A fond remembrance. . .

The Rev. Charles Evanson was installed as Pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church on Rudisill in Ft. Wayne in 1975 --  where he would serve for 25 years.  He was ordained into the Office of the Holy Ministry in 1964 but not until after serving for two years as an ordained deacon under the Rev. Berthold Von Schenk.  He also became a field work supervisor in 1976 when the Seminary formerly of Springfield, IL, returned to its roots in Ft. Wayne.  While Ft. Wayne was not sure it wanted the Seminary since it had come at the cost of Concordia Senior College, Pastor Evanson was more than welcoming.  He became a mentor to me and to countless others across the years.  I was among those who were his first field workers and he was instrumental in my life as a pastor in so many ways that it is impossible to overstate his influence upon me.

I had actually been at Redeemer before he was installed there.  It was a tough time.  Their larger than life Pastor Herb Lindemann had taken a call.  He had been a very big presence in the liturgical movement among Lutherans.  The associate had left under less than happy circumstances.  The congregation was not even sure about calling Pastor Evanson.  But they did.  I well recall his installation.  The Rev. Adalbert Raphael Alexander Kretzmann, then pastor of St. Luke's, Chicago, read the Gospel.  He cast an imposing shadow over the day but it belonged to a quieter and yet no less profound Charles Evanson.  Soon began regular conversations, visits, and tabletalk -- mostly on Saturday mornings.  Behind a puff of pipe smoke and in a small study too crammed with books, Evanson held forth on the pastoral task -- complete with the history and pastoral theology to match.  But if I was going to serve at Redeemer, I also had to be under orders.

I was ordained a deacon with Gary Frank and Marvin Hinkle and served at Redeemer as liturgical deacon, visitor to the sick and shut-in, sometime catechist, occasional organist, and temporary custodian for most of the six years I was at the Senior College and Seminary.  Gary long ago swam the Bosporus and then the Tiber.  Marv served at historic Zion, Friedheim and elsewhere in Indiana before moving back to the area.  I was on Long Island, between Albany and NYC, and then here in Clarksville.  It is now 50 years since that Sunday near Thanksgiving when hands were laid, prayers were prayed, promises were made, and a stole was laid.  I cannot say what a privilege it was to serve under the good Father.  Oddly enough, I ended up for nearly 13 years just down the road from Fr. Von Schenk's farm and summer home and the mission he began in Oak Hill.  What a circle!  Anyway, I found the photo, my wife cleaned it up, and I offer it to you as a record of a wonderful day that began a privileged life.

 

Tired old arguments continue. . .

Everyone knows the ongoing debate about the order in which the Gospels were written, the theories about common source material, and the actual dates of their composition.  Spoiler alert.  I will not solve the problem here.  Suffice it to note that modern times have undone the historic narrative about the order and somewhat about the dates.  They have some evidence, to be sure, but they also are guessing and in their postulating have decided that those closer to the time know less than they do.  That is my point.

Modern Biblical scholarship believes that the Gospel of Mark was the first written Gospel and probably dates that work somewhere within a twenty year period from 50-70 AD.  Until more modern times, nearly everyone thought that the order of the gospels in the canon was actually their order of composition.  In particular, the Early Church Fathers are nearly unanimous in their thought that the Gospel of Matthew was the first gospel to be written and the sequence of gospels in the New Testament is the result of this thinking -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Today, about the only agreement you can find with earlier fathers and modern scholars is that the Gospel of John was the last to be written.

Third century scholar Origen said in his Commentary on Matthew 1:

Concerning the four Gospels which alone are uncontroverted in the Church of God under heaven, I have learned by tradition that the Gospel according to Matthew, who was at one time a publican and afterwards an Apostle of Jesus Christ, was written first and that he composed it in the Hebrew tongue and published it for the converts from Judaism. 

