The Saints –Among Episcopalians, Lutherans, and United Methodists
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GOOD SHEPHERD LUTHERAN CHURCH Gaithersburg, Maryland The Saints – Who Are They? The Saints –Among Episcopalians, Lutherans, and United Methodists. Among Southern Baptists and Independents The Fourth of Five Sessions The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost – October 4, 2020 I. All The Saints Adore Thee! I was reminded this week of one of my many favorite hymns. All of us know it, and many of us know it from memory, all four stanzas of it! It was stanza 2 that began singing inside of me: Holy, Holy, Holy! All the saints adore thee. Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea; Cherubim and seraphim, falling down before thee, Which were and art, and ever more shall be. It’s not enough. I want to sing on. There is so much more to tell and celebrate in this hymn. But, I must attend to this paper. Still, as we live apart and yet together in this Pandemic time, we miss our gathering, and for the moment, I miss the blessedness of our singing at Good Shepherd! During Luther’s time, one Catholic Cardinal is said to have remarked about Luther and the Reformers: “It is not their theology that upsets me so much; it is their singing!” During World War II, the Third Reich was known to send “Nazi party listeners” into congregations and if what was preached was upsetting to the Reich, that congregation would be closed. On a Sunday evening a crowd gathered outside one of those churches and began to sing. The crowd swelled until the Gestapo arrived, commanding the crowd to disperse. But the singing grew louder. After another warning, the shout came from one in the crowd: “Tonight we sing; tomorrow we die!” Reginald Heber1 has given us this hugely popular hymn, with a stanza about the saints!2 1. Reginald Heber - 1783 - 1826. An Episcopal Clergyman and hymn writer and later the Bishop of Calcutta until his death at the age of 42. 2. A similar story had been told by Helmut Thielicke in his book on the Parables of Jesus entitled The Waiting Father. He drew huge crowds in post-WWII East Berlin. Crowds gathered at the churches then, too. They would be dispersed for not having a permit for a demonstration! He was so popular that he would sometimes preach in three different locations in one afternoon-evening. The Saints – Among the Episcopal, Lutheran, and United Methodist Churches Rev.3 pdf Pare 1 II. Saints in the Anglican/Episcopal Church Lutherans and Anglican/Episcopal3 Churches largely agree in their “Calendars of Saints” As we have discussed in previous sessions of this series, by the 10th century, there was a beginning of a process of canonization for those believed to be candidates for sainthood. It has developed in intricacy over the years until the 20th century and the work of The Second Ecumenical Council following, which some efforts were made toward simplification. The Lutheran Reformers had set about to greatly simplify the length of the Roman Catholic lists. In the years following, the Calendars of the Saints Days for Lutherans and Anglicans looked largely the same, leaning overall on the Pre-Reformation Roman Calendar of the Saints. The Anglicans, of course, added the patron saints of Great Britain and Ireland: Saint George of England, Saint David of Wales, Saint Patrick of Ireland, and Saint Andrew of Scotland. ( King Charles I, considered as a new saint and martyr has, interestingly, come and gone in the Book of Common Prayer.) Not all saints and heroes, the two terms essentially similar in Anglicanism, are from biblical, early church and medieval times. There are 20th century saints and martyrs, too. On the West front of Westminster Abbey stand statues of martyrs held to be blessed in our time: Maximillian Kolbe, Martin Luther King, Jr., Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Lucian Tapiedi. (Anglican New Guinea martyr.) The Lambeth Conference first met in the late 19th century as a gathering of bishops from the world-wide Anglican Communion intended to develop the experience and the working relationship of being one international communion rather than a group of individual Anglican churches. The Conference convenes once each decade.4 This ninth Lambeth Conference, meeting in 1958 clarified the Commemoration of Saints and Heroes of the Christian Church in the Anglican communion via Resolution 79. It says, in part: ! In the case of Scriptural saints, care should be taken to commemorate men or women in terms which are in strict accord with the facts made known in Holy Scripture. 3, Anglican/Episcopal – In world-wide references, the Church of England is referred to as The Anglican Church. In the United States, the primary presence of the Anglican Church is The Episcopal Church in the United States. There are, unfortunately, small bodies of independents as well. Most are accountable to an Anglican bishop, “somewhere.” 