“’Do this in remembrance of me.’ Jesus invites you to commemorate his betrayal, death, and resurrection. His invitation makes space for ‘dangerous memory,’ a memory that, as post-Holocaust Catholic theologian Johann Baptist Metz tells us, ‘puts pressure on and questions our present because in it we remember an unfinished future.’ Memory can unsettle the unreconciled present and open up a future for the hopeless and the forgotten, the failed and the oppressed….Remembering keeps the ghosts alive so that they may warn and comfort, haunt and inspire the living: dangerous memories that rush toward an unfinished future. Making the absent present allows for processing grief, strengthening commitments, and opening up vision. Such remembrance commits you to work for a future for those who have been forgotten, erased, and left behind.”
-Hanna Reichel, For Such a Time as This, 88, 89
I believe that most of us experience an internal tug-of-war between the past and the future. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’ titular demon supervisor advises his underling Wormwood that one of best ways to keep a human from doing good is to keep them ping-ponging between those two times that are not the present. One keeps trying to recapture or reach towards moments that are mist. It can keep a person from doing something.
The quote above resonates with me because it harnesses the past and unfinished future into a catalyst that animates our present. We remember the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus because it means something today and compels us to presently work for the Good that is already here, but also not yet. We remember the hope and pain of the past to do something that help us take some sort of step each and every day. We realize that the hope which exists within the gospel story is not yet fully realized. Many people are still being left behind and forgotten. The realization, as the theologian Metz states, puts pressure and questions on the present.
The pressure of the present forces me to consider the way in which many of our institutions seek to answer those questions by attempting to turn back time. But it’s not as simple as simply going back to some idealized past. Often those halcyon days are misremembered or the recollections are selective. A movement seeking to make America great again neglected how that greatness was oppression for many people in this country.
Hand in hand with those politics is the denomination in which I grew up. The Southern Baptist church last week made it official (again) that women are not allowed to be pastors in their denomination. They will tell you that this decision is to cement a return to how things were. They neglect how the first people that shared the good news of the resurrection were women. Or how Paul lauded female leaders like Phoebe, Priscilla, and Junia in his epistles. Or how there have been scores and scores of female pastors who have nurtured, taught, lead, and served the Church throughout its history.
It is a decision that frustrates me mightily even as it does not surprise me. SBC leader Al Moehler says that his championing of this discrimination is a desire for unity and to keep the denomination from slipping into liberalism. It is infuriating that one could think that a church slipping into a nebulous ideology is more dangerous than pastoral abuse, championing a vulgar and violence-prone Christian nationalism, or telling every woman under your care that God does not call them to speak the Good News from a pulpit.
It is maddening because I have watched my sister, friends, and classmates in seminary need to prove themselves worthy over and over again despite clear calling to ministry and obvious gifts in teaching, preaching, and leading. They have had to either go search for places that would accept them or stifle their calling. It is ridiculous because every time so far that I have been in a congregation led by a female pastor, it has been really good. Perfect? No, but the success rate is probably better than the men. Not that women ministers are a lock to be successful, but a male in leadership has a ton of leeway that a more gifted female would not.
It is a tragedy because in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female. That is part of the Good News: there is a place of belonging here for everyone. I see in Jesus someone who loves and values every person that he encounters. We have so far to go in chasing down that unfinished future and the affirmation of female pastors is just one small facet of many in that pursuit.
Yet this is where we are and all we have is right now so let us try our best do something good. I hope by God’s grace we can summon dangerous memories and dreams of an unfinished future to work for the hopeless and forgotten, the failed and oppressed, the erased and the left behind.