Note that already in the 3rd century, tradition had wrestled with and come to unanimity on both the question of the order in which the gospels were written and which were canonical.  To those who would insist this question of order or canonicity is simply unknown or uncertain, here is the thinking of a person of some repute about what was known and accepted long before the Church actually bothered to write out a list or modern scholarship presumed to know better. 

Later than Origen, in the 4th century, St. Augustine himself put together a harmony of the gospels in which he states unequivocally: 

Now, those four evangelists whose names have gained the most remarkable circulation over the whole world, and whose number has been fixed as four — it may be for the simple reason that there are four divisions of that world through the universal length of which they, by their number as by a kind of mystical sign, indicated the advancing extension of the Church of Christ — are believed to have written in the order which follows: first Matthew, then Mark, thirdly Luke, lastly John.

In addition, Origen also wrote of the authorship -- something of which modern scholarship insists is unknown and even, perhaps, the result of various scribes and traditions as compilation, of sorts.

The second written was that according to Mark, who wrote it according to the instruction of Peter, who, in his General Epistle, acknowledged him as a son, saying, 'The church that is in Babylon, elect together with you, salutes you and so does Mark my son.' And third, was that according to Luke, the Gospel commended by Paul, which he composed for the converts from the Gentiles. Last of all, that according to John. 

While some might question if it all matters, the importance here is confidence in the source material for who Jesus is and what He has accomplished for us and our salvation.  The matter of the canon and the gospels and their composition date and authorship bear to this essential point.  Can we have confidence that what we are reading today is the Gospel.  Where modern scholarship puts a question mark and some insist that nothing is so until the almighty Church says it is, it is clear that the early fathers believed and so proclaimed this Gospel of Jesus Christ based upon the historic record of the Scriptures well known to them and well defined (except for a very few books or sections of books in the New Testament) and that they reflected the earliest consensus and tradition on the matter.

The witness to the canon is clear even though you would be hard pressed to find a definitive statement that this is the canon and no other.  So Clement of Rome mentions at least eight New Testament books (95 AD), the martyr Polycarp, a disciple of John the apostle, 15 books (108 AD), Ignatius of Antioch 7books (115 AD), Irenaeus 21 books (185 AD), and Hippolytus 22 books (170-235?AD).  So the New Testament books around which the most doubt was placed early on were Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 John, and 3 John -- and this more for lack of mention than for dismissal from the witnesses of the earliest period.  Thus it is certain that, concerning the vast majority of the 27 books of the New Testament, no shadow of doubt existed concerning their character as tradition and this certainly includes the Gospels.  

In his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius of Caesarea chronicles the witness of earlier writers concerning the limits of the canon. In summary (Book III, chap. 25), he divides the books into three classes: (a) twenty-two are almost universally acknowledged to be canonical, namely the four Gospels, Acts, the letters of Paul (including Hebrews), I John, I Peter, and even Revelation (though Eusebius comments further on Revelation); (b) five are quite widely accepted, though disputed by some (though it would seem all were accepted by Eusebius himself) namely, James, Jude, II Peter (earlier regarded by Eusebius as spurious), II and III John; and (c) five are clearly spurious, namely the Acts of Paul, Hermas, Apocalypse of Peter, Barnabas, and the Didache.  Eusebius comments about Revelation: “To these perhaps the Revelation of John should be added, as some reject it while others count it among the accepted books.” As any idiot can see, this is virtually the canon as we know today.  For what it is worth, following Eusebius (after 325 AD) the differences in the canon are very slight indeed.

This history supports the apostolic tradition received by the Church -- proclaimed with clarity and certainty as its Canon -- until a quantitative list appeared by the end of the fourth century.  Modern scholarship begins with a question mark where the Church must put an exclamation point.  The history may not be as neat and tidy as we would want it to be but to suggest doubt and uncertainty where the record says confidence and authority is to betray not only the Scriptures but the Christ whom those Scriptures proclaim.  Why we would doubt or distance ourselves from this early witness to the truth and reliability of the gospels in particular and the whole of the New Testament is and remains a mystery to me.

Grok says not so fast. . .

