In suffering the pain of grief, memory can be a healing salve. Not only remembering stories of loved ones lost and recalling them at family gatherings. But when it comes to observing traditions and special occasions, such as Christmas or Easter. How do you navigate through a holiday without that special person? What do you do?

The first step is to recall in your mind’s eye the past; linger with these memories until you can feel the quiet, reassuring love and pleasure of those moments. Stay with each memory long enough to understand what about it is meaningful for you.

Then, let your memories guide you in making plans — let’s say, for this coming Easter holiday. The point is not to make an exact re-creation of the past. This is not about making a simulation of past experiences.

I heard about a man who, in middle age, purchased a Harley-Davidson to try to live in the myth of the youthful, unfettered individual who is free to go anywhere at any time. He felt unsatisfied, however, after his solitary road-trips. Something was missing.

After more reflection, what he was remembering on a deeper level was the positive experience in his youth of the friends he made in a bike shop where he worked a job one summer. The meaning of memory was found in the relationships more so than the motor-cycles. He didn’t sell the Harley-Davidson. But he did inquire about local riding groups of folks his age. His interest shifted to making friends.

Memories of past Christmases or Easters can transform each new celebration. For example, a memory of a family bike ride on an Easter Monday decades ago can lead to a family train trek through the Rockies. What’s important is not to re-create the past, but to transform it so it’s meaningful for the present. Not simulation, but translation.

During Lent we reflect on the question of healing, on our faith journeys. What I am discovering is as we hear the various stories of healing from members of our community, a wonderful theology of healing is emerging. And one important aspect of healing, is to consider the power of memory. Because of one, small experience of God’s grace in our past — should we be able to recall such an experience — can emerge strength and encouragement and guidance for dealing with a current challenge, suffering or crossroad in our lives.

But even if we are not able to remember any good in our past, the faith that gives us power today is not about our glory, but about God’s. In the Gospel for today, Jesus heals a man, blind from birth (John 9:1-41). Those who witness this healing miracle want an explanation for his condition: Is it his fault that he was blind, or his parents’ sin that caused him this disability. A biblically sound question, since the Torah suggests that the “iniquity of the parents is visited upon the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation” (Exodus 34:6-8).

Jesus avoids this kind of biblicism that seeks only to make technical arguments that focus only on our righteousness or lack thereof. Jesus turns our sites away from ourselves and onto God: The purpose of our lives, including our suffering, is to point to God, and God’s work. If we are to remember anything, it is to remember God’s mighty acts in relation to the people of God, including you and me. When the Psalmist delights in the past, his memory focuses on what God has done: “I remember the days of old, I think about all your deeds, I meditate on the works of your hands” (Psalm 143:5).

God’s vision is expansive and eternal, abounding in steadfast love. I wonder why the disciples weren’t that interested in the first part of that text from Exodus. Before talking about the iniquity imparted to the third and fourth generations, when the Lord spoke to Moses, he said first: “The Lord is a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation” — which is a lot longer than four!

And as we know, generations ago the world was a lot different than what it is now. I was watching on Netflix a show that I remember watching avidly in the 1990s. One detail caught my attention, when the characters were talking to each other holding the old, large, clunky ear pieces connected by a spiral, rubber cord to a hand-dial phone. In one generation, so much has changed and people are doing things in different ways.

And yet, one thing remains: The steadfast love of God. Whatever we do in God’s mission, and however we do it, we can be assured that God is faithful to us, that God has unbounding love for us. After all, God doesn’t look on outward appearances; God looks at our heart. When David was chosen to be king of Israel, God wasn’t looking for the one who appeared to have all the desirable qualities; God wasn’t looking for the tallest, the strongest, the best-looking one to be their leader. God was looking at the heart of David (1 Samuel 16).

We can be courageous, then, and bold to reach out and be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world today. After all, it’s not, in the end about us. We find healing and wholeness for our lives in order to do, and by doing, the will of God. It is for His sake that we throw ourselves fully into life. It is for His sake that we are healed and restored.

The man who bought the Harley-Davidson was initially motivated by an individualistic worldview, that so often seeps into the life of the church. How often does our experience of worship, even, trend into being merely a disembedded, fragmented, personal experience in a crowd of strangers. As if worship was meant only for what you (individually) can get out of it for your own personal self-help agenda. No wonder many of us sometimes get frustrated with worship experience.

That is why a regular, weekly celebration of the Eucharist — the Holy Communion — is so vital to our life together. In this sacrament, we are re-membered as the Body of Christ. We remember what Jesus did and what God has done throughout salvation history; we recall these mighty acts of God, but not solely as a piece of history, a memorial. But as it impacts our lives today, in mission for others.

We come to the table, a diverse group of people. But we come as equals on a level-playing field deserving as one punishment for our sin but forgiven and showered with God’s mercy and grace — as one, by the self-less act of Jesus. We are empowered, through the broken body of Jesus, to be his broken body for the world, today. How that memory shapes us today may be different from decades ago. But memory continues to form us, and reform us. In our lives, the Gospel is translated for the world today.

Be thou, our vision, O God.

Thank you to Alan J. Roxburgh and M. Scott Boren in “Introducing the Missional Church: What it is, why it mattes, how to become one”, chapters 2-3