When was the last time you read the apocryphal book of Baruch? Have you ever? Do you know who Baruch was? One of my many Jewish friends in high school was named Baruch. At the time I didn’t know that he was named for the prophet Jeremiah’s secretary, who had to write Jeremiah’s words down more than once because an angry king burned the scrolls.
I’ve always been a bit leery of the Apocrypha – if the Jews didn’t want that stuff in their Bible, why should we? So I was surprised to find echoes of Isaiah in Baruch, making hills low and filling up valleys so that the people of Israel could walk on level ground. And what beautiful imagery! “The woods and every fragrant tree have shaded Israel at God’s command…For God will lead Israel with joy, in the light of his glory.” It’s not nearly as familiar as Isaiah 40, which shows up in Year B’s Advent (and Handel’s Messiah), but still nice.
And it’s a good parallel to Luke’s description of earth moving in the Gospel for Advent 2. I finally had time to translate the Sunday Gospel from Greek, frustrating but well worth it (although it does make the parish administrator wonder about the exasperated muttering coming from my office). Luke is so careful to set his story in real time. No “once upon a time” for him! He also introduces us gradually to John the Baptist, who simply bursts on the scene in Mark.
The big word for John (or JBap, as we call him at home) is metanoia, usually translated as repentance. Curiously, it’s a word that hardly ever shows up in the Old Testament, and for the Greeks it had the rather mild connotation of changing one’s mind. For John, however, and for Jesus after him, it’s a life-changing conversion, a total turning toward God and away from sin, something that affects all of life and conduct. As we will see next week, with JBap that inner change must find outward expression in acts of love.
Metanoia with John is pretty stern stuff. It doesn’t seem to be tempered with mercy. Jesus, being fully divine as well as fully human, knew how to being God’s mercy into the picture. Even though they both had the same message of repentance, John’s is based on Law and Jesus’ is on the Gospel. And that makes all the difference. Ultimately, the message of Jesus is one of joy.
Recently I preached at an ecumenical Thanksgiving service at an Assembly of God church. Before I spoke, a young man witnessed to everyone how he had turned to Jesus from a life of alcohol and drugs. My message was not nearly as powerful as that. He had leveled mountains and filled valleys. I had moved a bit of dirt. Yet God was at work in both of us. Both of us had experienced an inward change; both were finding outward expressions of God’s grace. God was leading us both with joy, in the light of his glory. I think I’ll take repentance from Jesus any day.
Advent 2: Baruch 5:1-9; Song of Zechariah (BCP Canticle 16); Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6. Most of what I learned about metanoia came from Geoffrey Bromiley’s one-volume abridgement of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Advent Reading
A dear priest friend once told me that he reads Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison every Advent. Having done so a couple of times, I know why – Bonhoeffer is wonderfully reflective and focused on the meaning of his Christian faith. Advent is a time of waiting, preparing us for encountering God through the birth of Jesus but also anticipating the end times. Bonhoeffer was also waiting for his end, which came shortly before his prison was liberated from the Nazis.
Bonhoeffer’s Life Together is also a good Advent read, a shorter book that I would recommend to anyone who lives in community (Christian, academic, or otherwise). A reviewer says that “it reads like one of Paul’s letters.” One of my favorite quotations from it is “A day at a time is long enough to sustain one’s faith; the next day will have its own cares.” I’d also recommend Margaret Guenther’s The Practice of Prayer, volume four in The New Church’s Teaching Series.
And there’s always the Daily Office as a daily discipline to start the new church year. On Advent 1 Year Two begins (BCP, p. 937). The Gospel reading in Matthew picks up where Year One ended, in chapter 21 with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, but ends before Jesus is arrested. I can think of no better way to prepare for Christmas than to spend some time each day with Scripture, even if you choose not to do the rest of the office. As Bonhoeffer says, focus on the day at hand; let tomorrow worry about itself (Matthew 6:34).
Bonhoeffer’s Life Together is also a good Advent read, a shorter book that I would recommend to anyone who lives in community (Christian, academic, or otherwise). A reviewer says that “it reads like one of Paul’s letters.” One of my favorite quotations from it is “A day at a time is long enough to sustain one’s faith; the next day will have its own cares.” I’d also recommend Margaret Guenther’s The Practice of Prayer, volume four in The New Church’s Teaching Series.
