Throwback Thursday: Stunned, Humbled, Honored
Note: This is Dr. Eckardt’s reaction to being surprised with a festschrift in his honor in 2021. It is entitled Leitourgiae Propria Adiaphoria Non Est: Essays in Honor of the Rev. Dr. Burnell F. Eckardt on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday. It is available here for $20. ~ Ed.
When the editors surprised me with the presentation of a festschrift on Monday night of the Gottesdienst conference in Fort Wayne, I was as stunned as I appeared to be. Totally caught off-guard. And indeed, so stunned that I mumbled to the crowd: “As the cowardly lion said, ‘Shucks, folks, I’m speechless.’” Pretty literally (here’s the video, if you don’t believe me). I had no time or forethought to say much of anything.
But now I can, and want to, if I may.
As a postscript, Leitourgiae is a peer-reviewed publication, and contains essays on a broad range of topics by Gottesdienst editors and contributors, as well as one of Dr. Eckardt’s professors who served on his dissertation board. These include:
Fr. Ben Ball: “In Gratitude for Fritz”
Dr. David Scaer: “Finding the Starting Point: Inspiration, Justification, or Historical Criticism”
Dr. David Petersen: “The Gospel Requires an Imaginative Reading of Scripture”
Dr. Arthur Just: “Confident Liturgy: Presiding with Hospitality and Grace”
Fr. Mark Braden: “Luther’s Liturgical Legacy”
Dr. Richard Stuckwisch: “Our Father and the Eucharist”
Dr. Wanda Zemler-Cizewski: “Rupert of Deutz on Nature, Sin, and the Mutability of Creation in Genesis 1 to 3”
Fr. Heath Curtis: “Jesus’ Allegory of the Good Samaritan and its Two-Fold Audience, Purpose, and Interpretation”
Dr. John Stephenson: “A Voice Retrieved from the Past with a Powerful Message for the Future”
Fr. William Weedon: “We Do Not Favor Aerius Either”
Fr. Peter Berg: “The Cultus of Israel, Sign, and Paradigm”
Fr. Larry Beane: “Liturgicals, Pietists, and the Kingdom of the Left”
Dr. Karl Fabrizius: “All the Righteous Blood: Swimming in the Scriptural Stream”
Fr. Jonathan Shaw: “Do This in Remembrance of Me: Who’s Remembering Whom?”
It is available for purchase here.