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The service opened with a prayer by Pastor Ryan Edgecombe thanking
God for the beautiful morning and the fog clearing off. He said
“this is the day the Lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it.
We are rejoicing because you gave us life today, because you got us
out of bed today and because you make your love and grace known.”
Edgecombe prayed for our interactions and conversations and how we
treat others and said “we have a day of opportunity today to worship
you. We even worship you after this little service is over through
how we live our lives and response to the gospel and gratitude to
the gospel.”
As Edgecombe finished the prayer, he said “we pray that our little
service will be honoring you. May our voices be lifted up to you. It
is a day to make a joyful noise.”
After the opening prayer, everyone sang several hymns starting with
“Amazing Grace” and ending with “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”
Edgecombe led singing while his wife, Bethany Edgecomb provided
accompaniment on the keyboard.
The passage Edgecombe preached from was 1 Corinthians 15:50-58. This
passage talks about the perishable becoming imperishable and the
mortal body putting on immortality on the day when a trumpet will
sound. On that day, death will be swallowed up in victory.
In 1 Corinthians 15:57, Paul writes, “thanks be to God. He gives us
the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Verse 58 says,
“therefore my beloved brothers and sisters, stand firm” by always
abounding in the work of the Lord knowing that in the Lord your
labor is not in vain.
Trying to bring a little history to the message like
he does each year, Edgecombe then talked about a book called
Lincoln's battle with God by Steven Mansfield. In the book, Manfield
said Lincoln went through what Edgecombe referred to as several
different seasons of his life when it came to his faith.
What Mansfield says in the book is that Lincoln went from seeing God
as an angry father to seeing God as a myth. Lincoln thought he was
cursed at one point and had a few reasons for that which Edgecombe
said he would not go into. Finally, Lincoln got to where he started
to accept God as ruler of the world.
This particular author seemed to think Lincoln grew in his faith and
drew closer to Christ over time, relying on prayer more and more.
Referring back to the text in 1 Corinthians, Edgecombe said the
passage may have given Lincoln comfort after losing one son around
age four and another at age 11.
Edgecombe said, “I think his emotions were pretty close to the
surface which I think is a beautiful thing [and is] one way that God
helped him get through.” Edgecombe thinks even the passing of
Lincoln’s boys helped him get a little closer to God over time.
Elizabeth Keckley, a dressmaker for Mary Todd, prepared Willie's
body. Lincoln wanted to view his son and has been quoted as saying,
“my poor boy. He was too good for this earth. God has called him
home.” Though Lincoln said he knew Willie was much better off in
heaven, [because] “we loved him so much, it is so hard to have him
leave us.”
Mr. Gurley, pastor of the New York Avenue
Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C., met with Lincoln quite a
bit. One day, Edgecombe said one of Lincoln’s friends saw Gurley
leaving the White House and asked what he was doing in there.
When Gurley told the man he had been having a morning chat with Mr.
Lincoln, the friend assumed the two men had been talking about the
war. Gurley told his friend he and Mr. Lincoln had actually been
talking of the state of the soul after death, which is a subject of
which Mr. Lincoln never tired. Gurley said he had had a great many
conversations with him on the subject and that morning was a
listener while Mr. Lincoln did all the talking.
A New York City Episcopal pastor named Francis Vinton
who was apparently pretty well known at that time period wanted to
call on Lincoln specifically after the loss of his son, Edgecombe
said the pastor reportedly told Lincoln your son is alive in
paradise.
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Pastor Vinton then asked President Lincoln, “do you
remember that passage in the gospels [that says] God is not the God
of the dead but of the living for all live under him.” The Pastor
told Lincoln “seek not your son among the dead he is not there. He
lives today in paradise. He is in a Kingdom and an existence as
real, even more real than your own.”
By Pastor Vinton’s account, Edgecombe said, Lincoln stood up, threw
his arms around the preacher’s neck and kept repeating, “alive,
alive, alive, my son is alive.”
Another time, Lincoln was out at one of the forts
inspecting the troops. As Lincoln was interacting with one of the
officers, he said, “I don't suppose you have a Bible here or
Shakespeare.” One of the officers said, “well I got a Bible, and
another guy has Shakespeare.”
As Edgecombe said, it was probably a treat for them to have Lincoln
read to them both from the Bible and from Shakespeare.
1 Corinthians 15 is a passage Edgecombe said probably
gave Lincoln quite a bit of comfort as he was mourning the loss of
loss of a son.
In a summary of the text, Edgecombe said, change is coming. We will
not all sleep, but we will all be changed in the flash [and] in the
twinkling of an eye. At the last trumpet sound, the dead will be
raised imperishable.
What Edgecombe said the text is talking about is a big change. Right
now, he said we are living in the Kingdom somewhat and we are living
in this world somewhat, but one day the Kingdom will be fully
realized.
That is a big change, because as Edgecombe said it's not going to be
just a veneer of newness on top of the old; it's going to be a
fundamental qualitative and quantitative change. We will all have a
new body.
Lincoln might have thought of that when he thought about his boys.
Edgecombe said when Lincoln heard the promise of a new imperishable
body, it probably gave him hope.
A passage in Revelation says that there will be no more death or
dreaming or crying or pain for the old order of things have passed
away. We will then have immortality, an imperishable existence and
victory over this broken and fallen world.
These verses can give us comfort with the promise of paradise.
Edgecombe said we all have a mixture of joy and grief and need to
know this promise.
A hope Edgecombe said he had, is that we desire to live in a way
that honors God. Edgecombe wanted everyone to remember we have a
hope to live for.
Edgecombe hoped this message would get everyone more
excited for life.
Something Edgecombe said he always tells people is that it's good to
have one foot ready for heaven and one foot here on this earth.
Edgecombe believes this life has a lot [for us] to be thankful for
too and there's a lot of ways we can honor God in this life.
What Edgecombe thinks this scripture motivates us to do is say, we
have a victory that Christ has given us [and] a savior that loves
us. He wants everyone to know about that. Edgecombe hopes he is
living life in a way that points people to Christ not shoves them
away.
As Edgecombe ended his message he said, we have got to think about
how we live our lives from day-to-day. We're all works in progress.
In a prayer before communion, Edgecombe thanked God for the words of
holy scripture and the comfort they may have given President
Lincoln. In his prayer, Edgecombe talked about how God works with us
throughout our lives and different seasons of life. Even if we have
times we do not have much to do with God, get mad him, act cold
towards God or just have other priorities, that doesn't mean God
abandoned us.
Edgecombe’s prayer talked about how God still loves us and through
his spirit, brings us back to the fold or bring us closer to him, so
he is not through with us. He thanked God for his grace.
To prepare everyone for a time of communion, Edgecombe’s prayer
ended with the words of Jesus on the night he was betrayed. That
night, Jesus took bread and broke and gave it to his disciples and
said, take, eat, this is my body…and then took the cup and gave it
to them saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood shed for you
for the remission of sins. We proclaim our hope today the Christ has
died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.
During communion time, Mike Anderson played hymns and inspirational
music on his dulcimer.
After communion and one final prayer of thanks, the service closed
by everyone saying the Lord’s Prayer together.
[Angela Reiners] |
