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Do this,? Jesus said at the table. When it comes to worship, it seems like we are doing a lot of other things in the church other than what Jesus said to do.

 ?Do this in my (anamnesis) memory.? ?Memory? doesn?t quite get it, however. The idea of remembrance conveys a stroll down memory lane, nostalgia, scrap booking, which is all well and good if Christian worship is only about reminiscing.

I am sorry we ever started to use that word, ?remembrance? as a translation for the Greek, ?anamnesis.? It turns communion into only something we mentally remember, rather than an affirmation of what Christ promises.

The opposite of the word ?anamnesis? is ?amnesia,? forgetfulness. So in some sense the word does mean to recollect. Yet that word more dynamically means, because it is spoken by a
living savior: Do this ?to re-present, make present again? my presence and the salvation story. Now that is power.

The  Discipleship Adventure is rooted in revitalizing our church. I cannot think of a better way of revival and evangelism, of making Acts 2 congregations, than to do what Jesus said to do, and to trust in his promise that he will be with us in the breaking of the bread, and by that doing, move others to Jesus Christ.
 
John Wesley believed the Lord?s Supper was a converting ordinance, an experience that moved the unbeliever towards faith in Christ.

The Eucharist is also a reviving experience, as one articulate woman put it at St. Andrew?s, ?the Eucharist is not only an affirmation of faith, it is a confirmation of faith; it makes faith strong so I might see God?s grace everywhere.?

Worship not only expresses the church?s identity; it is constitutive of that identity. Praying shapes believing. The Eucharist is a focusing experience; the Word and Table open our eyes to the presence of the Christ in the here and now, so that we might see Christ everywhere so as to become his body everywhere.
        
St. Andrew?s UMC has discovered that revival is found through the weekly celebration of the Eucharist. My doctoral work at Catholic University centered on moving a local United Methodist Church to the weekly celebration of Word and Table.

Through a process of education, practice, evaluation, and lay and clergy leadership, St. Andrew?s moved away from a service of the Word to the weekly service of the Word and Table about 10 years ago. It has proved to be one of the best things we have done to revive the church, and make and empower disciples of Jesus Christ.

We have found that in the ?breaking? of the bread, that our lives, too, break themselves open to serve the world and to make disciples. 
    

The church has debated the meaning of ?real presence? in Communion for years. In fact, when our new Eucharistic rites were being debated, there was controversy centering on the words of the Epiclesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit over the bread and the wine to ?make them be for us the body and blood of Christ.? Some felt that was too strong, too literal in understanding, others argued that this conveys the power of the Eucharist.

Yet, thank God, the words remained and with those words, rightly so, a strong sacramental theology was affirmed for United Methodists.

 One of the things I heard recently at the monthly Discipler group is that we need to keep God and not ourselves as the focus of our worship. I think that is true ? worship is about God and not us.

By keeping the focus on Word and Table, St. Andrew?s has found that this is the best way to keep the focus on God.

In listening to my brothers and sisters in the annual conference and at the recent Fellowship of Worship and Arts in St. Louis this summer, it seems like we are doing a lot of things trying to revitalize the church and its worship ? Power-Points and praise bands and so called ?contemporary? worship.

And all these things have their place if used, as Marva Dawn puts it, without ?dumbing down.? Yet, sadly, I do not hear a lot of folks doing what Jesus told us to do: celebrate his presence in both Word and Table.

Many of our churches have moved quickly towards contemporary worship. I still cannot for the life of me figure out what that means, for all worship if it is good and vital worship is contemporary. However, when I ask, at clergy gatherings, if they had moved their congregations toward weekly celebration of Word and Table as the norm of Christian worship, the response is silence. This raises the question ? do we trust in Jesus and what he promised or not ? ?Do this? and I will be with you?

Sacramental worship is the heart of the church?s identity: we depend on Christ?s presence to make us into his disciples and to keep us as his disciples. Far too many churches have shrunk the great powerful liturgy of the church into the tiny box of the self.

People are yearning for mystery, for those liminal places where they know they will experience the risen Christ. People are yearning for the church to keep God in focus. People are yearning for those moments when they know that they have stood in the presence of God. Christ says you will as you break bread together in my name.
 
I have many ideas of how to keep the Eucharist a powerful experience in a local church ? sung Great Thanksgivings, gestures that empower the spoken word, but basically it comes down to pastors committing themselves to ?Do this.? By ?doing this? pastors help their churches claim the great promises of Jesus, which confirm and empower us as disciples of Jesus Christ, as that woman said ? ?communion is confirmation!? 

The Rev. David Thayer is pastor of St. Andrew?s UMC in Annapolis.