Three Great Gifts from God

[This was shared during the funeral for a friend of ours earlier this week.]

Ecclesiastes 1:1-15
1 Corinthians 15:51-58
John 14:1-4

All of you who mourn Betty’s passing this morning: Today we know for a certainty that Betty wants you—and all of us—to hear the words of Jesus that begin our Gospel lesson. “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in Me.”

We know that Betty wanted you to hear these words because back in 1988, she took the time to do what, in my experience, few people ever do, when she selected the passages of Scripture for possible use at her funeral. So, let Jesus’ words be our theme as we worship God and commit Betty to Him today: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in Me.”

Betty’s love for family—evident in how she and Virgil always made their kids’ and grandkids’ events, among many other ways—shines through in all of the Bible lessons she chose for us today. It was important for her to give a testimony for the Savior in Whom she believed, of course. And you can hear that in these passages. But it was also important to her that she comfort all of you and everyone who loved her with three great gifts from God: realism, joy, and hope!

The realism is supplied by King Solomon in the passage from Ecclesiastes that Betty selected. It begins with the famous words: “For everything, there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven…” And that includes “a time to be born, and a time to die.”

This family knows too well that the time to die Solomon mentions can come tragically soon, as it did for Chad. But you also know that the death of someone you love can come, as it finally did for Betty, as a blessed release. She and Chad and all the saints—all who have trusted in Jesus in this life, are safe in the hands of their Lord…our Lord!

Betty once asked me, “How do people who don’t believe in Jesus face hard things?”

Betty, like many of us, could be a worrier. But she could face all the times mentioned by Solomon—the times to be born and to die, the times to plant and the times to pluck up what is planted—because of Jesus. And the fact is that it is only those with faith in Jesus who can face life and death with realism. We know, as we celebrated just a few weeks ago, that Jesus has conquered sin and death and futility. We can, even in the midst of tears, be filled with joy because we know that while the times of this life will one day come to an end for us, all of our times and all of our eternity are in hands of our risen Lord!

We see joy in all the passages Betty picked, but maybe especially in the reading from 1 Corinthians. There, the apostle Paul assures us that those who have died in the Lord share a great joy: “Listen!” he says, getting our attention, “We will not all die [death is not the end of the road], but we will all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet…the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable…then the saying…will be fulfilled, ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is a victory? Where, O death, is your sting. The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, Who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

There’s joy in this passage, laughter in the knowledge that those who die in Christ rise again. And that seems appropriate because, not only did Betty believe in Christ, she also loved to laugh.

Ann and I have had so many fun times with Betty and Virgil! In the wee hours one Sunday morning, Ann woke me up while I was sleeping over in the parsonage. “Mark,” she said, “there’s a racket going on outside.” I reluctantly decided that I had to do my duty to protect my wife and kids. So, I quickly pulled on some trousers and went downstairs to the front door. There were Betty and Virgil, along with Kae and Kenny, and Larry and Cheryl, singing “Happy Birthday”…almost on key.

Several years later, when we were living in Cincinnati, we were bowling with friends, when we suddenly became aware of two people who were rooting for us. We’d never had fans before. We turned around and there, laughing, were Betty and Virgil.

I will always remember Betty’s laugh. So far as I can remember, she never laughed at anyone. She just enjoyed herself, whether she was rooting on her kids and grandkids or spending time with Virgil and friends at events like wedding receptions. And I know she enjoyed that hole-in-one.

Today, we can be certain that Betty is enjoying herself in the presence of God!

In another place, Paul writes that we who believe in Jesus Christ grieve, but we do not grieve as those without hope. God lets all who follow Christ in on the most wonderful punch line in history. For Betty and for all who believe, death has lost its sting. You can derive joy from that even today…and I know that you do!

Finally, in her selection of Bible lessons for today, Betty also showed that she clearly wanted to share the hope that comes to us from Christ. Our Gospel lesson is part of a long stretch of teaching Jesus shared before His arrest and crucifixion. The disciples sense that things aren’t going to go as they’d previously hoped. Jesus wouldn’t supplant the Romans and establish a government in Jerusalem. He was intent on being exactly what John the Baptist had described Him as being one day at the Jordan River: “the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world.” Jesus addresses their fears and apprehensions. “I’m going to prepare a place for you,” He tells them, “so that where I am, there you may also be.” Just a few verses beyond our lesson, Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

The condition of sin and the reality of death represent threats to every human being. But all who turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ are reconciled to God for all eternity. Jesus is readying places for us now, even as He readied a place for Betty. In Christ, there is infinite hope and that is cause for celebration!