  

For a very long time the issue of errors in the Bible has dogged Christianity and created a problem for those who hold a high view of the Scriptures.  Curiously enough, the Grok IV artificial intelligence from Elon Musk's company, has found evidence to give weight to the truthfulness of the Bible and the veracity of its stories from the beginning of the Old Testament to the end of the New Testament.  Far from simply reporting differences within the text, the Grok review found profound uniformity and the difference of details adding weight to the claim of truthfulness.  Furthermore, the Grok review found striking commonality across the books and across the fullness of its time of writing to give support to the claims of Scripture.  Nobody would ever suggest that a review by AI will settle the argument but it does help us too see that what is being claimed for the Bible is inherent within the text and reasonable -- just as reasonable if not more so than the doubts lent to the Scriptures.  This is not going to silence the Bible critics nor will it satisfy the Bible's supporters but perhaps it will remind us that our claims are not on the edge.  The internal consistency of the Scriptures is not an accident nor even a human scheme but evidence of something wider and deeper.  Listen for yourself and tell me what you think.

London Bridge is down. . .

Words that once gave the coded announcement of the death of the Queen have become the words which acknowledge the death of what was once greatness in Britain.  I for one am sad for it.  In many respects, the death of the Queen has either hastened it all or made it more obvious.  I am not sure which.  On the one hand are the images of Britain that we tend to see.  It is an increasingly secularized state in which the state church is largely a shell of its former self and in which agnostic and atheist seem to be able to live together with believers because they both value tradition and ceremony.  The Brits have always done an exceptionally good job of that.  But the ceremonies done so well cover the lost of much of what was once underneath it all.  Resolve and faith were hallmarks of British life and were put to the test during WWII and this small island nation seemed uniquely poised to flaunt the Nazi onslaught when other nations fell swiftly and easily under its grip.

The King is perhaps well meaning but chafed under the long life of his mother and the denial of the crown until age and disease have made him seem not simply late to the party but less than ready for prime time.  Perhaps I read too much into the tabloid stories and The Crown.  I hope so.  But the grand universities of this great empire are just as much bastions of wokism and liberalism as they are here.  The government too wedded to DEI causes over the old virtues that once held this diverse empire together.  The nation too comfortable with government money and more proud of the National Health Service than just about anything else.  Is that all there is?  This is a hard thing for an anglophile like me to ask but it must be.  Has Britain become a mere caricature of its once robust self?

It was painful to watch as the monarchy and government pandered to President Trump as if the nation of Elizabeth II and Churchill had become a mere lapdog to whoever happened to be in the White House at the moment.  A strong and profound alliance requires more than a mere echo of one opinion but a strong conversation.  Europe long ago lost its voice and identity over a Common Market, common currency, and common commitment to progressive democratic socialism.  It would seem that across the Channel things are not far behind.  The reality is that the Christian history of Britain, like that of the continent, has become a footnote and legacy -- something you prefer not to mention except in small print and something you spend half your time repenting of in order to prove you are on the right side of culture's drift. The vibrant voice of Europe and England is more Islam than Christianity and the dominant issues are more about taking care of people so they do not have to than the strong virtues of honesty, integrity, faith, and service.

This is a lament because as Europe has gone and England is headed, Canada is soon to follow.  Though Canada remains divided between its east and west, the liberal causes are there enshrined into law and not open to change.  We will be there soon unless we learn that conservatism implies that there is something to conserve and something worth conserving.  Our children are learning well their values from media and liberal educational policies and institutions.  Yes, we have alternatives and there is an actual resurgence among young men wishing to be men of virtue again but these are small numbers in comparison to those who have drunk the poison of liberalism and progressivism.  We must not simply pass on the faith to our children but also pass on virtue and honest reason unclouded by ideology and falsehood.  We must do more than merely give our children a good home but nurture their minds and their hearts in this home within the truth of God's Word and what is goodness.  We must teach them to resist and respond to the confused voices of academia who mouth the mantras of liberalism without either understanding what they are saying or seeing where it is headed.  London Bridge may be down but perhaps the George Washington is as well and countless others are falling.  Our future does not lie in the triumph of desire and individual autonomy but in truth that is also a scandal and service that gives more than it expects in return.  With the faith, we must teach our people well or Africa may be alone in resisting the  reinvention of self, marriage, and family as well as who Jesus is and what He has accomplished and what we should look like in Him. 

