On January 23, 2013, Kilgore artist Sarah Weatherford of Faux Artistry by Lisa puts the second coat of paint on the reredos lettering that connects the congregation’s name to our heavenly goal.
With a name like “Pilgrim Lutheran Church” and a building that is New England Colonial in style, one might think that we have something to do with the English Puritan Pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower and established the Plymouth Colony in 1620. And, in so thinking, one is probably at least a little right. (Although, admittedly, no one around now was around when the congregation’s name was chosen, and we have not found any record of the rationale for the decision to so-name the congregation.)
Those Mayflower pilgrims had fled religious persecution in England, first to Holland and then to what is now Massachusetts. The colony’s second governor, William Bradford, in a 1630 writing with reference to Hebrews 11:13 (see below), was the first to use of the English word “pilgrim” to refer to those who came over on the Mayflower. The English word “pilgrim” comes from the Latin word peregrinus, which itself first and foremost similarly means “foreigner, stranger, alien” but can also likewise have the more specific meaning of someone who makes a long journey of some special religious significance, as to a holy place. Both English and Latin words also can have the figurative meaning of a person travelling through life in this world to heaven, regarding life in this world as a period of exile before life in the world to come.
Indeed, the Bible teaches that we are temporary residents on earth making our way through life in this world to life in the next. For example, in Genesis 23:4 Abraham refers to himself as a “stranger and sojourner” (the King James Version’s rendering of the Hebrew words ger and towshab). The two words are very close in meaning, but, notably for our purposes here, the first brings with it the nuance of a temporary resident. (The prayer in Psalm 39:12 seems to be quoting Genesis 23:4 directly, and confer Psalm 119:19.) Like Abraham, so his descendants, the people of Israel, often lived as strangers among people to whom they were not immediately related by blood, and so they did not have native civil rights but instead depended on the natives’ hospitality, which meant they ultimately depended on God (see 1 Chronicles 29:15). God’s Law called for the people of Israel always to show similar hospitality to those living in their midst, something they should have been able to appreciate because of their own experiences (but such provisions of the Law are not correctly understood in our modern context when they are said to allow or in any way to condone illegal immigration). Yet, as Hebrews 11:13 tells us, even once in the Promised Land, the faithful did not regard themselves as anything more than “strangers and pilgrims” in the sinful world (the King James Version’s rendering of the Greek words xenos and parepidemos; the Septuagint used paroikos and parepidemos to translate the Hebrew of Genesis 23:4 and Psalm 39:12). With that understanding of the Old Testament believers, the New Testament believers are exhorted to live with a similar understanding, avoiding the sins that are typical of the world in which they sojourn (see 1 Peter 2:11, where the King James Version translates the Greek paroikos and parepidemos with “strangers and pilgrims”, although compare the King James Verison’s rendering of parepidemos in 1 Peter 1:1 with “strangers”). Again, the transitory nature of our life’s journey in this world is clearly emphasized.
Our historic liturgy and hymns reflect this view of our lives as pilgrims in this world journeying to the next. For example, the old General Prayer of The Lutheran Hymnal’s order of Morning Service without Communion referred to us as “strangers and pilgrims”, temporary residents, on earth (page 13). Similar is a favorite hymn, “Rejoice, O Pilgrim Throng” (Lutheran Worship #455). Edward H. Plumptre’s text for an 1865 choir festival is suitable not only for liturgical processionals and recessionals but also for our way through life. The hymn calls us to “Send forth the sturdy hymns of old, / The psalms of ancient days”, to pour out joy “With all the angel choirs, / With all the saints on earth”, and to throng onward behind Christ’s cross “With hymn and chant and song”. Other hymns in Lutheran Worship also make reference to “pilgrim” (63:3, 218:3, 220:1, 433:5, 450:3), “pilgrimage” (277:6, 487:2, 515:2), and “pilgrims” (102:4, 335:3, 381:1, 383:1-3, 384:1-3).
A line from one of those hymns is stenciled on the top of Pilgrim’s reredos, the decorative panel behind the altar. The line “Pilgrims Here – Our Home Above” (Lutheran Worship 381:1; confer Lutheran Book of Worship, 487:1; Lutheran Service Book, 685:1) is a seeming theological, if not translational, improvement over the older rendering of Irdisch noch, schon himmlisch sein with “bodies here, our souls above” (The Lutheran Hymnal, 409:1; confer Christian Worship, 452:1; Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary, 236:1). Our use on the reredos of the hymn line “Pilgrims Here – Our Home Above” not only makes the connection between the name of our congregation and our heavenly goal but also both confesses to everyone who sees it and reminds us all that we are not shaped by things that determine life here but by the things that determine our life to come.
May God bless all the faithful who are so making this pilgrimage!
