It caught me by surprise this past Sunday, just how “nostalgic” it felt to visit St. John-Sauers, a few miles outside of Seymour, Indiana. For a place I’d never been before, it still hit me close to home, more so than I could ever have anticipated. And that was not only because it’s a lovely and impressive church out in the middle of the cornfields of Jackson County.
St. John-Sauers began sometime in the 1840s, as far as I was able to understand. And I’m told it is the mother church of the vibrant and robust Lutheran community in and around Seymour – a counterpart to St. John-White Creek in Bartholomew County, planted by the same circuit rider. Both of those congregations have weathered the 180+ years since they were founded rather well.
Although I’d never been to Sauers before this past weekend, I grew up hearing about it from my Grandpa & Grandma Stuckwisch. It’s where they both were baptized and confirmed, where they were married, and where my Dad was also baptized and confirmed, prior to the family moving into town at some point. They lived on South Lynn Street in Seymour throughout my growing up years, but they would often make references to “Sauers,” where the family farm and homestead were to be found (and evidently still are to this day, not far from the church). One of my uncles took my wife and some of our children out to see the church and cemetery years ago, while I was busy elsewhere. But to me it has had almost a mythical quality, like a location in a Tolkien story.
It was only within the past few years that I was told that “Sauers” was the name of the first pastor of the congregation, and it became the place name, as well, because that pastor’s home was also the local “post office.” Makes perfect sense in retrospect, but it amused me to learn that tidbit.
Whatever I had come to imagine and picture when I thought about St. John-Sauers, the present church building is a lovely and well-kept structure, the current congregation is alive and active, and the church cemetery – spreading out in several directions – is a poignant testimony to the numerous saints who have gone before us in the faith from this household and family of God.
The church building is not the one in which my Dad and grandparents were baptized, although the original front entrance now serves as the entryway from the narthex into the nave – which I found to be particularly moving. What struck me more than anything else, though, was walking through the cemetery for half an hour or so prior to the Divine Service. Lots of headstones with family names on them, both “Stuckwisch” and “Steltenpohl” (my Grandma’s maiden name), as well as many other last names familiar to me from the Seymour community and congregations.
I’ve had a profound appreciation for Church history, ever since Early Church with Dr. Weinrich at the Seminary, but most of my interest and study has been from the Patristic and Reformation eras. In this case, what really hit me was the sense of that venerable history extending down to my own forebears, to the family I grew up knowing and loving or otherwise hearing about. On one of the headstones, I recognized the name of one of my Grandpa’s brothers, Emil, and I was especially pleased to visit with one of Emil’s sons, Lynn, before the Service.
In going from the nostalgia of the cemetery into the “blest Communion, fellowship divine” of the Church & Ministry of the Gospel in Word & Sacrament, I was reminded that we are “strangers and exiles on the earth,” and that we are “seeking a homeland” not of this world, but “a better Country, that is, a heavenly one,” and “the City that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10-16). Though I’ve not yet seen that glorious place, I do yearn for it with a kind of “future nostalgia,” for that which our Lord has obtained for us by His Cross and in His Resurrection, and which He promises in His faithful Word. For now we have a Foretaste of that blessed heritage in the Holy Communion, but the Day is coming when we shall see it with our eyes, from our own risen and glorified bodies, like unto His own. Even so, “Come, Lord Jesus!”