Pope said it - must be true. . .

After years of equivocating and spreading a fog over the clarity of Scripture and tradition from Pope Francis, we have this from Pope Leo:

“I do understand that this is a very hot-button topic and that some people will make demands to say, “we want the recognition of gay marriage,” for example, or “we want recognition of people who are trans,” to say this is officially recognized and approved by the church. The individuals will be accepted and received. Any priest who has ever heard confessions will have heard confessions from all kinds of people with all kinds of issues, all kinds of states of life and choices that are made. I think that the Church’s teaching will continue as it is, and that’s what I have to say about that for right now. I think it’s very important. Families need to be supported, what they call the traditional family. The family is father, mother, and children. I think that the role of the family in society, which has at times suffered in recent decades, once again has to be recognized, strengthened.”

Of course, it really does not matter what the Pope thinks.  It matters what Scripture says and the Church has confessed faithfully in response to that Word of God through the ages -- at least until things began to change and some Christians began to believe that it did matter what they thought and it mattered more than what Scripture says.  In any case, we ought to be grateful that this Pope at least has noticed what has been happening and says [traditional] families need to be supported and that the family is father, mother, and children.  It has been a while since the Vatican spoke so clearly.

We are not beholden to Rome but it helps when Rome speaks in faithfulness to Scripture and supports the rest of us who confess what God has said, His order in creation and the blessing of marriage and family.  In our times, this has been a truth confessed by fewer and fewer churches and rather ambiguously by others trying not to offend the culture.  The family is in trouble and the source of that trouble is often from voices within the churches who listen more to the pulse of the world and the press of media than to the clear and blunt teaching of Scripture.  I wish it were merely the government or society pressing against the faithful but the reality is that without Rome's clear confession we are tenuous minority.  Everyone else seems to have decided that doing what feels right in your own eyes is not a recipe for sin but for the ultimate human achievement and fulfillment.  

So, while I will not rest in my own encouragement to the faithful to hear God's Word and keep it with regard to marriage, children, and family, it does help when a voice from Rome admits that the family has suffered.  If the same Pope admits that the family has suffered in part by the failures of Francis, I will be even more encouraged.  For now, these are good words.  He has not exactly appointed the most faithful folk to positions in the Vatican to carry out these words so, like everything, we must wait and see how this pans out.

On another note, the same Pope in the same interview (how odd is it that Popes are interviewed like political or media figures!) that homosexuality, the role of women (aka ordination), family, and the Latin Mass are "hot button" issues or charged or divisive.  Well, sure, they are emotionally charged even if they will not change to approve same sex couples or the ordination of women (deacons or priests).  Of course, the traditional family (in the face of our want to change that definition) and reverent worship should not be emotionally charged but our culture has made them so.  But divisive does not mean that they need to be changed.  Truth is divisive.  I think Jesus said that.  It is the stumbling stone.  He is divisive -- setting family member against family member.  He is a scandal -- unless He is diluted or softened to make Him say and do nothing at all.  We have to remember that.  You can talk about some of these things all day long and it will not make these doctrines and issues less divisive or charged.  Sin has made the things of God a conflicted problem for us.  Redemption and faith are the only way out of it.  In the world but not of it.  

Striking. . .

“The most striking phenomenon in the Roman text is the augmentation of the words of consecration said over the chalice.”  So wrote Josef Jungmann in volume 2 of the Mass of the Roman Rite.  Of course, Rome seems to consider the words of consecration to be more narrowly the words Jesus spoke and not quite the words which describe His speaking and what He did.  Perhaps this is considered nitpicking but it does occur to me that the additions are really somewhat dilutions; they do not enhance but detract from the words of Christ. 

