in Corinth,
not for the cube of bread or the sip of juice. But remembering
Jesus, and in particular his horrible death, are not at the top
of our mental agenda. We too seem to have developed a Christian
amnesia. The cross has become a lovely gift of jewelry to be
worn on a chain around the neck or a shiny golden symbol to be
displayed prominently in the front of a sanctuary. No longer is
it the vivid reminder of suffering and sacrifice endured on our
behalf. Perhaps that is why so many church members evidence a
kind of take-it-or-leave-it religion. They forget what was done
for them on that dusty hill so long ago. As has been said, a
clear conscience is often the product of a cloudy memory.
At this time of year, as we recall our nation's birthday, I
am reminded of a scene from the Revolution. A father took his
son up to the top of a hill overlooking a valley where the
American patriots had just driven the British back with
sacrificial courage. Before the father and his son lay the
battle-ridden valley; the smoke of the cannon still lingered in
the evening sky; the stench of dying flesh hovered heavily in the
air; the moans of injured young men, cut down in the prime of
their lives, sanctified the silence; the blood of the
bold stained the snow-covered ground. The father placed his arm
about the shoulder of his son and said, "Look long and well, and
remember, THIS is the horrible cost of your freedom."
I am told that in the sign language used by the deaf, the
way to say "Jesus" is to make an imaginary nail print in the
hand. In this day of comfort and convenience, of padded pews and
comfortable sanctuaries, of religion designed more to make us
feel good than be good, we need the reminder that the center of
the Christian faith is the symbol of agony. "Look long and well,
and remember, THIS is the cost of your salvation."
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine
Demands my soul, my life my all.(2)
Of course, the cross is not the end of the story. Neither
our memory nor Paul's stops with the Lord's death. Thus, we
gather at the table on Sunday, not Friday. The concluding phrase
of the apostle's sentence is instructive: "Whenever you eat this
bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death...UNTIL
HE COMES." The final word is victory...over every enemy, even
death. The Lord's Supper is not simply a sad memorial meal; it
IS a joyful feast, and our host is the risen Savior.
But for us who gather at the table today, the words, the
bread, the juice can be a desperately needed antidote to our
amnesia. If Dr. Sacks is correct in saying that when memory is
lost, some of US is lost as well, we can ill afford forgetting
that horrible cross. It is a vivid reminder of the incredible
lengths to which the Lord went to bring us to himself and at the
same time is a challenge to live as people worthy of such a
sacrifice.
The great cellist Pablo Casals was once teaching a student
who was struggling through a piece of music she had played many
times and had long ago committed to memory. She was doing a
terrible job - much had been forgotten so she improvised as best
she could. Finally, after suffering through it with her, Casals
comforted her by saying, "That is all right. Everything should
be new every time you play it."(3) May it be the same for us as we
come once more to the Lord's Table.
Amen!
1. Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, (South
Yarmouth, Ma. : J. Curley, 1986). Ten years later it was reintroduced as a musical, "The man
who mistook his wife for a hat" : chamber opera / Michael Nyman ; libretto by Oliver Sacks,
Christopher Rawlence, and Michael Morris, London : Chester Music ; Bury St. Edmunds,
Suffolk : Exclusive distributors, Music Sales, c1996
2. Isaac Watts
3. Clifton Fadiman, Gen. Ed., Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, (Boston, Little, Brown, & Co., 1985), p. 106
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