And there’s always the Daily Office as a daily discipline to start the new church year. On Advent 1 Year Two begins (BCP, p. 937). The Gospel reading in Matthew picks up where Year One ended, in chapter 21 with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, but ends before Jesus is arrested. I can think of no better way to prepare for Christmas than to spend some time each day with Scripture, even if you choose not to do the rest of the office. As Bonhoeffer says, focus on the day at hand; let tomorrow worry about itself (Matthew 6:34).
Monday, November 23, 2009
Green World
If I write a lot about the natural world, it’s because it always has been part of my life, even when I was growing up surrounded by millions of people. The churchyard next to our house had just enough space for some grass and trees and a fish pond (which I fell into as a child, somehow not getting bitten by its resident snapping turtle). My parents liked Saturday walks and Sunday drives in the country, so I was immersed in the smells and sounds and sights of each season as it progressed.
I was fortunate enough to enter a profession that paid me to take walks in the woods. Yet I quickly discovered that many of my students didn’t have a lot of outdoor experience unless they grew up on a farm or were avid hunters. They could not read the sky or see differences in plants or find tracks until I taught them how. And then a new world opened up, and they started telling the same stories about me that I had told about my botany teacher: “He can pick up a dead stick in winter and tell you what it came from!”
This loss of natural knowledge is a great loss, one that some find alarming. For people of faith, it can make the Bible that much more obscure. Some references are universal: surely everyone knows that when “the fig tree and all the trees…sprout leaves…summer is near.” But what about all of those wonderful references to the living world in Psalm 104? Or Jesus’ references to signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars? If we do not know what the sun, moon, and stars usually do, how can we read them?
This Sunday we begin another church year, another year of telling the story of God’s love for us. For me, at least, the experience of that love has come through living things as much as it has come through people. My Green Bible highlights Jesus’ comments about signs in the sky, but not the trees sprouting leaves. Why not? Apparently these trees did not illustrate the Green Project’s “core mission.” Fortunately for us, trees do appear to have been part of God’s “core mission” of creation, God’s ongoing and intimate relationship with the world that Jesus came to redeem. “Remember, O Lord, your compassion and love,” the psalmist writes, “for they are from everlasting…All the paths of the Lord are love and faithfulness to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.”
Someone asked me in church if I’m going to put suggestions for Advent spiritual disciplines on this blog. I’m still chewing on that. For now, at least, I commend to you Jesus’ admonition to “be alert at all times.” Be alert to the natural world around you, but also be alert to what weighs you down, “the worries of this life,”, so that you may know that joy and peace of God that passes all understanding. Search for the place deep within where God comes to you in peace. Watch the sky. Listen to the crows. Prepare yourself once again for Jesus to be born in your heart.
Advent 1: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36.
I was fortunate enough to enter a profession that paid me to take walks in the woods. Yet I quickly discovered that many of my students didn’t have a lot of outdoor experience unless they grew up on a farm or were avid hunters. They could not read the sky or see differences in plants or find tracks until I taught them how. And then a new world opened up, and they started telling the same stories about me that I had told about my botany teacher: “He can pick up a dead stick in winter and tell you what it came from!”
This loss of natural knowledge is a great loss, one that some find alarming. For people of faith, it can make the Bible that much more obscure. Some references are universal: surely everyone knows that when “the fig tree and all the trees…sprout leaves…summer is near.” But what about all of those wonderful references to the living world in Psalm 104? Or Jesus’ references to signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars? If we do not know what the sun, moon, and stars usually do, how can we read them?
This Sunday we begin another church year, another year of telling the story of God’s love for us. For me, at least, the experience of that love has come through living things as much as it has come through people. My Green Bible highlights Jesus’ comments about signs in the sky, but not the trees sprouting leaves. Why not? Apparently these trees did not illustrate the Green Project’s “core mission.” Fortunately for us, trees do appear to have been part of God’s “core mission” of creation, God’s ongoing and intimate relationship with the world that Jesus came to redeem. “Remember, O Lord, your compassion and love,” the psalmist writes, “for they are from everlasting…All the paths of the Lord are love and faithfulness to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.”
