Remembrance and Formation

In general, we can appreciate how sights, sounds, and smells can be strongly associated with certain memories. Because we inhabit time and space, abstract ideas and experiences often appear to “stick” to locations and situations in which we learned an idea or had an experience. J. H. Bavinck labels this “recollection” and distinguishes it from the more general idea of memory, which is the ability to reproduce the contents of consciousness from the past.[1] To illustrate recollection, Bavinck writes the following:

Once, on a dark afternoon, while it was pouring down rain outside and almost dusky in the classroom, the teacher taught me during the French lesson that we must translate “la mer” as “de zee” [the sea]. Now it is years later, and I come across the word “la mer” in a book. All at once, I not only think “de zee,” but I again see before me the place, the teacher, the gloom, and it is as if I hear the gushing of the rain outside on the street. In that case, a simultaneously recorded idea is not simply reproduced, but the word wakes up in me a recollection of a moment in my life. I relate it to my own [life], to my own personal past; it gets a place in my storehouse of experiences of my soul.[2]

As we take up the institution of Passover and God’s command for its ongoing remembrance in Exodus 12, we might be able to appreciate how the Passover meal got a place in the storehouse of the experiences of that first generation’s souls. There is no doubt that the location and situation would have provided a ready place for both Moses’ instructions and the final experience to stick, so that at the next celebration of Passover, the ones who experienced the event of Passover would have a strong recollection of it later. There is no doubt that this would have been a valuable recollection, and most certainly it would have been formative.

But all at once, a problem arises, for only a few generations would have experienced the event of Passover, the execution of the tenth plague. How, then, would future generations make meaningful and formative connections between the remembrance and the event which was not a part of their personal past? Here I think the specification that future Passover celebrations be eaten in haste, with feet shod and staff in hand, serves the purpose of approximating the “local and temporal index” of the recollective ideas that the first generation would have had.[3]

The Lord’s Supper raises a similar sort of challenge, as well. For the generations of Jesus’ disciples who ate with him, witnessed his death, and experienced his resurrection, the Lord’s Supper would squarely fit within the category of recollection. But what about us? We are separated by thousands of years from the event which we remember each week. What does this mean for us when we “do this in remembrance” of Christ?

The beginning of an answer is that insofar as we participate in the Lord’s Supper with faith, we really do experience real spiritual communion with Christ. Regarding our engagement with Scripture, Henk van den Belt writes, “As the Spirit is present in the Word, so also the Father and the Son. This presentia realis [real presence] is the object of the testimonium [the Spirit’s witness to us].”[4] Later he writes, “Without the Spirit Scripture remains empty and arid for the believer. The Spirit does not fill the text with new meaning but fills the heart to actualize and apply that meaning.”[5] He even goes so far as to say, “The Spirit makes the testimony of Scripture so resonate in the heart that you yourself become an eyewitness of the acts of salvation. You possess the living voice of God, and you see by faith the crucified and risen Savior.”[6]

It is no giant leap to apply these thoughts to the Lord’s Supper, since it is a “visible Word.” As the Holy Spirit dwells in us, he unites us in real spiritual communion with Christ in such a way that we do not even need recollection since we have the present reality of Christ’s presence. May we, by both Word and sacrament, treasure up as experiences of our souls the significance of Christ’s word, work, and continuing presence with us.

[1] J. H. Bavinck, Inleiding in de Zielkunde, ed. A Kuypers, 2nd ed. (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1935), 107.

[2] Bavinck, Inleiding, 107.

[3] Bavinck, Inleiding, 107.

[4] Henk Van Den Belt, Geestspraak: Hoe We de Bijbel Kunnen Verstaan (Utrecht: KokBoekencentrum, 2024), 241.

[5] Van Den Belt, Geestspraak, 245.

[6] Van Den Belt, Geestspraak, 398. He points to the spiritual, “Where you There?” as an example of this idea, which aligns well with Paul’s words that we were buried with Christ (Rom 6:3-5; Col 2:12).