Anamnesis is a Greek word that is translated remembrance but it is not like remembering what you ate for breakfast. Rather it is the remembrance that vividly evokes another time, another place. A song is sung and it brings to mind and heart another world.

When Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of me" it wasn't the vintage of wine or the kind of bread that mattered. It was something much more than that. It was and is a glimpse of God. Yet churches have been rent asunder as we Christians have argued over precisely when the bread and wine turn into the body and blood or whether they do at all. Churches have been ripped apart over whether baptism should be sprinkled or poured, dipped or dunked.

You may be aware that the great schism of Christianity that separated Catholicism from Orthodoxy was predicated by but one syllable of one word in the Nicene Creed.

Pondering such troubling realities, I am reminded that the very first commandment is to have no other gods before the one God. Surely such a commandment was placed first on the list because it was and is so often broken. Every time we say that it's the book that matters or the box or the building we are guilty of worshiping other gods.

One of the reasons why I am more than a little uncomfortable with reciting our creeds is that we tend to think of them less as directions to God and more as a description of God. They become a kind of idol for us, a means for discerning who is in and who is out, who is right and who is wrong. When used properly, our creeds are rich and wonderful guides to grace but too often they are arrogant weapons of idolatry.