Someone asked me in church if I’m going to put suggestions for Advent spiritual disciplines on this blog. I’m still chewing on that. For now, at least, I commend to you Jesus’ admonition to “be alert at all times.” Be alert to the natural world around you, but also be alert to what weighs you down, “the worries of this life,”, so that you may know that joy and peace of God that passes all understanding. Search for the place deep within where God comes to you in peace. Watch the sky. Listen to the crows. Prepare yourself once again for Jesus to be born in your heart.
Advent 1: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36.
Monday, November 16, 2009
The Sun Rising on a Cloudless Morning
Nearly every morning since we moved into our new house last July, I have arisen a great while before day so that I could finish prayers in time to see the sun rise. I walk up our street, turn the corner, and enter a bike path that goes due east over a highway and into the fields beyond. On the very clearest mornings I see something I first experienced at sunrise on Lake Michigan: the horizon where the sun will first appear gets intensely clear. In Chicago I could see individual waves miles from shore; in Iowa each distant tassel of corn becomes clear and sharp. Then suddenly there is a sharp flash of light, and a new day has begun.
Some of the clearest mornings come after a storm has passed through, when the clouds have been swept away and all that is left is the wet land. The sun is more welcome on such days, brighter, more intense. Those are the days I think of when I read in the First Book of Samuel, “One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on a grassy land.” A just ruler brings brightness and clarity to the people, the brightness of God.
Few, if any, rulers fulfill that promise. Those in whom we may put our faith at one time (such as Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan), we later come to doubt. Many of our Presidents have undoubtedly ruled in the fear of God, but even those who say that they are led by God find that what they have done creates more murkiness than clarity. It just isn’t that easy. The “last words of David” found in Samuel’s book are more hope than reality.
That is why we put our hope in Jesus Christ. Only in Jesus do we find that sharply revealing light, the sword that divides soul from spirit, joint from marrow (to mix metaphors). That is why the writers of the New Testament saw Jesus as the ideal and final king, and why many Christian churches celebrate Christ the King Sunday on the last Sunday of the Pentecost season.
It some circles it is no longer fashionable to speak of Christ the King; it is too imperialist, or undemocratic, or whatever. These same circles choose not to interpret the Hebrew Bible in the same way that the first Christians did, seeing glimmers and foreshadowing of the coming of Jesus. I do have some sympathy with that; Jews have been interpreting their Scriptures longer than Christians have, and we need to honor that. But what Christian hears in Psalm 132 “A son, the fruit of your body will I set upon your throne” and does not quickly move past Solomon to think of a messianic king, he whose appearance is foretold in those same Hebrew Scriptures? Who does not think of the Messiah revealed to us as Jesus Christ?
Only Jesus can rule as God would rule, with the utter clarity of the sun rising on a cloudless morning. Only Jesus can illuminate the smallest movements within our souls, bringing them to light. Only Jesus can testify to the truth that comes from God. “To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
Last Pentecost: 2 Samuel 23:1-7; Psalm 132; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37.
Some of the clearest mornings come after a storm has passed through, when the clouds have been swept away and all that is left is the wet land. The sun is more welcome on such days, brighter, more intense. Those are the days I think of when I read in the First Book of Samuel, “One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on a grassy land.” A just ruler brings brightness and clarity to the people, the brightness of God.
Few, if any, rulers fulfill that promise. Those in whom we may put our faith at one time (such as Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan), we later come to doubt. Many of our Presidents have undoubtedly ruled in the fear of God, but even those who say that they are led by God find that what they have done creates more murkiness than clarity. It just isn’t that easy. The “last words of David” found in Samuel’s book are more hope than reality.
That is why we put our hope in Jesus Christ. Only in Jesus do we find that sharply revealing light, the sword that divides soul from spirit, joint from marrow (to mix metaphors). That is why the writers of the New Testament saw Jesus as the ideal and final king, and why many Christian churches celebrate Christ the King Sunday on the last Sunday of the Pentecost season.
