For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
1 Corinthians 11:23-24
There is a novel, or rather a series of novels, by a guy named Jack Finney. In these books, he expands on an analogy put forward by Albert Einstein who describes time as a river and the future — or the past for that matter — as something that is just out of sight, as if it were around a bend. Finney suggests that one can journey forward or backward along this river, rounding one bend or another, by building up enough reference points from a previous time to be able to fully imagine one’s self there (and by so imagining, actually move to that time).
I think Finney is taking more than a few liberties with Einstein, which is fine for a novel, and even if he weren’t, I am not sure that one could build up so many reference points from, say, 1883, that a person could fully imagine themselves in that place. But I do think we can get close. Simply hearing the first few chords of “You Can Look But You’d Better Not Touch” by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band stirs up vivid images from my memory of Christmas Day in 1986 when I first heard that song. Corn prepared in a particular way will always bring me into the presence of my mother.
If we rely on our experience of time to always be sequential, this experience will only seem sentimental. But if we allow ourselves to understand that eternity always touches the present moment, we can begin to experience the presence of people we remember. Some people who seem to have lost all sense of the passage of time — people who are experiencing what we call “dementia” — might actually be spending more time with things and people who are eternally present.
Now, I don’t think that Paul, quoting Jesus, is suggesting that we should pursue dementia. I do, however, think he is trying to pass along what he knows: that the presence of Jesus is accessible to us through the eternal now if we will allow ourselves to enter into a deep and shared memory. It’s a memory in song and in taste, a memory in sight and in smell, a memory of hands touching feet and a resonant voice commanding “Love one another, as I have loved you.” It’s an invitation to travel through time.