Diary of a Theologian

Resurrection: The Gift of Home

    It was a Wednesday evening parish supper, and short people were present, some up in arms, others toddling or darting about. Many of the tall people addressed them by name. The short people clearly felt at home in the parish hall: it was just a normal part of their lives, an ordinary thing. This church space was theirs as much as anyone else’s.
    As I write this, an old childhood memory emerges: potluck suppers at church. My brother and I got to eat whatever we wanted. We had to exhibit reasonable behavior, but we were also free to go around and sit where we wanted and also to walk into other rooms. The church was ours; we knew it; we were at home.
    I’ve seen this in several churches lately, the reappearance of short people. I call them “short people” to make a point: children are not “the future”; they are, just like everyone else, part of the church of the present. Once upon a time, my church had a children’s sermon after the Gospel. We called it “the sermon for short people.”
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    The sense of being at home in a church is a gift that keeps on giving. As life gets complicated, as difficulties increase, it is good to have two homes. It is good to have a family where one is “at home.” It helps to have also a church home, a place where you are known by name, where you know the rooms, where you learn how to be a friend with your other friends. I have long thought that it is a shame that the Society of Friends is a particular church. Every church should know that it is a society of friends, a home base in a complicated world.
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    As we all know sorrowfully, the complications of the world do not stay “out there”: they enter families and churches as well, not to mention our own hearts. No family is perfect, every church falls short, and every heart is pierced by sin. The resurrection of Jesus is the way God chose to give the created world back to us. The resurrection remakes the world into what God always intended it to be. Thus, God’s resurrection gifts include families and churches and hearts of flesh. Resurrection is God bringing us to home.
    How precious is the knowledge that it’s there for us: not just on Sunday, but every day; not just on this Sunday, but every Sunday of the year.
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    The Center of the Universe. I was rescheduling something with a friend in a different time zone, which was complicated by my just assuming that of course he would know that by 3 p.m. I meant 3 p.m. Central! After it was sorted out, he noted how we naturally put ourselves at our center. An Uber driver had once told him about a question his young daughter asked: “Daddy, why do you put on the turn signal? You know which way you're going!”
    Dear reader, now you know why Dallas drivers never use turn signals. Being the center of all things, they know where they’re going.
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    Out & About, Web-wise. I worked through some thoughts about the resurrection body and “defects” in a recent piece, “Resurrection Scars,” for the website of the Human Life Review: https://humanlifereview.com/ resurrection-scars/

To Be A Pilgrim

The text is from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, though it was reworked skillfully by Percy Dearmer, a priest I have mentioned before. Dearmer cared about hymnody and worship in ordinary Anglican parishes. He it was who commissioned Eleanor Farjeon to write words for a hymn on creation; for her text, “Morning has broken,” we thus have Dearmer to thank as being, so to speak, the midwife.

So for “He who would valiant be.” It’s a hymn that my wife made us memorize before a happy family visit to England—about 30 years ago. (Nearly two decades later we sang it at her funeral.) Susan thus framed our England trip as a pilgrimage. The broader truth, of course, is that every human life is a pilgrimage, from God and to God; God has given us life, and the end of our life’s pilgrimage is to be with God.

Two tunes, both in The Hymnal 1982, are associated with the text. The first, #564, is St. Dunstan’s; this is the tune traditionally paired with the text in the U.S. If you are new to the hymn, this may be easier to sing (than Monk’s Gate, #565), since no syllable has to slide over two notes. I also like the dramatic climb in the second half of each stanza that finally achieves that high E before coming down to settle on a very satisfactory G. To find it on YouTube, just enter “He who would valiant be” and “St. Dunstan’s.”
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The theme of the hymn is the valiant character of a Christian pilgrim. He stands up against “all disaster” by following Jesus with constancy. If you want to be a pilgrim—which is to say, if you want to follow Jesus in your life—you must not let anything turn you away from that, your “first,” fundamental, primary “avowed intent to be a pilgrim.”

There will be opponents. To follow Jesus is to choose not to follow the false gods that many other people follow. They will “beset him [the pilgrim] round with dismal stories.” But God will protect the pilgrim, and those who try to deflect the pilgrim from his path will confound themselves. Indeed, through trials and temptations, the pilgrim will not be weakened but instead strengthened all the more. The mockers confound only themselves; the pilgrim’s “strength the more is.” There are no foes who can stop a true pilgrim—not even giants: “he will make good his right to be a pilgrim.”

In the third (the final) stanza, the pronoun changes from “he,” the pilgrim, to “us” who are pilgrims today. It begins: “Since, Lord, thou dost defend us with thy Spirit, we know we at the end shall life inherit.” This makes clear that the pilgrim’s strength, although it is his, just as it was his “first avowed intent to be a pilgrim” and just as it was “his strength” and “his might”—although all this is truly “his,” it is the pilgrim’s only by virtue of God’s Spirit. God defends us in our pilgrim lives with his Spirit. Indeed, God’s Spirit is with us every step, and he leads us, with confidence, to our destination. At the end, we shall inherit life: the hymn doesn’t say “eternal life”; it just says “life.” The end of our pilgrimage on this earth is, plain and simple, life. Fancies will flee away! The individual pilgrim, singing this song, now says “I”: “I’ll fear not what men say, I’ll labor night and day to be a pilgrim.”
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Perhaps you will want to memorize this with me also?

He who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster,
let him in constancy follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement 
shall make him once relent
his first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.

Who so beset him round with dismal stories,
do but themselves confound, his strength the more is.
No foes shall stay his might, 
though he with giants fight;
he will make good his right to be a pilgrim.

Since, Lord, thou does defend us with thy Spirit,
we know we at the end shall life inherit.
Then fancies flee away; 
I’ll fear not what men say,
I’ll labor night and day to be a pilgrim.

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Out & About. Palm Sunday, March 29, I will be preaching at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas at 9 and 11:15am.