It some circles it is no longer fashionable to speak of Christ the King; it is too imperialist, or undemocratic, or whatever. These same circles choose not to interpret the Hebrew Bible in the same way that the first Christians did, seeing glimmers and foreshadowing of the coming of Jesus. I do have some sympathy with that; Jews have been interpreting their Scriptures longer than Christians have, and we need to honor that. But what Christian hears in Psalm 132 “A son, the fruit of your body will I set upon your throne” and does not quickly move past Solomon to think of a messianic king, he whose appearance is foretold in those same Hebrew Scriptures? Who does not think of the Messiah revealed to us as Jesus Christ?
Only Jesus can rule as God would rule, with the utter clarity of the sun rising on a cloudless morning. Only Jesus can illuminate the smallest movements within our souls, bringing them to light. Only Jesus can testify to the truth that comes from God. “To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
Last Pentecost: 2 Samuel 23:1-7; Psalm 132; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Thrown Down Stones
This week’s lectionary brings us two stories of distress, one personal and one corporate. The childless Hannah is mocked by her husband’s second and fertile wife. Jesus speaks of an approaching period of widespread destruction. Hannah’s story at least has a happy ending when Samuel is born.
I’ll pass over the Bible’s “family value” of Elkanah having two wives. What strikes me most about the Hannah story is how much attention is drawn to Hannah’s distress. I realize that her barrenness is heightened to magnify the miraculous nature of the prophet Samuel’s birth, but still – fifteen verses describe her bitterness and only two the happy outcome of her prayers. I’m glad that we’ll sing the Canticle of Hannah instead of a psalm on Sunday; such great grief deserves an equally great outpouring of joy.
Hannah’s unhappiness is clearly described. “She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly… ‘O Lord of hosts, if only you will look favorably on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant…’” R and I have not known this misery of unwanted childlessness, thank God, but it seems to me that Hannah speaks eloquently for those who have, who not only are without child but may feel forgotten by God. God answers Hannah’s prayer. What do we say to those who do not have their prayers answered?
The discourse of Jesus takes us beyond personal misery to an overthrow of religious, political, and natural order. When a slack-jawed Galilean disciple-tourist is overawed by the beauty of the Jerusalem temple, Jesus lets him have it. “Do you see these large buildings?” he says. “Not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” Prophets in the past were killed for saying things like that, and the fearful disciples want to know more in private. Instead of reassuring words, they hear even worse news. There will be wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and famines. And “this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” We don’t hear about the rest of the birth pangs in subsequent verses, but believe me, they don’t get any better. This labor won’t have nearly as happy a result as Hannah’s.
It’s an apocalyptic view in some ways, but it also describes the way the world is. Wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and famine are part of the daily news. Personal sorrows are there, too. Christianity is an open-eyed religion that can directly face what is awful and what is evil in the world (though less so in its happy-clappy manifestations). That’s true because it is also a religion of hope. “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering,” the letter to the Hebrews says, “for he who has promised is faithful.”
That’s the key, isn’t it? God is faithful. God has promised to be with us, to remain among us always. God sent Jesus Christ to reveal God’s own self to us, and God continues to send the Holy Spirit so that we are not comfortless. It is not easy to see or sense God in the middle of distress, yet God is there. “There is no Holy One like the Lord,” Hannah sings, “there is no Rock like our God.” Because of that faithful Rock who can throw down stones, we can live through distress, take up hope, and walk with joy.
Pentecost 24: 1 Samuel 1:4-20; 1 Samuel 2:1-10 (as canticle); Hebrews 10:11-25; Mark 13:1-8.
I’ll pass over the Bible’s “family value” of Elkanah having two wives. What strikes me most about the Hannah story is how much attention is drawn to Hannah’s distress. I realize that her barrenness is heightened to magnify the miraculous nature of the prophet Samuel’s birth, but still – fifteen verses describe her bitterness and only two the happy outcome of her prayers. I’m glad that we’ll sing the Canticle of Hannah instead of a psalm on Sunday; such great grief deserves an equally great outpouring of joy.