Another Paul (McCartney) sings words that could well speak to all of us about the comfort and the promise of a place in eternity that Jesus Christ gives to those who follow Him:

You lead me to places, that I've never been
Uncovering secrets, that I've never seen
I can rely on you, to guide me through, any situation.
You hold up a sign that reads, follow me… 

Today, in the words Betty has chosen for us, Jesus Christ is saying...

"Do not be troubled.

"Believe in Me.

"Follow Me.

"Be comforted.

"Be filled with joy and hope, even as you face the realities of life.

"And know that, one day, all who have trusted in Me will be together again for eternity. And we will laugh.” 

And to that, all of God’s people can say, “Amen!”

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

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

Facing Life's Uncertainties (Inspired by Wilma, Who Knew How)

[This morning, the funeral and graveside committal services for a member of our Saint Matthew family, Wilma, took place. Wilma was 92 and except for the final two months of her life, was in great physical health. She had some memory loss, but beyond that remained remarkably healthy. 
[The funeral service today had three purposes: to celebrate Wilma's life, to commit her to the hands of God, and most importantly, to proclaim the hope that all who turn from sin and death and turn to Jesus Christ are assured of life forever with God, the good news.]

The Message
This morning, I want to share a few thoughts with you based on what may seem like a strange Biblical text for Wilma’s funeral. But somehow, it seems appropriate to me. It’s Luke 12:16-21, which is Jesus’ famous parable of the rich young fool.

[Jesus says:] “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Except for the past few months, when first, I had some health issues and then, Wilma became ill, I visited with Wilma every month in the past three years.

It took Wilma about a year for her to remember me from visit to visit. Once, she called the church office to say that the appointed time I was to be at her house conflicted with a doctor’s appointment and in talking with my secretary, she referred to me as “that guy.”

A couple of times, though she habitually wrote everything on her calendar, she was caught unaware when I arrived, sitting in her stocking feet, reading, and apologetic for her lack of preparation when I showed up to once more bring her Holy Communion.

Over time, she came to remember me and in fact, on one of our last visits, I was surprised and touched when she threw her arms around me to hug me.

I came to know Wilma as warm and friendly, with a great sense of humor. As I told my wife when I learned of Wilma’s passing, “I really liked her and I always looked forward to our appointments.”

I didn’t know Wilma when she was younger. But like anyone who knew her as an older person, in any given visit, I might have heard the same stories and comments about family and life experiences several times: about her two sons and where they lived; about her extended family in Elyria; about her growing up; about her niece Eloise, who looked after her and provided her with plenty to read; about the difficulty she had in finding people to mow her lawn; about planting her flower beds in the spring and cleaning them out in the fall; about her need to write everything down, including when to take her medicines.

Wilma, in fact, struck me as a disciplined person. I got the impression that even before her memory loss necessitated her taking extra care to keep her life organized, she was always organized. The neatness of her house and its lack of unnecessary furnishings and goo-gobs that most of us acquire in our lifetimes were testimony to this.

But something else struck me about her self-discipline. In Jesus’ parable of the rich young fool, a man thinks that if he disciplines his use of time and saves his money, he will get to a point when he’ll be in control, he will have conquered the world, and he can simply sit back and relax. In a way, this young man deludes himself into believing that he can be his own little god, self-sufficient and invulnerable. No obligations or responsibilities to anyone but himself. We have a term for people like this today: We call them control freaks.

Wilma was no control freak. She laboriously worked out her daily schedule because she didn’t want to be a burden to anyone!

“When I get to where I can’t take care of myself anymore, I’ll go to the Care Center,” she told me many times. And in the hospital little more than a month ago, she said, “I always said when I couldn’t take care of myself, I would go to the Care Center. They might as well send me there now.”

