Still Reasons for Hope!

[The funeral for my Uncle Jim happened yesterday. I was honored to be asked by my Aunt Marge, my father's older sister, to preside. This is the sermon I shared then.]

Isaiah 40:27-31
Romans 8:31-39
Psalm 23
John 11:21-27

Aunt Marge, Danny, Jennifer, Cindy, and all your family members: Alongside Uncle Jim, you’ve been through terribly hard times. In just a short while, you’ve suffered sudden multiple losses after long suffering on the parts of people you loved.

There will be, sadly, hard times yet ahead. The loss of loved ones isn’t something people can just “get over.” In a sense, losing Uncle Jim—who, along with Aunt Marge—presided over a “brood” that included eighteen great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild, is something none of you will ever “get over.”

And why should you? When the ties of love are strong, so is the sadness you feel when the familiar voice and the well-known heart are gone.

But, as the Bible says, we who believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, don’t grieve as people without hope. We have hope. Even today there is hope!

There’s hope, first of all, because the moment Uncle Jim left this life, his suffering ended and he entered a new reality. The words of Isaiah, chapter 40, spoken by God to His chosen people, Israel, through the prophet hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, are for you to hold onto today. "Those who wait for the Lord,” God says, “shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” Through trust in Jesus, we can know that Uncle Jim, denied his health and the ability to walk in this world, is not only walking again, but is running without weariness. He’s once again alive, living in the presence of God.

But this passage from Isaiah is also a promise to you. Uncle Jim’s long illness and the other adversities and tragedies faced by this family have left you depleted and tired. But God will give you strength! The God Who created the universe and died and rose for us, can give you rest and renewal! “Come to Me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,” Jesus says, “and I will give you rest.”

Aunt Marge: When I read the passage from Romans 8 a few moments ago, Ann smiled because I've told her many times that if it isn't read at my own funeral, I'm getting up and reading it myself. I love it so much because it contains another amazing promise, one that underscores this hope that you can have as you move through day to day in the weeks and months to come. Those who trust in Jesus Christ as their God and Savior, it says, can live knowing that nothing “in all creation…will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

God has not forgotten any of you or any of us this morning! That, God says in another place in Isaiah, is impossible: “I will not forget you…I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands.” Even now, God is...

• as close as a prayer, 
• as close as His Word in the Bible, 
• as close as a church fellowship in which we can confess our sins, hear the Gospel, and receive Christ’s body and blood* along with others who, like us, need comfort and hope and strength, 
• as close as a friend or a family member willing to listen, to help, and to pray with you.

But we have hope more than just for this life. In the lesson we read from the Gospel of John, Jesus has gone to a town called Bethany, where a friend of his, a man named Lazarus, had died four days earlier. His sisters, Martha and Mary are beside themselves with grief. When Martha first sees Jesus, she gives words to what many people think when a loved one dies. “Lord, if You had been here,” she says, “my brother would not have died.” Martha feels that Jesus had abandoned her.

Jesus doesn’t bother sparring with Martha; God is big enough to take our accusations and our sense of abandonment. After all, if we get upset with God, it only proves our belief in God because you don’t get upset with a God you don’t believe is there. (Jesus Himself would later have the same feelings as Martha had, when, as He was being executed on the cross, He cried out, “My God, My God, why have Your forsaken Me?”) Instead of being defensive, Jesus told Martha plainly, “Your brother will rise again” and “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me, even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”

Then Jesus asks Martha a question that He asks us again this morning: “Do you believe this?” Martha said that she did. Without any evidence but the credibility and love she saw in Jesus, Martha said that she believed that all who trust in Christ will live again.

Shortly thereafter, Jesus gave a sign that He could be trusted to make good on this promise to those who turn from sin (repent) and believe in Him: He called Lazarus back to life.

Later still, Jesus gave the ultimate sign that we can place all our hope in this promise: He took our punishment for sin on the cross and then was raised from the dead. In Christ, we have the hope of everlasting life with God…alongside all who have trusted in Him.

Now, there’s one last hope that we have this morning. That’s the hope for this life we derive from a good example, like that given to us in so many ways by Uncle Jim.

It’s one of the indelible memories of my growing-up years. Somehow, Uncle Jim and I found ourselves alone in the living room of Pop’s and Grandma’s house in Bellefontaine. Marge and Jim had recently celebrated a wedding anniversary and out of the blue, Uncle Jim told me: “You know, Mark, a lot of people say bad things about marriage. But it is a wonderful thing, especially when you're married to the right person.”

