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It Is Well with My Soul
Messages of Hope for the Bereaved
Harold T. Lewis
Foreword by Richard A. Burnett
It is Well With My Soul
Messages of Hope for the Bereaved
Copyright © 2018 Harold T. Lewis. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-5253-0
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-5254-7
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-5255-4
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 03/12/19
And, Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll,
The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend,
“Even so,” it is well with my soul.
It is well with my soul,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
Horatio Spafford (1828–1888)
In pia memoria matris meae amatissimae
MURIEL KATHLEEN WORRELL LEWIS
Foreword
This is truly a mysterious book.
No, not in the sense of an Agatha Christie whodunit. Nor is it like a dense, jargon-riddled tome intended only for theologians. The mystery found in this book is the central claim of Christian living: the Paschal Mystery, “a cycle of rebirth,” as Ronald Rolheiser says in his modern classic, The Holy Longing. It is “an invitation to live into the kingdom and reign of God . . . to see differently,” in the words of liturgist Susan Marie Smith. In this collection of sermons (along with its extensive introduction), Harold Lewis unravels, in his own way, the Paschal Mystery and, in so doing, provides us with many lenses for clearer understanding of and more profound insights into the mystery of the life of Christ, which Jesus himself shared with his friends in those first peripatetic homilies offered throughout the Galilean countryside.
In the pages of It Is Well with My Soul, we meet over and over the Apostle Paul, who tells the Christians at Rome, “If we have died with Christ, we believe we shall also live with him” (Rom 6:8). For Lewis, Christian preaching should never be absent from Christian burial. Indeed, Dr. Lewis would have gotten along famously with a visiting professor of liturgics who proclaimed: “If the Christian church cannot speak at the time of death, it cannot speak at all.” In these pages, too, we encounter not only Lewis the preacher and teacher but also Lewis the racial reconciler, Lewis the historian, and Lewis the pastor. For only the pastor can admonish his seminary flock: “Thou shalt not bleed on your congregation”—which I have always taken to mean that, in vague or clumsy attempts to seek the heights of what is often called narrative preaching, we must be careful not to confuse the subject of all preaching, Christ and Him crucified, with ourselves! As Paul reminds us, we must preach “not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor 4:5).
Harold Lewis, a devoted son of the Anglo-Catholic expression of Anglicanism, understands the role of liturgical preaching too well to expect the sermon to stand alone in the Burial Rite. For him, the sermon gives voice to the many other voices in prayer and recollection, grief and thanksgiving, humor and confession, and joyful songs raised to the Lord Jesus who, by his love alone, receives the departed “upon another shore and in a greater light.” The Paschal Mystery is the heart of all Christian proclamation, and in this book we are given, even now, glimpses of “the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.”
In these funeral sermons, preached at the memorial liturgies of the famous and not-so-famous over the past three decades, Dr. Lewis offers brave witness to the Resurrection and insights into the greatest mysteries we share as the Body of Christ. But whether preaching to the diocesan family of a bishop taken away from them in his one hundredth year, or to the parents, siblings, and friends of a young man who took his own life at thirty, Lewis—a man who has been a leader in Christian social witness and has lived at the center of the Episcopal Church’s dynamic engagement in the world—sounds the clarion call of sure and certain hope with characteristic wit and wisdom. Thus inspired, the bereaved may leave worship proclaiming in their hearts and on their lips: “It is well with my soul.”
Richard A. Burnett
Trinity Episcopal Church, Columbus, Ohio
Introduction
“Sure and certain hope”
I have vivid memories of participating in my Grandmother Edith’s funeral when I was sixteen years old. The family—her five surviving children and their spouses, a dozen or so grandchildren, and an assortment of other kin—processed into the church, mournfully walking behind the coffin, and sat down in the front pews reserved for them. I, however, did not join them. When we arrived at the church, I reported to the sacristy, and asked the rector if I could be the acolyte for the service. One of my duties was to carry the ornate brass and mahogany processional cross before the coffin as we entered and as we left the church. After the funeral, I placed it in the hearse, alongside the coffin, and when we arrived at the cemetery, I retrieved the cross and led the body to its final resting place.
Now I don’t think that the word “oxymoron” was in my vocabulary at the time, but had it been, I think I would have used it to describe what I heard next. As the priest took a clump of earth and traced with it the sign of the Cross on the coffin, he said: “Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our sister departed, and we commit her body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.” To my young mind, something didn’t click. To me, hope, by definition, was anything but sure and certain. Hope was an expression of something we would like to happen. We express a hope that it won’t rain, so that we can go on a picnic; we hope that the girl in our class will go with us to the prom; we hope that Mother has made bread pudding for dessert. But there is nothing either sure or certain about those hopes. It might rain torrents, canceling the picnic. Our would-be date may already be spoken for. And Mother might serve us canned peaches because she didn’t have time to make dessert.
But to the Christian, “sure and certain hope” is not an oxymoron at all. It is a statement of faith, not dependent upon our feeble wishes and desires. This is why the Apostle Paul assures the Romans: “Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our heart through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5). This is why St. Peter can assure those under persecution with the words: “God has given us
