July 01st, 2018

The Gospel text for this Sunday (Mark 5:21-43) is a wonderful text, especially since the Gospel according to Mark does not have much when it comes to Jesus’ resurrection account. Especially significant is the reaction of the people in the text. On this Sunday, Jesus resurrects the young girl, Jairus' daughter.

There is a great hymn in The Lutheran Hymnal associated with this hymn. It has a great tune connected with it (Den signede Dag)—which naturally helps. The last stanza of the hymn is amazingly appropriate to this text—although the bible verse connected to this hymn (there can be only one in TLH) is Revelation 14:13 (ESV: ‘And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who died in the Lord from now on.”’).

O Jesus, draw near my dying bed / And take me into Thy keeping / And say when my spirit hence is fled, / “This child is not dead, but sleeping.” / And leave me not, Savior, till I rise / To praise Thee in life eternal.

I recently found out there was another stanza after the one above. It is given in The Handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal.

Now opens the Father’s house above, / The names of the blest are given. / Lord, gather us there; let none we love / Be missed in the joys of heaven. / Oh, grant to us all a place with Thee; / We ask through our dear Redeemer.

It is nice that The Handbook goes into the following details as to why this stanza was left out: ‘It was dropped because of an unscriptural thought in Lines 3 and 4. Such a prayer presupposes the possibility of suffering in heaven. This is inconsistent with Rev. 21:4.’ (ESV: ‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’)

This fits with what a hear people asking. ‘I was very much attached to my pet dog. Will that dog be in heaven with me?’ I usually reply by noting that there is very little in scripture which talks about what this new heaven and new earth will be like; but, on the other hand, there is a LOT in scripture which tells us how to get there! Now that is not answering the question, but there are some questions which we cannot answer--because those answers are not in scripture.

And, as for the omitted stanza, how about the following for a resolution? Only two words need to be changed. (Admittedly this makes the translation from the Norwegian very much a paraphrase!)

Now opens the Father’s house above, / The names of the blest are given. / Lord, gather us there; let all we love / Be joined in the joys of heaven. / Oh, grant to us all a place with Thee; / We ask through our dear Redeemer.