“Saint Stanley”

by Pastor Wade

“To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours…”    1 Corinthians 1.2

I had coffee in Ulen last month in celebration of the feast of St. Stanley.  Never heard of St. Stanley?  Well, they have in Ulen.  And no, he didn’t drive the grasshoppers from Norman County or lift a staff high overhead to halt the rising flood waters of the Wild Rice River.  Stanley Lunde lived a pretty regular life, birth to death in that little farming community between Hitterdal and Twin Valley…which is what most saints do…live normal lives of faith and service.  According to “Saint” Paul in his letter to the church in Corinth, saints are not those who do spectacular or heroic deeds for God, and later reside in stained glass windows, but rather those who are “saints” through faith in Jesus.  They are those who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and are therefore “sanctified” (set apart) as the chose ones of Almighty God.  They are those who, in the words of Martin Luther, “quietly do their jobs, tend their children, run the farms, fix shoes, cut hair and teach the children.”  They are the ones we celebrated last week on All Saints Sunday…the saints who have turned our eyes toward Jesus.
Saint Stanley farmed and ran a green house and working at the Co-op Elevator.  He loved his wife and raised five children and worshipped at Bethlehem.  In so doing his quiet witness touched countless lives.  Whether in leading a church committee or pulling a neighbor out of a snow bank or saying prayers around the table with his wife and children, St. Stanley gave witness to the love of Christ and his trust in Christ’s spirit leading him sustaining him through joy and sorrow, in this life and toward the next.

Not that I knew all this before attending the feast day (actually it was a funeral lunch in the basement of Bethlehem Lutheran - scalloped potatoes and macaroni salad and jello), but I heard it clearly in the stories told and in fullness of the community gathered for this 90 year-old saint, in the joyful songs of his family as they stood together 25 strong in the chancel to sing two songs of hope for Dad and Grandpa.  And I knew it because his family, so influenced by his faithfulness has also touched me and and my family.  Ann Shane and her family, Al Lunde and his family, Connie Lunde and her family have all been a part of the community here at First Lutheran in Detroit Lakes and encouraged my faith and the faith of my children.  The faith in Jesus they received from Saint Stanley has been passed on again and again and again.

And I thought – as I heard their stories of Dad and Grandpa…and as I sat drinking coffee with three pastor friends in the basement who had also come because they had been touched by Saint Stanley and his family – I thought, “I hope that this is what my family will remember of me (and of you):  He loved Jesus; he loved us; he loved the earth and the people of our community.”  And because he loved…we love.  What could be more “saintlike”…more like Jesus?

Thanking God for the saints…thanking God for you,

Pastor Wade

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