"Singing Our Faith: When Peace like a River" - Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Singing Our Faith: When Peace like a River
Pentecost 11 – Summer Series
August 9, 2015
Grace, Mankato, MN
1 Corinthians 15.51-58

Late in 1873, Chicago businessman Horatio G. Spafford was to take a vacation to England with his wife and four daughters. Delayed by business, Spafford sent them on ahead aboard the French liner, the Ville du Havre. While crossing the liner was hit by the English iron ship Lochearnon and sunk. Spafford’s wife survived, but all four daughters perished. Upon reaching Wales, his wife cable Spafford the message, “Survived alone.” Spafford immediately sailed to join his wife, crossing the very spot his family went down. As he did, he penned the words to the hymn, When Peace like a River.

Hearing the news, family friend Dwight L. Moody (founder of the Moody Bible Institute) traveled to England to comfort them. He reported that Spafford said about the tragedy, “It is well; the will of God be done.” Philip Bliss, another family friend, wrote the tune that accompanies the lyrics and named the tune after the liner, Ville du Havre. We also know the song as It Is Well with My Soul. Jason Glaser, who nominated the song, echoes many of our thoughts about why he chose the hymn: “The background to the lyrics, and the depth of faith shown against such catastrophic loss. Could I do it? Doubtful, but I do sing the song to myself on darker days.”

The heart of the message and the basis for Spafford’s (and ours) assurance is the promise of the resurrection. For many of us, the promise of the resurrection to eternal life has various implications. For example, some of us are assured that there is more than this life. Others take comfort in knowing that whatever pain or suffering we are enduring will not last. Still others are heartened at the anticipation of being reunited with loved ones. If fact, we almost take the resurrection for granted because we have celebrated the promise so long. However, that was not true for the earliest Christians, especially at Corinth.

For the Corinthian Christians, the resurrection seemed to be at best open-ended and at worst in question. To understand why this is the case, we need to remember that there was no single Jewish viewpoint about resurrection in the first century and there were contrary ideas in Greek philosophy as well. Some people denied any kind of resurrection. Some thought the achieved immortality through their descendents. Some believed in the immortality of the soul while others believed in a bodily glorification. There were even some various combinations of these. Though we don’t know for sure, some of the Corinthians appeared to believe that resurrection already happened to them, that they had already arrived into some sort of spiritual being and that there was nothing else to do.

The question of an afterlife is not just something from 2,000 years ago. I have begun watching a new TV show on TNT called Proof. The story line is that dying genius billionaire wants to find definitive evidence of whether or not there is an afterlife. He essentially bribes a hard-science cardio-thoracic surgeon with donations to her favorite charity to explore various phenomena and report back to him. This is not just some intellectual exercise for the doctor, who though skeptical about the afterlife, has not only had an NDE (Near Death Experience) herself, but has recently lost her teenage son in a car accident.

For Paul, this is no academic exercise or philosophical question; the question of the resurrection goes to the heart of Christian faith. It’s so important that he spends an entire chapter, 58 verses, to hammer home the point. Christ’s resurrection, and by extension ours, is the core of the gospel, the good news of Jesus. If we deny Christ’s resurrection, and ours, then Paul says, our faith is in vain and we are to be pitied. But for Paul, the resurrection isn’t just some future promise; it makes a difference in our lives today. So the Corinthians were partially correct; we have new life available to us right now, but as is always true with God, there is more.

Spafford knew this, too. So here’s the rest of the story: Spafford and his wife went on to have three more children, a son and two daughters. At the age of four, the son died of scarlet fever. Their Chicago church, seeing all of their tragedy, accused them of some secret sin. They believed that God must be punishing them. (Apparently, they were unfamiliar with John 9.) This ostracism caused Spafford and his family to leave and start their own group. Spafford, who had developed an interest in biblical archeology, took the group to Jerusalem in 1881, establishing the American Colony.

Joined by Swedish Christians, the colony engaged in philanthropic work among all peoples, including Christians, Jews and Muslims. Although Spafford had died in 1888, the colony lived on and was instrumental in supporting these communities through the great suffering and deprivations both during and after WWI by running soup kitchens, hospitals, orphanages, etc.

My brothers and sisters, may you, like Spafford, be sustained by the promises of the resurrection. May it not only be “well with your souls,” but enable you to “excel in the work of the Lord” knowing that your labor is not in vain. Amen.