St. Luke Lutheran Church is a lasting reminder of New Edinburgh’s historic German community. The village east of Bytown founded by a Scotsman, Thomas MacKay, became home to waves of German labourers, the descendants of Prussian serfs, near the end of the nineteenth century. Established in 1915, St. Luke served the local German community. Evidence of the church’s roots are present in the inscriptions that appear in the sanctuary, including Dein Wort ist die Wahrheit, or “Thine Word is the Truth.” Today, Sunday services are entirely in English, although many aspects of the historic church remind us of the German past, including the cornerstone which depicts the original name, St. Lucas Evangelisch-Lutherisch Kirche.
The Reverend Aaron Astley serves as the Pastor of St. Luke Church. During the liturgy, he led the Service of the Word, including readings from Malachi 4, as well as 2 Thessalonians, and a Gospel reading from Luke 21. As Rev. Astley observed, at this point in the liturgical calendar — nearing the last Sunday of the Church year — the End Times are at the heart of the readings. In Luke 21, we read: “While some were speaking of the temple, how it was adorned with noble stones and offerings, [Jesus] said, ‘As for these things that you see, the days will come when there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.'” Jesus warned that the Second Temple in Jerusalem, the holiest site of Judaism and an extraordinary structure, would be turned into rubble. What Jesus’ audience most wanted to know was when this cataclysm would occur and what signs they might expect to know that destruction is imminent.
In his sermon — given from a traditional, elevated pulpit — Rev. Astley noted that Jesus’ warning of the Temple’s destruction came to pass less than four decades after he uttered these words, when the Romans destroyed it during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD. “The temple was the epicentre of the entire nation of Israel and more than that — it was meant to be the epicentre of the entire world,” Rev. Astley observed. “Everything that Israel did revolved around that temple in one way, shape or form. The temple was God’s dwelling place on earth and it was the centre of Israel’s religious, cultural and political life,” he added.
Although we no longer need to ask when the temple would be destroyed, the question that was most on the minds of the Jews who heard Jesus utter these words, it’s reasonable to ask why God would allow this to occur. We hear that the temple would be destroyed, because the people did not know the time of their visitation. “Their God, the one who had promised to dwell in that temple and to be their saviour, He was coming to them, He was coming to visit them, He was literally riding on that donkey into their city. But as John puts it in his gospel, God came to His own people, and they did not receive Him,” Rev. Astley observed. After Jesus’ death on the cross, the temple had become obsolete. Sacrifices were no longer needed, as Jesus himself was the Lamb of God and his sacrificial act was offered up once and for all. Rev. Astley offered this as one of the reasons why God allowed the temple to be destroyed. And finally, another and perhaps the most important reason: Jesus is the living stone. While the temple’s stones were magnificent, they did not rise from the rubble. Jesus did. And we too, as the people of God, are part of His living, spiritual house.
The sermon was the highlight of this liturgy. Rev. Astley is an excellent orator and homilist. He is animated at the right times, engaging, and his cadence is effective and clearly intentional. The hymns, accompanied by a pianist, also focused on the End Times. “Built on the Rock,” a particularly poetic one, included the lines:
“Built on the Rock the Church shall stand
Even when steeples are falling.
Crumbled have spires in every land
Bells still are chiming and calling,
Calling the young and old to rest.
But above all the souls distressed,
Longing for rest everlasting.”
Not any less lyrical was the hymn “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” with the lines:
Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Soon bears us all away;
We fly forgotten as a dream
Dies at the op’ning day.
O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be Thou our guard while troubles last
And our eternal home!
The liturgy included the congregational recitation and prayer of the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Our Father, ending with the New Testament Canticle and the hymn “Wake, Awake for Night is Flying,” from the Lutheran Service Book. After 110 years and demographic transformation in New Edinburgh, St. Luke remains a robust, multi-generational faith community.
Christopher Adam