Bishop's Note: The Opening Anthem

Bishop Eric Menees

Dear brothers and sisters, 

I pray that this Bishop’s Note finds you safe and well! We continue our examination of the 2019 Book of Common Prayer, and more specifically over the last several months we’ve been examining the Pastoral Rites. Last week we looked at the section titled, “Concerning the Burial of the Dead” that describes some of the practical matters around death and burial. Today we start the very beginning of the burial rite itself, the opening anthem. 

This opening anthem made up of verses from scripture is something that Anglicanism added to the burial service during the Reformation. It’s a moment for the officiant of the funeral to use God’s Word to speak to what the people are seeing in the service. The opening anthem is not in place of the scripture readings but these verses of scripture, which may be sung or said, focus us on the hope of the resurrection that is the very foundation of our faith. 

These verses are here to remind people what death is to us as Christians and how it’s been changed by Jesus Christ. Many see death as a constant throughout the world. It just seems like something that’s certain and a given, as people often say like “death and taxes.” These verses remind us that wasn’t God’s intent and that’s why Jesus Christ became incarnate in the first place. As we hear from Jesus in the first passage, “I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” As Jesus tells us, God is not a God of the dead, but of the living. In him we have life and that gives us hope when we face death. The next verse speaks not just to that truth, but of the hope we have as Christians that accompanies it. Knowing Jesus as our redeemer isn’t just a nice thought we have, it’s true and it’s a promise we can trust in. As Job says, “at the last he will stand upon the earth,” “and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”

I encourage you to spend some time thinking and praying through these verses. People may associate them with death and funerals but they speak to the profound hope we have as Christians, that as Jesus says, “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” These sentences have even been put to music by many English composers and you can hear some of them at the links below.

I pray you all have a blessed Last Sunday of Epiphany and Ash Wednesday this coming week!