Wilma could be determined when she needed to be; she often talked about how she learned to drive after being widowed. But Wilma was also a realist. Though her willingness to go to the Care Center no doubt had something to do with losing one of her sons, Bob, exactly three months before she suffered a stroke, she also understood, unlike the rich young fool in Jesus’ parable, that we are not in control. We are vulnerable. Life does hit us with unexpected setbacks, even tragedies.

But that doesn’t mean that you stop living! Instead, like Wilma, you live the life that you have been given. You exercise appropriate self-discipline. You take care of the gifts God gives you—whether it’s your health or your house. You live in appreciation for the gifts of brothers and sisters, children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and extended family.

Rare people like Wilma, are ones who, I think, can only be described as ordinary people who, in quiet, unassuming ways, lead extraordinary lives.

That’s because Wilma had something that the rich young fool in Jesus’ parable didn’t have. I don’t mean to paint her as some stained glass saint. You all will know her faults more than I do. (Of course, we all have faults and if anyone thinks they don’t, that’s a big fault in itself!) But I got to know Wilma when life—and the God Who lovingly disciplines His children—had worn off her edges. Adversity has a way of showing the real person beneath the veneer. The masks come off the more vulnerable life renders us. And this is what I saw in Wilma: a person of humble faith in Jesus Christ.

She wasn’t the type to go around advertising her faith. (She wasn’t the type to go around advertising anything, as I experienced her.) But she was always anxious to receive the Body and Blood of our Lord, always anxious to join in with the Order for Confession and Forgiveness, every word of which she knew by heart and recited with me during our visits. In the sense of vulnerability that I know Wilma felt each day, in spite of the physical vigor she enjoyed until the very end, she knew that she needed the God revealed to all in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ. Not barns or baubles, just Jesus. She needed Jesus.

And so do you.

Wilma lived a long life. I think of one her life’s lessons is simple: There is nothing to a life like that of the rich young fool. Nothing in this world lasts. But there is everything to a life lived with Jesus Christ, Who has conquered sin and death and gives eternity with God to all who turn from their sin and entrust their lives to Him.

When you know Jesus Christ, you can face this life with all its uncertainties and unfair twists, you can look forward to the future Christ has secured for all who believe in Him, and you can do it all with a smile on your face, with hope in your heart, and with peace.

May you make knowing Jesus Christ the number one priority of your life so that the blessings of being part of Christ’s new creation can be yours here in this imperfect world and in the perfect world awaiting all who follow Jesus Christ. God bless you.
***********************************************************************************
The other Biblical texts shared at Wilma's funeral were: Proverbs 20:29; Isaiah 46:4; and John 11:17-27.
***********************************************************************************
This bit of doggerel, found among Wilma's papers, was read. The fact that she cut it out and kept it shows something of the humor and humility with which she approached life and fit in well with the Proverbs and Isaiah texts above, which in turn, remember the wisdom God grants to those with gray hair, who are attentive to life's lessons, and recall that God promises to save us even in our old age. The author is the ubiquitous, "Anonymous":

Thought I'd let my doctor check 'cause I didn't feel quite right,
All those aches and pains annoyed me, and I couldn't sleep at night.
He could find no real disorder, but he wouldn't let it rest,
What with Medicare and Blue Cross, it couldn't hurt to do some tests.
To the hospital he sent me, though I didn't feel that bad.
He arranged for them to give me every test that could be had.
I was flouroscoped and cystoscoped, my aging frame displayed,
Stripped upon an ice-cold table, while my gizzards were x-rayed.
I was checked for worms and parasites, for fungus and the crud,
While they pierced me with long needles, taking samples of my blood.
Doctors came to check me over, probed, and pushed, and poked around,
And to make sure that I was living, they wired me up for sound.
They have finally concluded (their results have filled a page),
What I have will some day kill me: My affliction is OLD AGE!

That's essentially what took Wilma's life in the end, old age, and we were blessed to have had her with us. As one of the prayers in our funeral liturgy puts it:

O God of grace and glory, we remember before You today, Wilma. We thank You for giving her to us to know and to love as a companion in our pilgrimage on earth. In Your boundless compassion, console those who mourn. Give them Your aid so that they may see in death the gate to eternal life, that they may continue in their course on earth in confidence until, by Your call, they are reunited with all who have gone before us trusting in Christ as God and Savior; through Your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Tough Faith in a Tough God

[This was shared during the funeral service for Irene, a member of our congregation.]

