Hope for the Living

[This was shared during the funeral for Dale, a member of the congregation I serve as pastor, earlier today.]

Psalm 23
Romans 8:31-39
John 11:17-27

Over the past three-and-a-half years, as his pastor, I’ve gotten to know Dale a bit. Because Dale, who was never a talkative man from what I have gleaned, was increasingly silenced by illness in this period, some of what I’ve learned about him has come from others.

One day, for example, while visiting Dee at her house, she showed me a beautiful piece of furniture that Dale made for her dining room. He was a tremendous carpenter!

But his talents weren’t confined to carpentry, of course. Luke used to tell me about how knowledgeable Dale was when it came to anything mechanical or, as Luke would put it, “handy.” (High praise from Luke!)

From everyone—from Dale himself—I also learned how much Dale loved the outdoors. He loved to boat and hike. Were it up to him, I think, Dale really would have kept a “home, home on the range.” (A song he loved to sing.)

In later years, unable to hike or travel, he enjoyed, when the weather allowed, sitting on the deck amid the trees and the chatter of the birds. (I know he appreciated the gift of the “birdie cam” he recently received.)

Dale’s love of nature was also reflected in the home he built on that hill near Lake Logan back in the 1970s. This dwelling did not always meet with Elaine’s approval. As some of you will remember, the first time I visited Dale and Elaine, she commented on their house, “Dale says it’s secluded; I say it’s isolated.”

From that, I learned something else about Dale (and Elaine): whatever differences in their personalities, these two who grew up as classmates in a rural Michigan one-room schoolhouse, were a team. Dale smiled when Elaine said things like that to me. It was the smile of recognition of a “discussion” they had rehearsed countless times before.

Sometimes, Dale’s smiles would turn into laughter that I loved to hear: the breathy, hearty laugh of someone truly tickled.

I came to know Dale also as a man of great intelligence.

And I also experienced Dale as a caring person. When someone was in the hospital, he wanted to know how she or he was doing. He relished telling me how things were going with Sandy’s and Perry’s lives and work and with his grandchildren. He enjoyed it when neighbor Butch brought his own granddaughter Isabelle, a young ball of energy, along for visits. After I had a heart attack last summer, I mentioned that the church council was after me to take it easier; Dale fixed me with a stare and asked bluntly, “Are you doing it?”

On top of all this, Dale was a man of quiet faith. He was always anxious to receive Holy Communion during our visits. Even when it had become a struggle for him to move his hand to his lips, he determinedly ate the bread and drank the wine that are Christ’s body and blood. And no one ever more sincerely thanked me for bringing the Sacrament to him.

Dale was truly grateful for the grace and love of God, whether he saw it in the meticulously engineered beauty of the created world or in the gift of Jesus on a cross, Whose death and resurrection brings eternal life to all who turn from sin and believe in Him.

And it is to this I want to point all of you who grieve Dale’s passing today. At one level, Dale’s death brings a story to a close. With that, there will be, understandably, some sense of relief. Dale had suffered from multiple maladies over an extended period of time. His suffering is ended. But his death is a sad ending for all of you, too: A father, a grandfather, a friend, a strong presence, is gone.

But you can take heart. You can have hope. Dale’s passing is also a beginning. The Gospel lesson from John which I read a few moments ago tells the story of what happened one day when Jesus went to Bethany, the hometown of friends: two sisters and a brother named Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.

The sisters and the whole town are grieving when Jesus arrives. Lazarus was dead. At first, Martha seems to lash out at Jesus. "Lord,” she says, “if You had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.”

But to Martha in her grief and her confusion, Jesus says, “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.” He then asks Martha to trust those assertions. Jesus asks her to believe them, to believe in Him.

Jesus asks the same thing of you this morning. You see, if the promise that Jesus makes to share His Easter victory over sin and death isn’t true today, it isn’t true. It is precisely for moments like these that Jesus makes His promise to be the resurrection and the life!

And our faith in Jesus’ resurrection promise isn’t just a hope whispered against the grim realities of life. After telling Martha that all who believe in Him will live with God forever, Jesus gave a sign of His capacity to make good on His promises. He stood at the place where Lazarus' body had been placed some four days before and commanded his friend’s dead bones to come back to life on this side of eternity. The voice of Jesus, God in the flesh, spoke with the same voice as the One Who called the heavens and the earth to life in the first place. In response to the command from that voice, Lazarus stepped out of his tomb, back into the embrace of his family.

Of course, Jesus would, shortly after the events at Bethany, give an even more emphatic sign of His authority over life and death and sin. After bearing the weight of all the sin of human history—including your sin and my sin—on the cross, though Himself sinlessness, Jesus rose to life again. The Bible says of the crucified and risen Jesus: “God raised Him up, having freed Him from death, because it was impossible for Him to be held in its power.”

Fortunately, God recognizes how hard it is for us to believe such good news, especially on days like these. That’s why He sends the Holy Spirit to any of us who want to believe. If we will pray to the God the Father in the Name of Jesus, the Holy Spirit will help us to believe in the same Lord so welcomed by Dale every time he gratefully received the Lord’s Supper and listened to God's Word...the same Lord he so reverenced every time he joined the Saint Matthew family for worship over the radio on Sunday mornings.

In the days and years ahead, you will miss Dale, just as you have missed Elaine. Grief is natural and understandable when the love runs deep and the memories are piled high.

But those who follow the risen Jesus don’t grieve like others do. We have hope. We belong to a Savior Who rose on Easter.

