Here I raise my Ebenezer

By Tyler Tankersley

On the first Sunday in June, members of my extended family gather at McGee Chapel in Grassy, Missouri. It's a small sanctuary with an attached park pavilion out in the wilds of Bollinger County. Before we gather for worship, there are buckets of fried chicken, various species of pie and all variety of casseroles placed in the pavilion awaiting our arrival after a (hopefully) short service.

After we have enjoyed the meal, we engage in the annual ritual of walking in the cemetery. McGee Chapel is surrounded by hundreds of gravestones, and it is for this reason we have gathered. We pass from stone to stone as we listen to our elders tell stories of those we have lost. On this first Sunday in June, my family gathers together to pray, worship, sing, eat and remember.

In the book of 1 Samuel, there is an extended narrative in which the Israelites have lost the Ark of the Covenant to the Philistines. After defeating the Philistines in battle and regaining the Ark, the prophet Samuel has a stone placed on the road. Samuel names this stone "Ebenezer," which in Hebrew means "Stone of Help." Samuel has this rock erected to remind the people of all God had done to see them through this difficult time. The point for the people is that the memory is meant to instruct their future (see 1 Samuel 6:19-7:17).

In a way, each of those tombstones in that little cemetery in Grassy is an Ebenezer stone. It's one thing to remember to walk the stones and to honor the dead. It's an entirely other thing to allow the memory of our loved ones to instruct our future. I do not want to simply honor my grandma by merely acknowledging she existed; I want to honor her memory by exemplifying her love of hospitality, her warmth, her delicious angel food cake, and her unending, unconditional grace. Her gravestone is not merely a marker in time; it is a reminder of who I come from and who I still could be.

When Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address, he was asked to commemorate the dead who had fallen on that battlefield. Instead, he turned the occasion around and said, "It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced." We remember the dead and we erect tombstones not to simply mark a place in the past; rather, we remember in order that we may learn from and live out the ideals of our loved ones.

The last time I was walking among the graves at McGee Chapel, the words of the hymn "Come thou Fount of Every Blessing" came to me:

"Here I raise my Ebenezer

Hither by thy help I come

And I hope by thy good pleasure

Safely to arrive at home"

I sang those words to myself as I stared at my Grandma Simmons' grave. Then I went home and made an angel food cake.