On the day before he was to suffer, he took bread in his holy and venerable hands, and with eyes raised to heaven, to you, O God, his almighty Father, giving you thanks, he said the blessing,
broke the bread and gave it to his disciples saying: Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my Body, which will be given up for you.

In a similar way, when supper was ended, he took this precious chalice in his holy and venerable hands, and once more giving you thanks, he said the blessing and gave the chalice to his disciples, saying: Take, all of you, and drink of this: Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my Blood, the Blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.  Do this in memory of me. As often as you shall do these things, you do them in memory of Me.

Perhaps it is understandable why there might be a desire to add to the words of Jesus in order to emphasize them or somehow make them more eloquent, it raises doubts about why there was this departure from the text of Scripture and, in particular, the words commended by St. Paul with such solemnity.  My point is not that this is the worst possible thing on earth but it does raise an issue.

Rome, along with Lutherans, insists that these are Jesus' words and that Jesus is still speaking them, albeit through the mouth of the priest/pastor.  So the question is why not let Jesus' words be simply Jesus' words without elaboration?  Bouyer has put it best.  The more we tinker with the words, the more they are our words and not the timeless words of Jesus, less they are words of God and more they are merely words and the creation of man.  Within the great and awesome mystery of Christ's presence in bread and wine, it would seem to me that precisely here the words of Jesus should be only Jesus' words -- without elaboration, paraphrase, or comment.  Let the words of Jesus remain His alone.

That is not to say that the words of the entire canon cannot be changed or should not be changed -- just the opposite.  From time to time they can and perhaps should be changed.  Goodness knows we have remembered that Jesus gave thanks but most Eucharistic prayers are heavy on everything but thanksgiving.  Yet the words of Christ should remain His own and without addition or edit.  First Corinthians 11:23-26:

²³ For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; ²⁴ and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” ²⁵ In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”

²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.

In another odd change, the Tridentine Canon had added the words Mystery of Faith right after the chalice or covenant statement of Jesus.  It was another striking deviation from the Words of Scripture in the Roman version, anyway.  The insertion of the words mysterium fidei into the Simili modo, though it does not interrupt Jesus' words (“This is the Chalice of My Blood”), it does interrupt the Scriptural narrative of those words. St. Thomas Aquinas was concerned enough to call it an inappropriate (inconvenienter) inserion.  Josef Jungmann echoes the concern: “And then, in the middle of the sacred text, stand the enigmatic words so frequently discussed: mysterium fidei.” Finally, Pius Parsch finds it disburing: “The insertion of ‘the mystery of faith’ is most unusual, since it even disturbs the construction of the sentence.” 

Curiously, until the changes to the liturgy in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, the Latin rite was practically the only one that did not sing the words of the consecration.  Among the changes ushered in by the liturgical reform in the name of the Council was to allow for the possibility of singing the words of consecration, indeed the singing of the entire Eucharistic Prayer, in the Latin rite. As the General Instruction of the Roman Missal [GIRM] says:

"No. 30. Among the parts assigned to the priest, the foremost is the Eucharistic Prayer, which is the high point of the entire celebration. Next are the orations: that is to say, the collect, the prayer over the offerings, and the prayer after Communion. These prayers are addressed to God in the name of the entire holy people and all present, by the priest who presides over the assembly in the person of Christ. It is with good reason, therefore, that they are called the 'presidential prayers.'

"No. 32. The nature of the 'presidential' texts demands that they be spoken in a loud and clear voice and that everyone listen with attention. Thus, while the priest is speaking these texts, there should be no other prayers or singing, and the organ or other musical instruments should be silent."

"No. 38. In texts that are to be spoken in a loud and clear voice, whether by the priest or the deacon, or by the lector, or by all, the tone of voice should correspond to the genre of the text itself, that is, depending upon whether it is a reading, a prayer, a commentary, an acclamation, or a sung text; the tone should also be suited to the form of celebration and to the solemnity of the gathering. Consideration should also be given to the idiom of different languages and the culture of different peoples.

