When Christians talk about Communion, we say it is a remembrance of Jesus, a memorial. Which is true, and scriptural, but also slightly misleading, as if what we are doing at the table is reminiscing, like you would at a wake.

But in the gospel’s original Greek, the word for remembrance is stronger, edgier—anamnesis—literally, “against amnesia.” Remembering Jesus in Communion is like standing up to an adversary. It is not reminiscence, it is resistance. It is not merely remembering; it is refusing to forget.

There are forces around us and within us that want us to forget what they have been up to for eons, wreaking havoc, taking up all the breathing room, squeezing the life out of everything for ego, profit, supremacy, and power.

They are still at it night and day, trying to fog over all traces of Jesus’ revolution in the world and in our hearts. They hope we will lose his trail. They hope we will forget we ever knew him.

For if we forget, we will be putty in their hands. If we forget, they can tell us anything they want, and we won’t know they are lying. In the vacuum of forgetting, injustice has it easy, violence rules the day.

Communion is dangerous memory; it is our uprising. At the table we take a stand. We remember him. We remember each other. We remember everyone hate erases. We refuse to forget.