From Mourning to Dancing
“You have turned for me my mourning into dancing
You dressed me up with gladness
I cannot be silent forever”
I still have the vinyl.
Back in 1980, in my senior year in High School, my youth group drove out to the Ligonier Valley Training Center outside of Pittsburgh to hear James Ward perform songs from his just-released album. The center was also the L’Abri-like home of resident theologian R. C. Sproul, a graduate of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
The song that stuck in my head that night and that has never left was “Mourning To Dancing,” and I found myself singing it this week. My father, The Rt. Rev. John H. Rodgers, Jr., another reformed theologian from Pittsburgh, went on November 23 to be with the Lord, his wife, and former friends and colleagues like Sproul, J.I. Packer, and British theologian John Stott.
This is a week to reflect on his death, which joins with the groaning of all creation.
In the past week, there has been the passing of a dear friend and common colleague, Michael Gerson, the mass shooting at the Walmart in a community we are close to in Virginia, the premature death of a young woman close to our Clapham staff, and the earthquake in Indonesia that took over 300 lives. But this week was not unusual, in a sense. Death is sadly the natural course of life as it is now. Creation groans under its heavy yoke.
My father was a remarkable man and lived a full life until his 92-year-old body caught up to him. He lived a Midwest boyhood before admission to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1950, but had fallen in love with the historic 39 Anglican Articles of Religion in high school and left the Marines to attend Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS) in Alexandria, Virginia. He served in a parish in Washington and met my mother, Blanche Kostka. They were married in 1959 and moved shortly thereafter to Basel, Switzerland, where he earned his Doctor of Theology degree, studying with the renowned theologian Karl Barth. This is where I was born.
Over the next thirteen years teaching at VTS, they raised four children, and my dad became a popular Professor of Systematic Theology. He was known throughout the Anglican Communion as one of its foremost Evangelical theologians. He left VTS to join the pioneer faculty of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, which grew out of the Evangelical and charismatic renewal movements. For the next 20 years, he taught theology to students at Trinity, occasionally breaking into song while lecturing on the attributes of God.
This is how I remember him the most: singing. “Mockingbird” (the James Taylor/Carly Simon version) and “If I Had A Hammer” with my mother in the front seat of the only car we ever had growing up (a VW camper), tapping out the beat on the steering wheel with his big Naval Academy ring. Harmonizing hymns so loudly in the church that we’d all distance ourselves from him a little. Then singing them nightly to my mother as she slowly faded into the next life to wait for him. They are singing together again now, I am sure of it.
My Dad was consecrated a bishop in South East Asia to begin The Anglican Mission in America, helping US churches stay connected to The Anglican Communion while maintaining their orthodox theology. I noticed that over time, new songs entered our family from the global Anglican communion, notably Africa.
As I reflect on my life and his, I see how the songs he sang found a voice in my life, including my interest in theology and my faith, my work with religion and public life, my interest in international concerns (including AIDS and Africa), my commitment to family, and my love for music (including James Taylor).
But perhaps the song he sang that resounds loudest in my memory is the hymn “All Creatures of our God and King,” based on the poem “Canticle of the Sun” by St. Francis of Assisi. This stanza rings especially true to me at this time:
“And thou, most kind and gentle death,
waiting to hush our final breath,
alleluia, alleluia!
Thou leadest home the child of God,
as Christ before that way hath trod,
O sing ye, O sing ye, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!”
This is the cry of all creation, groaning to be set free of death but sung with the firm hope that, in God’s time, our mourning will turn into dancing.
It’s actually a song not of despair, but of Thanksgiving!