HYMN AFTER PENTECOST 3 Leaning on the Everlasting Arms

Text: Elisha Albright Hoffman (1839-1929) Tune: Anthony John Showalter (1858-1924)   Trinity Lutheran Free Congregation 1896 1.    What a fellowship, what a joy divine, Leaning on the everlasting arms; What a blessedness, what a peace is mine, Leaning on the everlasting arms. R/Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms; Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms. 2. O how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way, Leaning on the everlasting arms; O how bright the path grows from day to day, Leaning on the everlasting arms. R/ 3. What have I to dread, what have I to fear, Leaning on the everlasting arms; I have blessed peace with my Lord so near, Leaning on the everlasting arms. R/ Jesus teaching his disciples. James Tissot REFLECTION The Gospel lesson for this day has all kinds of possibilities in it. The part about the Sons of Thunder, wanting to send fire down on the cities that won’t receive him, is so strange it is almost funny. As usual, Jesus cuts through their mistaken belief about what his kingdom will be, then talks to them about what real discipleship is: demanding, if not frightening. We are to follow without looking back, like Lot’s wife did. Let the dead bury the dead, Jesus says, you must go forward.   The hymn shows us the delights of going forward, of walking with Jesus on our pilgrim way. The hymn quotes Proverbs 4, the path gets brighter every day. Pilgrimages are fraught with adventure and dangers. Psalm 77, the psalm suggested for the day, refers back to the Exodus and God leading the Israelites through the Red Sea, even though God has left no tracks. Lina Sandell and her father read that psalm before retiring on their trip across Vättern, the large lake in the middle of Sweden, on their way to a meeting in Gothenburg. The next morning when they met, her father reached out his hand to greet her and a great wave took him and after that all she saw of him was his white hair bobbing in the water and disappearing. She was catatonic with grief. The only thing that brought her back was reading the last lines of the psalm. The pilgrim way is rough, but he goes with you, day by day. That was her only comfort.   The great Christian epics—Dante’s Divine Comedy and John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress —are journeys on the way to God. The way is filled with vivid dangers and battles and delights. Both have shown us the map we must take through terrors and valleys of the shadow of death. And we make this trip in a fellowship, or congregation, as Bunyan shows especially well in the second part of his book, when he tells the story of Christiania, Christian's wife. It is a thrilling story of adventure, with a glorious end. This week I heard William Willamon talk at Luther Seminary about how often it feels like the church wants to protect its people from Jesus and his truth. That makes the Christian life rather dull and placid. Bernard Christensen, sainted president of Augsburg College and Seminary, wrote in his book Inward Pilgrimage , “The pilgrim way is long and rugged, often full of danger. But the resources of God are ever at hand. To overcome and arrive safe at home at last, it is only necessary that we be willing to make the decisive choice, to set forth, to continue in the way.” (BMC Inward Pilgrimage , 1976). In a few weeks my latest book, What a Fellowship: Remembering Augsburg Seminary and the Lutheran Free Church will be available for purchase. (see the link below) I chose the title What a Fellowship because the Lutheran Free Church began as a fellowship of congregations and referred to itself by that name for years.And we loved this song. My book, a story of my family and the institutions we loved and served, tells about the joys divine, and alarms the pilgrimage of my ancestors up to my generation went through for love of the school and church.   My fellowship challenged its young and old to follow Jesus, to live for Jesus “a life that is true” and relish the struggle. It introduced people to the joy divine that grows brighter every day.   Link to What a Fellowship https://www.fortresspress.com/store/product/9798889834045/What-a-Fellowship    HYMN INFO Elisha Albright Hoffman attended Union Seminary in Pennsylvania and became a pastor in 1868. He served Congregational churches in the Cleveland area and wrote over 2000 hymn texts, this being perhaps the most well-known. Anthony John Showalter, a pastor’s son born in Virginia, was a church musician and composer. He knew the shape note tradition from the Southern Harmony treasury and taught music after receiving an education at the Ruebush- Kieffer school of music in Dayton, VA. He, like many well-known writers of gospel songs at the time, studied composing in Europe, probably Leipzig, and continuing writing, composing and teaching music, editing hymnals and teaching until his death.   LINKS Gary Penrod/Gaither Music TV https://youtu.be/AXjAO4ILoGQ?si=7dfaQWpjWspJFe--   First-Plymouth Church Lincoln Nebraska https://youtu.be/yysjZrGlSdk?si=EMh00Ty-AyxVb4RI   Truegospelman https://youtu.be/i18H_TDMnGM?si=e3ArTcPZh-mGNuJQ   Alan Jackson https://youtu.be/DObsJ1PSdnQ?si=KYnP0p_4A8GlRO5p   Iris DeMent from True Grit https://youtu.be/ZGbxrNqK4-4?si=9fc-PUNVE8vXB_Ft