WITH THE EPISCOPALIANS

My dear Ouida says she likes the way the Episcopalians bury their dead, for it is mostly praise, prayer, and readings from the Scriptures. As one enters the chapel she is given a copy of “The Burial of the Dead”. taken from the ancient Book of Common Prayer. The service opens with the solemn procession. As the congregation stands in respect for the deceased, the rector reads, “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

There is then a collect or prayer in behalf of the deceased in which the person’s name is used: “O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered: Accept our prayers on behalf of thy servant (N), and grant him an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of thy saints, and bring us all to thy heavenly kingdom.”

With the congregation seated there follows rather extensive readings from the Scriptures and the apocrypha. Then there are responsive readings. This was followed by brief remarks by the pastor relative to the deceased and words of comfort to the family, all done rather informally, even jovially. I was surprised that the rector ventured to describe the deceased as “irascible”—with good humor of course. Knowing the deceased as well as I did, I heartily agreed with his description, though I refrained from saying Amen.

Even though the rector and his assistant were in full clerical regalia, with a cross born down the aisle toward the altar during the solemn procession, it was a “low church” Episcopal service, so there was no mass for the dead. And since our departed friend gave his body to a medical school, it was more of a memorial service than a funeral.

Since Ouida and I had attended the old gentleman somewhat in his latter years, the relatives asked if I might say something at his memorial. I was impressed that the rector urged me to do more than eulogize the deceased, but to bear witness for the Christian faith. “We have a message to give,” he said to me with a sense of urgency, “and I think we make a mistake in not giving it at a time like this.”

1 was also impressed with the way he introduced me to those that had gathered. I was a close friend to the deceased and “a minister of the church.” A minister of the church! Never mind about this sect or that denomination, I was simply a servant of Christ and his church. While the reference to the church would please many Church of Christ folk, interpreting the term as they often do, it is certain that the rector was speaking of the church catholic.

On the way home Ouida was commending the spiritual depth of the Episcopal service while I was praising the openness of the rector. “They are less sectarian than we are,” I said to her, and we wondered how it would be if the situation were reversed, with the relatives requesting that an Episcopal priest be invited to take part in a service at a typical Church of Christ. We concluded that one would have to be both daring and naive to make such a request! And the Episcopal priest would have to be even more daring! And it would be an unusual Church of Christ minister that would urge him to bear witness to his faith and introduce him as “a minister of the church.”

Ah, if we could all come to see the beauty and the appropriateness of being simply the church. We are all His church, His Body, the Body of Christ, all who believe in Christ and “habitually obey him,” as Alexander Campbell liked to put it. We are His church not because of our sects and denominations but in spite of them.

It is my prayer that our folk in Churches of Christ-Christian Churches will come to see the church more like that Episcopal priest sees it and as Thomas Campbell saw it—as consisting of all those who profess faith in Christ and obey him according to their understanding. What we call the Church of Christ or the Christian Church is no more the church than the Episcopal Church is, or any other denomination. The church of Jesus Christ transcends all denominations. It existed upon this earth before there was ever a denomination, and when all sects and parties have had their day and exist no more, the church will still be the pillar and ground of God’s truth.—the Editor