A setting I won’t forget, a future we pray for. Sunday I preached for the 175th anniversary of St. Luke Lutheran Church in Cabot, Pennsylvania. Their normal three services were combined into one, an outdoor service, several hundred chairs facing an improvised altar, a cross on its top, and in the distance, maybe a hundred or so yards away, was the church cemetery. The whole service long, everyone looked at the cemetery beyond the cross.
At the start of the sermon, I turned toward the cemetery and joked that 100% of the alumni had shown up. People laughed. After the service and a catered picnic meal, longtime Pastor Barry Keurulainen, now retired, gave a tour of the cemetery. I especially liked one thing that he said, that every year he would bring the confirmation class to the cemetery, give them 15 minutes to look at the stones, and then talk about it. The stones, their decorations, their inscriptions, put before us the whole Christian creed.
About 45 years ago, I conducted the funeral for an elderly church member. I remember the visitation as if it were yesterday. His 16-year-old granddaughter had been shielded by her parents from death. The sight of grandpa dead sent the teenager into hysterics. How different Sunday in that outdoor anniversary service. In the first row, a boy in grade school, a teenage girl, and many more young people behind them. They were not being shielded from death but were seeing it in light of the cross on that altar. “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:26). That’s the future we pray for.
John Ylvisaker’s hymn was sung. “I was there to hear your borning cry, I’ll be there when you are old.
I rejoiced the day you were baptized, to see your life unfold.
In the middle ages of your life, not too old, no longer young,
I’ll be there to guide you through the night, complete what I’ve begun.
When the evening gently closes in, and you shut your weary eyes,
I’ll be there as I have always been with just one more surprise.”
I’m not ashamed to say that I teared up big time. Every congregation should have an outdoor service at a cemetery. We’re looking forward to that “one more surprise.”