Hannah’s unhappiness is clearly described. “She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly… ‘O Lord of hosts, if only you will look favorably on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant…’” R and I have not known this misery of unwanted childlessness, thank God, but it seems to me that Hannah speaks eloquently for those who have, who not only are without child but may feel forgotten by God. God answers Hannah’s prayer. What do we say to those who do not have their prayers answered?
The discourse of Jesus takes us beyond personal misery to an overthrow of religious, political, and natural order. When a slack-jawed Galilean disciple-tourist is overawed by the beauty of the Jerusalem temple, Jesus lets him have it. “Do you see these large buildings?” he says. “Not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” Prophets in the past were killed for saying things like that, and the fearful disciples want to know more in private. Instead of reassuring words, they hear even worse news. There will be wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and famines. And “this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” We don’t hear about the rest of the birth pangs in subsequent verses, but believe me, they don’t get any better. This labor won’t have nearly as happy a result as Hannah’s.
It’s an apocalyptic view in some ways, but it also describes the way the world is. Wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and famine are part of the daily news. Personal sorrows are there, too. Christianity is an open-eyed religion that can directly face what is awful and what is evil in the world (though less so in its happy-clappy manifestations). That’s true because it is also a religion of hope. “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering,” the letter to the Hebrews says, “for he who has promised is faithful.”
That’s the key, isn’t it? God is faithful. God has promised to be with us, to remain among us always. God sent Jesus Christ to reveal God’s own self to us, and God continues to send the Holy Spirit so that we are not comfortless. It is not easy to see or sense God in the middle of distress, yet God is there. “There is no Holy One like the Lord,” Hannah sings, “there is no Rock like our God.” Because of that faithful Rock who can throw down stones, we can live through distress, take up hope, and walk with joy.
Pentecost 24: 1 Samuel 1:4-20; 1 Samuel 2:1-10 (as canticle); Hebrews 10:11-25; Mark 13:1-8.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Off the Hook
This Sunday will be my first one off since I started at CEC. N is giving the first of two masters’ recitals this Sunday in Connecticut, and R and I are flying out there to hear him. It will be especially crazy for R. At the moment she is in NYC for a campus chaplains’ conference. She’ll fly to Des Moines on Thursday, where I’ll pick her up so she can give two presentations on General Convention at our diocesan convention (and officiate at a Jazz Evensong Friday evening). Then we’ll leave for New Haven before convention ends, return to Des Moines on Monday, and finally drive home via Iowa City. That’s why I think of Sunday as being “off” rather than a vacation. We always seem to pack a lot in!
I’m grateful that I have a well-seasoned deacon and a priest of nearly fifty years’ duration to fill in for me while I’m gone. They became a well-oiled team in the interregnum before I came on board. I’m also grateful that I had the opportunity at St. Peter’s to fill in during Lynne's three month sabbatical. Otherwise I might be unaccustomed to the constant flow of work and feel desperate for a break. Instead I am looking forward to the freshness that comes from returning to a familiar place after being away. I hadn’t thought about it until just now, but my long tenure at St. Ambrose was also preceded by a year as a sabbatical replacement. In both cases, teaching and preaching, the initial stint gave me the self-confidence to launch into a long-term position. At least I hope my current position will be long-term!
So those of you who are looking for lectionary reflections will have to wait a week. Uncharacteristically, I have nothing to say!
I’m grateful that I have a well-seasoned deacon and a priest of nearly fifty years’ duration to fill in for me while I’m gone. They became a well-oiled team in the interregnum before I came on board. I’m also grateful that I had the opportunity at St. Peter’s to fill in during Lynne's three month sabbatical. Otherwise I might be unaccustomed to the constant flow of work and feel desperate for a break. Instead I am looking forward to the freshness that comes from returning to a familiar place after being away. I hadn’t thought about it until just now, but my long tenure at St. Ambrose was also preceded by a year as a sabbatical replacement. In both cases, teaching and preaching, the initial stint gave me the self-confidence to launch into a long-term position. At least I hope my current position will be long-term!
So those of you who are looking for lectionary reflections will have to wait a week. Uncharacteristically, I have nothing to say!
