All Saints 2022: After the battle

I read three sermons yesterday on All Saints Day: Nadia Bolz-Weber's post "It's All Saints, Not Some Saints," preached in a women's prison last Sunday; and two sermons from 1969, one from my Grandpa Gotsch's funeral in June of that year and the other from the All Saints Day commemoration at Concordia College in River Forest the following November. The order of service at Concordia, where my dad taught organ, included my grandfather's name, Herbert Gotsch, Sr., on the list of family members of students and faculty who had died that year.

I found these 1969 sermons in my attic this fall, in a box of papers from my grandmother who saved everything. Because of poor health she was not able to attend my grandpa's funeral. Having a copy of the sermon to read and save would have brought some consolation. Pastor Paul (that was his last name — we didn't use first names with pastors in those days) preached on Psalm 23 which had been my grandfather's confirmation verse. 

Pastor Paul noted all the ways the Good Shepherd had cared for Herbert throughout his life. But he didn't mention my grandfather's service in the infantry in France in World War I, when he was a young man of 25. Yet if Herbert Gotsch (1892-1969) indeed had a Good Shepherd, that Good Shepherd must have been there in the trenches, too. Could that young man, taught by his parents to fear and trust in God, feel God's presence in France? Did it help? Did he despair? Friends said Herb was never the same after the war. Twenty years later, when my dad was still a child, he suffered a severe depression; my aunt, his daughter, told me of how he would lash out in anger at my grandmother. He became senile in his final years, fighting a losing battle with language and cognition and restlessness. 

Martin Koehneke, president of the college, preached the All Saints sermon in 1969. He quoted the battle language in the hymn "For All the Saints":

And when the fight is fierce, the warfare long/Steals on the ear the distant triumph song;

And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong. Alleluia! Alleluia!

The text of the hymn is from 1864, 30 years before Stephen Crane wrote about the reality of battle and cowardice in "The Red Badge of Courage" and more than a century before PTSD was added to the American Psychiatric Association's DSM. Post-Vietnam, post-20th century, we're less inclined to use war as a metaphor for the life of faith.

 Another stanza of the hymn also speaks of warriors: 

The golden evening brightens in the west. 

Soon, soon, to faithful warriors comes their rest.

While scuffling through the woods at the Morton Arboretum this morning, I received a text telling me of an old friend, Scott, for whom that rest arrived this morning. His death had been expected for the last few days, after a long, debilitating battle with cancer. 

These days we are careful not to say "lost his battle" with cancer or with ALS or with Alzheimer's. There is no losing a battle that is known to be un-winnable from the start. The suffering is fierce and long and tearful. It changes the ones who watch and care as well as those who are sick. Yet God is present as Good Shepherd, loving Savior, Comforter. "Sweet is the calm of Paradise the blest," continues the hymn, and that sweetness appears in God's everyday grace even on this side of the grave. 

It was a warm, dry day today. As I walked in the woods this morning I spent as much time looking down at the dry leaves underfoot as I did looking up at the blue sky and the gold and rusty leaves still on the trees. We sat for a while on a bench and watched leaves float down from treetops to the ground, yielding to gravity yet dancing little minuets in the air. 

In his 1969 sermon, Martin Koehneke preached about the spiritual victory of the saints in heaven and the song of the saints and angels in Revelation 7:12:

Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom

and thanksgiving and honor

and power and might

be to our God forever and ever! Amen.

He found comfort for mourners in every word of the song and built a stirring finish for his sermon. I can imagine my father appreciating it. But to me -- what does this all mean? Maybe you had to be there. 

In the days after a death, when we're shaky and sorrowful, we often use very concrete images to describe that person's life in heaven, images that make us smile or even laugh. When my father died, there was lots of talk about him making music in heaven with J. S. Bach. My favorite variation came from a former organ student who described Daddy watching Bach play from one of his manuscripts. My dad reached into his pocket for his pen, leaned over Bach's shoulder, and wrote in some fingering. 

When I picture my son Kris in heaven, he's playing frisbee with his brother, Kurt, on the lawn at the Sunset Resort on Washington Island. It's the golden hour, about 45 minutes before the sun will set over the lake. The frisbee's in his right hand, he's a got a bottle of Island Wheat in his left, happy to be whole again, happy to be in the presence of God.