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From the 2018 series “With Thanks”
“Then we your people, the flock of your pasture,
will give thanks to you forever;
from generation to generation we will recount your praise.”
There was a padlock on the gate, and plywood boards covered the stained glass windows of Bethany Lutheran Church in North Bergen, New Jersey. A closed church is a sad sign of the times as people abandon houses of divine worship throughout our country.
It was the place where I was baptized over forty-seven years ago. On my last trip back to my homeland, I heard the rumor of its closing, and I had to see it with my eyes.
To view a church gone-out-of-business is a sobering sight. To look upon the place where I first sang the great hymns of faith and to know that there the music has forever stopped is heart-retching. Though deep sorrow filled me, so did love. The memory of my first church family pushed away anger and despair.
Beyond the locked iron gate and the wooden barrier, in that small stucco building on the corner of that busy street, something extraordinary occurred. Though the dispassionate cars continue their endless procession without noticing the significance of the life-less structure, my memory bowed in adoration.
Mrs. Lamentain, Herbie, Roger Reich, Mrs. Kauffenger, Mrs. Rossi and her daughter Mrs. Schubert, Stuart Corby, the Kaplans: these names and faces, which I knew so well, come flooding into my mind from the hidden storage places of my heart. My eyes begin to water with joy. They and others blend to form that great company of saints. Pastors Bell, Rickel, and Sinnott (yes, I did have a pastor named "sin-not") helped to lay the foundation for my faith as they cared for those wonderfully imperfect people of God (myself and family included.)
From the gloom, emerged gratitude. Although the congregation of my childhood is no more, my church family lives on. The baptisms, weddings, and funerals - the sacramental encounters with God's grace and forgiveness - the sacred meetings and greetings - all these continue in the lives that were touched by the witness of Bethany Lutheran Church.
Church families are not static entities - permanent structures. They are dynamic, broken, fluid, and fluctuate. They live and die. They remain in the resurrected life of Christ.
Taking leave of the place of my first experience with the Body of Christ, I said a prayer of thanksgiving. God, thank you for my Bethany church family. Thank you also for the many other church families that have nurtured, challenged, and cared for my faith in all the years since last I worshiped beyond the locked gate and the barred door.
Prayer:
O God, our help in ages past and hope for years to come, you have blessed your church with your grace. Be with all those who gather around Word and Sacrament to sing your praise and worship your name. Strengthen church families everywhere so that they might be outposts of your welcome, grace, reconciliation, and love.
Through Christ, Amen.
Permission granted to share today's content with family and friends. Copyrighted 2018. Walt Lichtenberger