4. Lambeth Conference – The 2020 Conference has been postponed to 2021, another victim of Covid19! The Saints – Among the Episcopal, Lutheran, and United Methodist Churches Rev.3 Page 2 ! In the case of other names, the Calendar should be limited to those whose historical character and devotion are beyond doubt. ! In the case of new names, economy should be observed and controversial names should not be inserted until they can be seen in the perspective of history. ! The addition of new names shall normally result from a widespread desire expressed in the region concerned over a reasonable period of time. These “Lambeth Conference Rules on Canonization “ are in spirit much like those of the Roman Catholic Churches. They also bear some marks of the relaxed style of the Eastern Orthodox Communion. Though the four bullets seem less detail oriented, they show evidence of the same wisdom. A saint or commemoration may be added after an affirmative vote by two Conventions of the Church. Some may be intended for local Calendars of Saints. III. Saints in the Lutheran Church in America It has been noted earlier that the Calendar of the Saints and Commemorations of the Roman Catholic Church had centuries ago become so huge as to be unmanageable. Some names had no documentation and for some there was no proof that such a saint ever existed. Over the years there have been attempts to tidy this up a bit, and that effort continues to our day. The Lutheran Church Reformers restricted holy days to feasts of our Lord, the days of apostles and evangelists, St. Stephen, the Holy Innocents, St. John the Baptist, St. Michael the Archangel, and all The Luther Rose Saints. But for Lutherans the calendar has grown since the Reformation. In modern ELCA practice, the Calendar of Saints and Commemorations is part of the work of the hymnal commissions in the preparation of a new church hymnal. In our 20th and 21st centuries it has been so, beginning with the Common Service Book of 1917, the Service Book and Hymnal of 1958), the Lutheran Book of Worship of 1978, and now Evangelical Lutheran Worship of 2006. Each of these hymnals has required an affirmative vote of authorization by the supporting church body(s) at a Convention of either the ELCA, ALC, the ELCA, or the LC-MS, the supporting church bodies. The “Calendar of Causes” is a part of each of these hymnals. The “Calendar” includes the saints and commemorative persons, the dates of their feast days, etc. Some congregations do not do much with this calendar, observing Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, but not much else. We miss great inspirational and teaching opportunities! These folks and festivals are here because they help us teach one another, grasp opportunities to praise God with songs of thanksgiving, and so much more. And, it is not just about long-bearded and ancient saints. In our calendar, and in that of the Anglican worldwide Communion, we can find names like Martin Luther, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Oscar Romero. Incidentally, all three of these “Saints” also appear in the Calendar of the Episcopal Church (ECUS). On the West front of Westminster Abbey one The Saints – Among the Episcopal, Lutheran, and United Methodist Churches Rev.3 Page 3 finds statues of a group of saints and martyrs. Among them are Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Oscar Romero. In these latter decades we have come to share so much as Lutherans and Episcopalians. Most of our folks are not aware that it started out that way as well. The German Reformation and the English Reformation were nearly parallel time-wise in the 16th century. This was so much so that some of the English reformers traveled to Wittenberg to seek the help of the German reformers in putting together the first Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. Much later, in the mid-1950's, the most used and loved liturgical music setting in the Lutheran Service Book and Hymnal was the work of Regina Fryxell, a gifted scholar and musician from the former national Augustana Lutheran Church. Ten years of study went into setting 2 of the SBH, the most loved and popular of the three musical settings in the SBH. However, the settings 1 and 3 of that same hymnal were composed by two musicians from the Episcopal Church, Harry Gilbert and Ernest White. So, through the centuries since the Reformation, we have shared much in hymnody, liturgy, and even Reformation theology. It was an exciting time when in the years 1999 and 2000 these two faith communities, having shared so much since the Reformation itself, signed “Called to Common Mission”, a pledge to move into Full Communion together, sharing resources, clergy, curricular materials and long range planning.