"In the rubrics and in the norms that follow, words such as 'say' and 'proclaim' are to be understood of both singing and reciting, according to the principles just stated above. 

At the 2006 Chrism Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, Benedict XVI sang the entire Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer I) -- including the consecration.  In this he was joined by hundreds of concelebrating bishops and priests. 

Well, perhaps you learned something.  I did. 

 

 

 

Technology: Blessing or Distraction or Dead End

The gift of technology is, or perhaps could be, a tremendous blessing to the Church.  It may well be in some quarters but in many congregations it is a burden and has proven more costly than anticipated.  Web sites, apps, social media, live streaming, podcasts, cloud based systems, and the like have added more than a hefty bottom line cost for all that they might do.  Even under the best of conditions, it is a maze more than a superhighway and it offers a dizzying array of choices, options, alternatives, and possibilities to the Church.  The problem lies not simply in what to do with it but also where to begin and where to end.  For most congregations, technology is a tangled skein of yarn without a clue to the thread that will unravel it all so that something useful can be made of it.

Most congregations do not have the bucks to pay for or the manpower with the know how or the free time to do much with the technology so it often ends up like a DIY project gone terribly wrong.  It somehow seems to end up on the desk of the pastor -- typically as one of those other duties as assigned.  The technological problem has become a pastoral problem.  Even the recruitment and supervision of it all is largely deposited on the altar side of the rail instead of in the pews.  Perhaps large congregations can afford the cost of consultants, installers, and maintenance of it all or perhaps they can staff and pay for it in house but the bulk of us are left to fend for ourselves in a marketplace too filled with options and choices to make much sense of it all.  It ends us becoming a financial drain and a headache more than a boon to the mission.

How much do these things distract our attention or actually contribute to the fulfillment of our mission as a church?  How much do these things consume of our resources and would the be better spent in pursuit of other things or how much do they actually ease the burden or expand the reach of the same church?  Would we be better served investing more in technology or applying the savings from less investment to other purposes?  These are the questions facing most congregations and most pastors.  How many more apps do we need to put on our phones as church workers and how much more screen time should we obligate ourselves to give?  It always was and is easier to pick up the phone or order online the office supplies and resources you need to do your work as a pastor than to find a place to shop and go there.  I get that.  But is it easier to provide competitive and state of the art digital access to those inside or not yet inside the Church?

Personally I think it is high time to begin to test the various means available to us to make sure that we are using technology and it is not using us up in the process.  Stress and burn out come from trying to do too much with too little and this is exactly the promise of our technology -- do more with less but do it at home and on your phone while you are off duty.  How is that working?   We pay through the nose for online software costs, for cloud data storage, for access to our stuff wherever the internet goes, for security, and for the RAM and processing power to do it.  Is it helping us?  Really?  It is not a rhetoric question.  Is is a real issue of how best for a pastor to apply his time and attention and the congregation their money and leaders?  Maybe too much really is too much.  I fear we are at a tipping point when the gift has become a burden and our technology is costing us as much as, if not more, than it returns.  You tell me.

 

All Souls' anyone. . .

It is a long tradition in Christianity that certain days were dedicated to intercession for selective groups of the dead. The foundation of All Souls' Day for a general intercession on November 2 is due to Odilo, abbot of Cluny, who died in 1048. The observed date, which became essentially universal before the end of the 13th century, was determined to follow All Saints’ Day. After celebrating the feast of all the members of the church who are thought to be in heaven, on the next day, the body of Christ shifts to remember and pray for those souls suffering in purgatory.

In contemporary Western Christianity, the annual celebration is held on November 2nd and is part of the season of Allhallowtide that includes All Saints' Day (November 1st) and its eve, Halloween (October 31st).  During Luther's life, All Souls' Day was broadly commemorated in Saxony although the Roman Catholic meaning of the day was transformed. Ecclesiastically in the Lutheran Church, the day was joined with and is often viewed as a continuation of All Saints' Day, with many Lutherans still attending and adorning graves on all the days of Allhallowtide, including All Souls' Day.  Sadly, it no longer appears as a stand alone day on Lutheran calendars (as it once did).  