Those words were as much a tribute to you, Aunt Marge, as they are in remembering them now, to Uncle Jim. I have to tell you that, along with the examples of good marriages I saw in my own Mom and Dad and those of other couples I got to see up close, it gave me hope that I too, could one day have a good and happy marriage, with which I am blessed today. I never forgot what Uncle Jim told me!

And today, in addition to the hope that comes from knowing that God is with you and the hope that comes from knowing that God has promised everlasting life to all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus, I want to suggest that you also latch onto the hope that belongs to those who have been inspired by a good example.

Uncle Jim was a good man who loved the Lord, loved his wife, and loved his family. May his example help give us all inspiration to live lives at the end of which people can say similar things about us. Amen

*Until illness and the closure of the congregation of which he and my aunt were long-time members, Uncle Jim regularly assisted the pastor in sharing Holy Communion during worship.

Considering the Patience of God on This 'We Don't Get It' Sunday

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

John 16:12-15
Evangelist Billy Graham tells the story of a teacher who asked his class of fifth graders if they could explain electricity. One student raised his hand. “How would you explain it, Jimmy?” the teacher asked. The kid scratched his head and then answered, “Last night I knew it, but this morning, I’ve forgotten.” The teacher shook his head sadly. He told the class, “What a tragedy. The only person in the world ever to fully understand electricity and now he’s forgotten!”

Today is Holy Trinity Sunday on the Church calendar. Someone has pointed out that this is the only day in the whole Church Year devoted to a theological doctrine. The Trinity is a lot harder to understand than electricity. Anyone who claims to have it all figured out—this truth about the universe having been created, redeemed, and sustained by One God Who is three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—isn’t being honest, especially with themselves.

And it makes sense that we shouldn’t understand everything about God. If we did, we ourselves would be God.

But the word “Trinity” isn’t to be found in the Bible. If that's the case, then why do we Christians make such a fuss over it?

A Princeton professor of religion talked about this once. “There are probably a number of people who imagine that the idea of the Trinity was thought up by ivory-tower theologians who, typically, were making things more complicated than they needed to be and were obscuring the simple faith of regular believers,” the professor said. “In fact, it seems that the process worked pretty much the other way around. Practicing believers and worshipers were driven by their experiences of God's activity to the awareness that God related in several different ways to the creation. ... Thus what these believers came to insist upon was that God had to be recognized as being in different forms of relationship with the creation, in ways at least like different persons, and that all these ways were divine, that is, were of God. Yet there could not be three gods. God, to be the biblical God and the only God of all, had to be one God. This complex and profound faith was then handed over for the theologians to try and make more intelligible. They have been trying ever since.”

The fact is that we could just as easily call Holy Trinity Sunday, We Don’t Get It Sunday. That’s because the doctrine of the Trinity describes a truth that Christians have experienced over the centuries, yet still don’t understand.

But it isn’t the idea of a single being having different roles that’s so mysterious or unfamiliar to us. I am, among other things, a son, a husband, a father, and a pastor, for example. We all have different roles and may relate to each other in multiple ways.

But what we see in the Triune God—three Persons, one God--is something altogether different from that. Thumb through the pages of the Gospels in the New Testament, for example, and you’ll find God the Father affirming Jesus as His beloved Son, the exact image of Himself. You’ll find the Son speaking to the Father, even crying out to Him from the cross, asking why the Father has abandoned Him to bear our sins, sins He never committed. And yet, Jesus said, “The Father and I are One.” And, “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.” “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.” In the Father, we see God fully. In Jesus, we see God fully. Yet they are different persons.

So, where does the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, come in? Jesus talks about Him, the Holy Spirit, in our Gospel lesson for today. It’s just four verses that are part of what’s called Jesus’ farewell discourse. Jesus knows that He’s going to the cross. After that, He’ll rise from the dead and after a period spent with His disciples, He’ll ascend back to the Father. In Old Testament times, God the Father had led His people through the Law and the Prophets. When Jesus was on earth, God related to people in the flesh. But what was to happen to them once Jesus had ascended to heaven? Who would lead people in the truth of this God of grace Who offers everlasting life to all who turn from sin and trust in Christ? Who would relate to believers to help the mature and grow up in their relationship with God? Who would assure believers of the certainty of their hope in Christ when the chips were down, when life got tough, when they faced persecution, disease, death, conflict, temptation?