Because of Jesus, Dale will rise too. So will all who believe in Jesus.

May God fill you with this hope and the peace that comes from it in the days ahead…and through all the days of your lives. Amen

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.

Remember

[This was shared during the funeral for Dorothy, a lifelong member of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church, earlier today.]

Romans 8:31-39
Psalm 23
Luke 12:22-31
There are really only two legacies any of us ever leave behind, only two things we can give others that last.

One is love. The love that Dorothy bestowed on and shared with her family and friends didn’t end on Tuesday. The urgent desire of her family to be with her even in her final hours as she slept and occasionally fluttered her eyes is testimony to the love that was her gift to you, a gift you still possess and always will.

The only other enduring legacy we can bestow on others is our personal testimony about the truth of Jesus Christ. It’s a testimony we can give every day of our lives in words and actions.

The most powerful testimonies don’t usually come from people called to climb into pulpits and proclaim God’s Word. They more often come from people we see regularly, people who live their faith in the everyday places of life.

These testimonies can even come from grandmas who tell their grandchildren as they face new challenges and temptations in life, “Don’t forget who you are.” That, I’m told is something Dorothy sometimes told you, Ben and Sarah.

It seems to me that there are several ways you could have heard that simple admonition.

First, you could have heard it as a reminder of who you are in the eyes of God. Like your grandmother before you, you were baptized at the Saint Matthew Lutheran Church baptismal font. Water was poured over your head in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Word of God was invoked, and, without any qualifications or merit on your parts, God claimed you as His own.

The title “child of God” is a privilege that, again, like your grandmother before you, you claimed as your own when you affirmed your baptismal covenant at the time of your confirmation. First John 3:1 says, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”

Today, I invite you to remember, Ben and Sarah, and all who mourn Dorothy’s passing, that being a child of God is a tremendous privilege. When we children of God grieve, the God Who conquered death (and sin and futility in our lives) through the death and resurrection of Jesus, can be beside us. When we wander from God’s will, as we are all prone to do, God is ready and willing to welcome us into His embrace. When we rejoice, God rejoices with us. Remember who you are.

Of course, there’s another side of that admonition. It was no doubt what Dorothy immediately had in mind when she said it to her grandchildren. Remember that you were raised in a Christian home. Remember God’s commandments. Remember the love and respect you are expected to bear toward not just family members and people you like, but toward those you dislike or those who dislike you, toward strangers. Remember God’s grace and that it is, as we sang a few moments ago, amazing.

But remember too that God’s grace isn’t cheap. To give you His presence today and His promise of tomorrow cost Jesus Christ His life on the cross and that came after He underwent intense agony and the abandonment of His friends.

The very least we owe God in response to this free gift of everlasting life for all who believe in Christ are lives of obedience and love and daily repentance, lives in which we seek, however imperfectly, to tell God thank You and to display His presence in our lives.

Remember who you are.  Dorothy has left you with powerful legacies: love, the great way of living, and the good news of new life through Jesus Christ.

But today, I want to add something to Dorothy’s admonition. Remember who you are, to be sure. But also, remember who she was. Some of who she was comes through in two of the Bible passages we’ve read today, passages I’m told were among her favorites.

One is Psalm 23. In it, the psalmist, speaking as a child of God, proclaims confidently, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for His Name’s sake.”

Because of the heart God has revealed He has for us through Jesus Christ, we can cling to these confident words. As children of God, we can trust, as our lesson from Romans reminds us, that nothing…nothing…in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Another of Dorothy’s favorite passages is found in Luke 12, where Jesus said, “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” And then Jesus says, “If God so clothes the grass of the field…alive today and tomorrow is thrown in the oven, how much more will He clothe you—you of little faith.”

Martin Luther, the great reformer of the sixteenth century, used to talk about what it will be like when we all come into the presence of God for judgment. Considering all the passages of Scripture that speak of judgment, Luther says that God will look upon two groups of sinners, the whole human race in one of these two groups.

When God looks on one group, they’ll stand naked in their sins, living in the separation from God and self-will they chose while living here on earth.

But when God looks on the other group, He won’t see their sins—though they will be just as numerous and horrible as those committed by those in the first group.

Instead, in this latter group, God will see people clothed in Jesus, people who, in this life, claimed their baptismal heritage and trusted in Jesus for life and hope and peace even in life’s dark valleys.

When Dorothy came into the immediate presence of God on Tuesday morning, she was clothed as she had always been in the righteousness of Jesus. We do a lot of unnecessary toiling and spinning in life. But all we need is Jesus Christ!. Dorothy knew that. She was a child of God. That’s who she was. And that’s why I’m confident that when God met her at 6:30AM on Tuesday morning, the Lord said to her, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Father.”

I didn’t get to know Dorothy the way I would have had I arrived at Saint Matthew years before. But despite dementia, something of her essential self came through in our monthly visits. And much of who she was can be seen in the rich legacies of love and faith she bestowed on her family. That’s why today I know that Dorothy wants all those who are here this morning to one day hear those same words—“Well done, good and faithful servant!”—from God.

And we can hear them, joining her and all the saints in eternity, if we will simply remember who we are as children of God, saved by the death and resurrection of Jesus and our faith in Him.

And whenever you need inspiration, remember who Dorothy was.

If you can commit yourself to remember these two things in all the days that lie ahead in your lives, no matter what, your joy will be full and you will never go wrong. Amen