We give thanks to Almighty God, through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for remembrance of the faithful departed, especially those among our family and friends who have heard the words "well done thy good and faithful servant" (Matthew 25:31-40).   The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed is one way we acknowledge that those who die in the Lord are not dead but live and we will live with them on the day the Father has appointed to bring to completion all that was begun in them and in us.

 

My old friend Fr. William Weedon wrote:

All Souls Day is what today was traditionally called. A most fitting day, then, to offer up to God this wonderful little prayer from Seed Grains of Prayer, which Loehe gathered from the great Lutheran devotional tradition (prayer 341): I would remember before Thee also my parents, pastors, teachers, children, kindred and benefactors, who have gone before me in the blessed faith and are now at home with Thee. If, through Jesus Christ, my prayer finds favor in Thy sight, do Thou, in my stead, repay unto them my thanks and love, in whatever manner it be possible. Unto all whom I have ever pained, deceived, or caused to sin, or whom I have robbed of honor, health, or possessions, whom I can no longer ask for pardon, nor restore unto them, because they already are gone into joy and pardon of every sin -- gone home to Thee -- to all these, O Lord, grant good for all my evil, both now and in the day of the resurrection of the just; even as Thou knowest how, and in how far all this which I ask can be granted. As for myself, let me spend my remaining days in prayer, in adoration of the most holy name of Jesus, and in praise and thanksgiving for the hearing of my prayers and those of all Christian people which have ever been offered up unto Thee through Jesus Christ. Amen. 

On this day we recall more broadly all who have lived and died in the Lord by baptism and faith and now rest in His everlasting arms.  The anonymous and the named, those whom everyone recalls and those whom few remember, the mighty whose works need not be described and those whose labor of love is known to a small circle -- they all live together today as we remember and give thanks to God for all the blessings afford to them in their lives, through them to us by their lives, and to whom do now live in His nearer presence, waiting with us the day of the resurrection. 

 

We Sing for All the Unsung Saints

1 We sing for all the unsung saints,
    That countless, nameless throng,
Who kept the faith and passed it on
    With hope steadfast and strong
Through all the daily griefs and joys
    No chronicles record,
Forgetful of their lack of fame,
    But mindful of their Lord.

 

2 Though uninscribed with date or place,
    With title, rank, or name,
As living stones their stories join
    To form a hallowed frame
Around the myst’ry in their midst:
    The Lamb once sacrificed,
The Love that wrested life from death,
    The wounded, risen Christ.

 

3 So we take heart from unknown saints
    Bereft of earthly fame,
Those faithful ones who have received
    A more enduring name:
For they reveal true blessing comes
    When we our pride efface
And offer back our lives to be
    The vessels of God’s grace.

 

To die for. . . to live for. . .

On this day when the attention of the Church is turned to those who died in the faith and for the faith, it occurs to me that there is a difference between what we are willing to die for and what we are willing to die for.  Over the course of centuries and even to the present day with its abundance of violence, it has not been that difficult to find people willing to die for something.  Rile up a crowd and they will march to destroy or be destroyed in the name of their cause.  Individuals are willing, at an alarming rate, to kill and to be killed for seemingly small reason or none at all.  I recently watched The Good Nurse in which the villain may have killed 400 in hospitals across the Northeast -- a figure made even more scandalous by his refusal to give a reason for perpetrating such violence.  

