Resurrection. Victory over the grave. This central theme of Christianity appears throughout the service this morning. In our sermon text we find the story of Eutychus, the unfortunate man who fell to his death out of a window and had to be resurrected during an especially long sermon of Paul’s. Pastor Jamie chose to pair this with the story of the widow’s son in 1 Kings, whom God raises from the dead after an impassioned plea by the prophet Elijah. We’ll sing hymns like Crown Him With Many Crowns, which describe Christ as “triumphant o’er the grave,” and In Christ Alone, which celebrates the truth that, because of Christ’s power in us, we can have “no fear in death.” What Wondrous Love Is This and O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing both look forward to the day when “from death I’m free” and “new life the dead receive,” while And Let This Feeble Body Fail confesses that even though the Christian may “faint and die,” they trust that joy, life, and friends will be found again “in that eternal day.” On this “All Saint’s Sunday,” a day traditionally observed in Western Christianity to celebrate the memory of all departed believers, it is fitting that we focus on a message found in the hymn Abide With Me (paraphrasing from 1 Corinthians 15): “Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?”
—Henry C. Haffner
