Tributes

by Zenos Hawkinson and Glen Wiberg

“Singing together,” Nyvall used to say, “is tuning the congregation for worship.” Others have reported that, if you wanted to be in tune, singing the right note on the right page, you stood next to J. Irving. His confident and joyful voice would carry you through the music itself, and thence, to the worship for which the music itself was servant. He was a man who lived for music as the servant of worship.

But he was a man, and mortal, even though he has been for so long one of the landmarks of our common life. He died, peacefully but suddenly, on December 11th, two weeks before Julotta! At his memorial services, in his childhood church at Stambaugh, Michigan and again at North Park Covenant in Chicago, Karl Olsson quoted Edwin Markham: “as when a lordly cedar, green with boughs, goes down with a loud shout upon the hills, and leaves a lonesome place against the sky.” Glen Wiberg, preaching from the Revelation of St. John, affirmed that “Irving is in the choir, singing a new song to the Lamb.”

Irving was a quiet man, not inclined to push himself forward. Part of all that was his shy Swedishness, coming from growing up in a loving family in the Upper Peninsula, where he breathed a Covenant Pietism in the clean air — a pietism for which he was an advocate all his life. In his own statement of pilgrimage (The Covenant Companion, July, 1992), he said that he had never felt apart from “the union of souls redeemed and free.” And that, as it turned out, liberated him to a full-souled appreciation for singing Christians in all times and places.

I have prayed with Synesius, Bishop of Cyrene (fifth century), sung with Isaac Watts of the eighteenth century, and been encouraged by Luther and other hymnists of the Reformation. And I have lived through the revival in Sweden, where the Covenant had its beginnings, with Anders Rutström, Carl Rosenius, Oscar Ahnfelt, Lina Sandell, Joel Bloomqvist, Nils Frykman, et al.

He served his pastoral internship in Seattle and, after he had persuaded the lively Myrtle Hulting of old Austin Covenant in Chicago to marry him, served two senior pastorates, in Wiley Heights, Washington and Glen Ellyn, Illinois. They signed on together for a more than a quarter century of pastoral/ chaplaincy/library service at North Park College and Theological Seminary, while in the meantime Irving took a degree in English Literature at Wheaton College and a Library Science Masters at Rosary. These streams of living water gradually flowed together in his life to focus on hymnology, the issue of which is to be found in two books (both published by Covenant Publications), Twice-Born Hymns (1976) and Sing it Again (1985), and in long service to the Covenant’s Commission on Church Music and Worship.

Not two weeks before his death, I wrote him to inquire whether a particular Swedish summer psalm had been translated. His answer was prompt and accurate, confirming once again the wisdom of the advice: “If it’s about hymnody, ask Irving.” He was a weighty critic of new “stuff,” the kind of church music frothed with Saturday night inspirations and lacking in the kind of quality in both word and music a seasoned Christian must bring to the praise of the Lamb. But Irving was no snob; he measured both old and new with an impeccable taste, loving the best of the old and searching for the best of the new. We are not without resources. This person and that person can fill in. But Irving, in his uniqueness, we cannot replace. He became what he was during a long lifetime of faithful service to his Lord. His departure has indeed left "a lonesome place against the sky.” Peace to the memory of this good man.

— Zenos Hawkinson

Excepts from “A New Song,” Memorial Service Sermon, North Park Covenant Church, December 16, 1992

Irving represented a landmark in the Covenant, in its worship and hymnody, a landmark in the sense of marking property lines between past and present so that what he has handed on in terms of inheritance is more than we can even now fully appreciate. He has already assisted the praise of God from one generation to another. And his legacy will continue. The song goes on!

When assaulted by such catastrophic loss (and for our Hymnal Commission as for you the word “catastrophic” best describes our sense of loss) . . . when so assaulted, we are thrown back on the highest and best we know, the most basic, the ultimate things in our faith. So in asking the Lord for some word that I might speak both to comfort you in your loss and ours, and at the same time pay modest tribute to what Irving’s life was about, what he gave and taught us, I am brought back, or better yet, carried forward to the heavenly scene that stands at the end of time brought to that many-tiered choir which gathers voices of men, women, and hymnologists, the countless numbers of the heavenly host from every tongue, tribe, and nation — in one grand, full-throated final crescendo. “And they sing a new song” (Revelation 5:9). ...

If we sing in rehearsal for the New Song, we also sing here and now in foretaste.

Sunday evening after the Song Fest [Hemlandssånger, see Page 10] was over, sitting around our table, Irving said: “Now I don't need to go to heaven. I have already been there!” Rehearsal for the New Song but also foretaste. And now the real thing!

Tonight, in returning to this beloved community, I notice there are a number of empty places in the choir and congregation. Faces I miss. But if we were to take inventory of all the empty places and I were to name one by one the roll call of the departed and say, “Oscar Olson,” I can hear a resounding shout from heaven, "He's in the choir!” Or, “Evelyn Frisk” — “She’s in the choir!” Or, “J. Irving Erickson” — “He’s in the choir.”

Oh yes, he’s in the choir singing the Song of Moses and the Lamb. He’s in the choir where there is no more dissonance, no more death, no more partings, no more tears save tears of joy which the Lord wipes from every eye. He’s in the choir. Are you in the choir? Will we be? “And they sing a new song.”

The Gospel of the Lord.