When we confirm youth in the faith and when we receive people into membership in the congregation, we routinely ask if they are willing to suffer death for the sake of their confession and Church.  It does not seem to give them pause to make such solemn promise.  Perhaps it is because we are more confident now that we will not be put before magistrates, judges, kings, or emperors in the way that once was routine.  Yes, I know death is not simple or easy for folks to contemplate.  I know that we surrendered all kinds of things from our liberty and dignity as people out of fear of Covid.  I know that it is not as easy as it once was to raise up an army to defend even a righteous cause.  But as difficult as these things are, it is even more difficult to find people willing to live for something -- for faith, for freedom, for honor, for integrity, and other noble cause.  That is the challenge to Christianity.

We seem to do well enough to find people willing to suffer all -- even death -- for the cause of the faith.  The numbers of martyrs for the faith does not seem to decline significantly in any age or generation.  But when it comes to living as those who belong to Christ, whose membership in the Kingdom of God is above all, and who are committed to a nobler morality and ethic than what might pass the litmus test of culture or popularity in the moment, well, that is another thing.  Look at how easily and how willingly Christians surrender the truths of God's Word for what passes for science or what is judged reasonable in the moment.  Look at how easy it is for orthodoxy to become a broad boulevard instead of Christ's narrow way.  Look at how quickly doctrine has become a bad word, a sign of prideful exclusivity instead of the preservation of Scriptural truth confessed down through the ages.  Look at how terrible it is to exclude anyone from anything in the Church for reason of sin or unbelief without being condemned as a hater.  No, dying for Christ is easy but living for Him is more difficult by far.

In the Our Father we pray for our heavenly Father to forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and yet we keep the wrongs in our memory and in our playbook when charting how we deal with them going forward.  We do not forgive except in a perfunctory and shallow way and are almost scandalized as Trump was when the widow of Charlie Kirk publicly forgave his murderer.  We say that we love the poor as Christ did but they continue in want and need while the rich get richer.  We protest that we are against racism and bigotry and yet the excess of our words finds it hard to believe we do not hate our brothers and sisters who are different from us.  I am not at all suggesting that we should be passive or surrender doctrine in the name of some passive and weak love for others but just the opposite.  I am insisting that if dying for Christ is what we are willing to do, then living for Him is at least what we also ought to be willing to do.  

How many Christians live outside the places where God's Word is preached and His Sacraments administered and yet they claim to be as real in their faith as those who go?  Why?  Does Scripture give us a choice?  If our faith cannot muster us from our beds and pajamas and screens long enough to be in the Lord's House on the Lord's day, it is not likely to be able to muster us from our comfortable sins and the ruts of our sinful ways either.  If we complain that nobody needs to confess to a pastor in order to be forgiven and yet God has clearly given us this gift of private confession, what is it that is keeping us from it?  If we find the burden of the tithe to great and deem our own needs to be the higher priority, should we not be urged to examine such motivation for not giving and square it with God's Word?  The dearth of those who are willing to serve in positions of leadership and service in our congregations is testament to the way we value our time and skills for our purpose over the Lord's and raises a challenge to those who insist I am willing to die for my faith.  Oh, well, are you willing to live for it also and to sacrifice time and energy in the positions of leadership and service that cry out for people in every congregation I know.

Before we pass by All Saints and get back to our own lives and business, it is worth contemplating how those we remember gave themselves and their all for the sake of the Kingdom and to ask why we are unwilling to give our time in worship and prayer, our gifts in support of the Church and for the sake of the poor, or our precious desire for entertainment to be called to repentance and faith.  

For All the Saints
   
For all the saints who from their labors rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest.
    Alleluia! Alleluia!

Thou wast their rock, their fortress, and their might;
Thou, Lord, their captain in the well-fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true light.
    Alleluia! Alleluia!

Oh, may Thy soldiers, faithful, true, and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old
And win with them the victor’s crown of gold!
    Alleluia! Alleluia!

Oh, blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
    Alleluia! Alleluia!

And when the fight is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.
    Alleluia! Alleluia!

The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors cometh rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blest.
    Alleluia! Alleluia!

 But, lo, there breaks a yet more glorious day:
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of Glory passes on His way.
    Alleluia! Alleluia!

From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost:
    Alleluia! Alleluia!