These issues were on Jesus’ mind when He told the disciples in today’s lesson, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”

One of my favorite movies is Back to the Future, the story of how Marty McFly went in a DeLorean equipped with a flux capacitor, back to his parents’ high school days. In one scene, Marty, played by Michael J. Fox, is invited to sing and play his guitar with a band at the high school dance. Marty starts performing Johnny B. Goode, the Chuck Berry classic, in a style that some people in the 50s, the era Marty is visiting, might have found a little daring, but most would have still thought harmless...at least as he began playing it. But as the song goes on, Marty, this power guitarist from the 80s, can’t help himself. He saunters around the stage like Eddie Van Halen. At first everybody seems to love it. But then he kicks over an amp. He slides across the stage on his knees. Finally, the guitar screeching a single high-note, he notices that the band has stopped playing and that the crowd is just staring at him. Marty stands up, hands the guitar over to the mystified band leader, and tells the crowd, “I guess you’re not ready for that yet…But your kids are gonna love it."

There were certain facts of life with Him, Jesus knew, for which His first followers weren’t yet ready. Until He had gone through the cross, they (and we) couldn’t understand that the call to follow Him means dying to ourselves and to our sins. Until He had risen from the dead, they couldn’t understand that His kingdom wasn’t about giving us the momentary advantages or pleasures of this world, but about the blessings of eternity with God. Nor could they understand how God might call them and their spiritual descendants, like you and me, to change and grow. All of these were truths that Jesus wouldn’t teach them (or us) face-to-face, truths for which God had to make them (and us) ready. “When the Spirit of truth comes,” Jesus says in our Gospel lesson from John, “He will guide you into all the truth.” And then, the Savior Who said that He and the Father are one, goes on to say that the Spirit and He are one as well: “He will not speak on His own…”

The Spirit speaks the same truth spoken by God the Father and God the Son, as we’re ready to hear it. But what does that mean?

Well, here’s an example of how the Spirit speaks truth that no one was ready to hear before Jesus' death and resurrection. To a first century church grappling with whether Gentiles needed to be Jews before becoming Christians, living in a world where men ruled the roost in a patriarchal society, and where at least 25% of the Roman Empire’s population were slaves, Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, probably not fully cognizant himself of the implications of his words, wrote in the book of Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” The Church is still being taught by the Holy Spirit the truth contained in those words. It wasn't until 1970, for example, that we Lutherans in North America caught up to one thing that these words surely meant when we began to ordain women into pastoral ministry.

The Spirit will never teach us anything contrary to what God the Father and God the Son have already revealed to us; God never contradicts Himself. But in these times between Jesus’ ascension and the day He returns to the earth, the Spirit will continue to unfold God’s truth for us so that we understand more deeply what it means to be part of God’s kingdom.

We’ll never fully understand the Trinity. Still, we have experienced how God has, through the centuries, patiently revealed Himself as one God in three Persons.

My Geometry teacher in high school, Mr. Allen, knew how difficult Mathematics was for me. I had flunked Algebra I the year before and had to take it again in the summer. But, intent on going to college, I registered for Mr. Allen’s class. It was tough slogging for me. But Mr. Allen wouldn’t let me give in to my penchant for laziness in subjects that failed to interest me. He would go out of his way to help me understand the lesson at hand. When we got to the unit on the Pythagorean Theorem, I remember him saying to the class, “Mr. Daniels is very knowledgeable when it comes to History. You might be interested in knowing…” And then, Mr. Allen told us a little about the sixth century-BC mathematician Pythagoras who came up with the Pythagorean Theorem. Mr. Allen was trying to hook me and students like me. After he’d explained the theorem and how it worked to us, he would look around the class room for the confused faces. Mine was always among them. So, he’d explain it in a different way. And if we still didn’t get it, he’d choose one of us to come up to the chalkboard to go through things step-by-step. His patience was amazing! And, miracle of miracles, I passed the class!

On this We-Don’t-Get-It Sunday, Holy Trinity Sunday, we can say that through the centuries, first through Israel, then through Jesus, and now through His Holy Spirit, God has patiently revealed Himself to all of us. He’s still revealing Himself to us.

• In the Father, we understand God is our Creator and that God calls us to turn away from sin and toward Him and toward others. 
• In the Son, we understand that when we turn, we can fall trustingly into the arms of Jesus for forgiveness. 
• In the Spirit, we receive new life and the power to move toward becoming the people God made us to be. 

We can never fully explain God. But we have experienced God, Who patiently and repeatedly reveals Himself and His will for our lives: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Amen.