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Saints Alive!
It’s not November 1, All Saints’ Day, that gets me, but November 2, All Souls’ Day. Anglicanism is supposed to be both Catholic and Reformed, but sometimes leans too far toward the Catholic side for this Lutheran soul. Paul uses the term “saints” to mean all Christian believers. It is accretions of tradition that have led to “saint” being restricted to those who led an exemplary life, often by martyrdom, whose worthiness has to pass muster (or pass mustard, as we say at home). That restriction necessitated All Souls’ Day in order to remember all the faithful departed, whom Paul had already included with the saints. I’d rather return to the Scriptural usage of the word, and just have one day for everyone. The rest of the year we can commemorate exceptional individuals on particular days. (There are too many of them, in my opinion, but that’s a rant for another day.)
If “saints” includes all believers, then I can ask the question, who are the saints in your life? Who led you to the Christian faith, brought you to church as a child, or witnessed the faith to you as an adult? Who are your ancestors in the Christian faith?
Mine were my parents, and their parents before them, and so on back to the apostles – a kind of apostolic succession that does not necessarily involve the laying on of hands. My father was pastor of the church we attended, but it was my mother who saw to it that we actually got there. Considering how I acted many Sundays, she truly was a saint!
We were always made mindful of the communion of saints, of that apostolic succession of faith. The icon of that faith was my dad’s maternal grandfather, Grampa Jacobs, also a Lutheran pastor, about whom we heard many stories. To solidify his faith, Grampa Jacobs translated from German to English The Book of Concord, the tome that contains the essential writings of Lutheranism. Some years ago R found a copy of it at a used book sale and bought it for me. It stands on a shelf in my office, not only a reminder of faith passed on, but an indicator that pastors had more time before blogs, emails, and Facebook! And I have photos of both my dad and Grampa Jacobs in my office to give me courage when I need it.
So let us celebrate all the faithful departed on All Saints’ Day, those whose lives have been remembered over the centuries, those who have preceded us in the faith, and those who “have no memorial, who have perished as though they had not lived,” but were faithful Christians (cf. Ecclesiasticus 44:9). The communion of saints extends from you and me to the likes of St. Paul and yes, to Mary Theotokos herself. We may not feel worthy to be in that company, but that is what being redeemed and justified by Christ is all about. “For the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.”
(H293 has one of our favorite lines to rearrange: “And one was a soldier, and one was a beast, and one was slain by a fierce wild priest…”)
If “saints” includes all believers, then I can ask the question, who are the saints in your life? Who led you to the Christian faith, brought you to church as a child, or witnessed the faith to you as an adult? Who are your ancestors in the Christian faith?
Mine were my parents, and their parents before them, and so on back to the apostles – a kind of apostolic succession that does not necessarily involve the laying on of hands. My father was pastor of the church we attended, but it was my mother who saw to it that we actually got there. Considering how I acted many Sundays, she truly was a saint!
We were always made mindful of the communion of saints, of that apostolic succession of faith. The icon of that faith was my dad’s maternal grandfather, Grampa Jacobs, also a Lutheran pastor, about whom we heard many stories. To solidify his faith, Grampa Jacobs translated from German to English The Book of Concord, the tome that contains the essential writings of Lutheranism. Some years ago R found a copy of it at a used book sale and bought it for me. It stands on a shelf in my office, not only a reminder of faith passed on, but an indicator that pastors had more time before blogs, emails, and Facebook! And I have photos of both my dad and Grampa Jacobs in my office to give me courage when I need it.
So let us celebrate all the faithful departed on All Saints’ Day, those whose lives have been remembered over the centuries, those who have preceded us in the faith, and those who “have no memorial, who have perished as though they had not lived,” but were faithful Christians (cf. Ecclesiasticus 44:9). The communion of saints extends from you and me to the likes of St. Paul and yes, to Mary Theotokos herself. We may not feel worthy to be in that company, but that is what being redeemed and justified by Christ is all about. “For the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.”
(H293 has one of our favorite lines to rearrange: “And one was a soldier, and one was a beast, and one was slain by a fierce wild priest…”)
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