John 11:17-27
For me, there are two words that will always immediately spring to mind when I think of Irene. Those two words are humor and toughness.

There are other words that come to mind, too; words like cheerful, loving, strong-willed, and faithful. All of them are descriptive of Irene. But her humor and toughness, as a Christian, as a mother and a grandmother, and as a person, are what stand out to me.

She wore her good humor everywhere she went: in the greeting line after worship, in visits friends and family members had at her home, and even during her stays in the hospital. Irene could laugh even when things weren’t going well.

And she was tough! There were many weeks when I would call her, sometimes after she had gotten difficult news about her health or when she wasn't feeling particularly well, and she would tell me, “I’m planning on being in church on Sunday.” "OK, Irene," I would tell her, knowing that she would be as true as her word.

Irene wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of her being in worship on a Sunday morning! She knew that, as we gather to praise God and hear God’s Word in the company of other believers, God gives us the strength—you might even say, the toughness—to face all the good and the bad that life in this world brings.

She knew too that worship with our church family also recharges us with the hope that belongs to all with faith in Jesus Christ. This is one of the reasons God calls us to regular weekly worship and it’s why the Bible tells believers “not to [neglect meeting] together,” because in this habit we encourage one another.

Irene’s faith in Christ was evidenced in her humor and in her toughness and I, for one, was encouraged by her faith!

We meet another tough woman of faith in the Gospel lesson from John, chapter 11, which we read a few moments ago. Martha, along with her sister Mary and brother Lazarus, were friends of Jesus. As our lesson opens, Jesus arrives in His friends’ hometown of Bethany. Lazarus has died four days earlier. Many of the siblings’ other friends had come to comfort Martha and Mary, just as people have done for Irene’s family this morning.

Martha sees Jesus and calls out to Him. Martha’s words indicate anger and disappointment with Jesus. “Lord,” she says, “if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”

There is an impulse when we grieve to feel that God has abandoned us, to question God and His promises. Some time after the events recorded in John 11, even Jesus, God in the flesh, would feel that God the Father had abandoned Him. From the cross, as He neared His own death, Jesus cried out, “Father, why have You forsaken Me?”

Such feelings are normal. Deep in our bones, we know that what the Bible teaches is true; we weren’t made for death, we were made to live! Several translations of an Old Testament passage, Ecclesiastes 3:11, tell us that God has set eternity in human hearts. We know that death is a foreign intruder that exists in this imperfect world, but should not exist in the Kingdom of God that Jesus died and rose to bring to all who believe in Him. Martha experienced the same feelings all people experience when a loved one dies.

Her feelings are made more poignant by the fact that she, her sister, and her brother all believe in Jesus. Even in her anger and disappointment, Martha calls Jesus, “Lord,” a title the use of which indicates that Martha believes that Jesus is more than a carpenter who does some teaching. She sees Jesus as the Master of the universe, as the One Who brings sight to the blind, healing to the paralytic, and new life to the dying.

In our lesson, Martha underscores that, even in the midst of a situation she can’t understand or explain—the death of her brother—she still believes in Jesus. “Even now,” she tells Jesus, “I know that God will give You whatever You ask of Him.”

Later, Jesus tells Martha that He is the resurrection and the life and that all who believe in Him, even if they die in this world, will rise to newness of life. Jesus asks Martha if she believes Him and, in the midst of her grief, with no idea that a few short moments later Jesus will raise Lazarus from the grave, Martha says, “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Messiah, the Son of God, the One coming into the world.”

Folks, this is resilient faith. This is tough faith. It’s the kind of faith that I saw in Irene. It’s the kind of faith I am sure that she wants you to take hold of today.

It’s a faith that acknowledges the realities of this present, imperfect, sinful world in which we live. But it's a faith that trusts that Jesus, the resurrected Lord, is bigger than all our sorrows and that He gives eternity to all who turn from sin and believe in Him.

Today, in spite of sorrow, there is reason for us to be glad.

You see, God is tough too! He went all the way to a cross to bring you forgiveness of sin and everlasting life. It’s to you and me, as much as it was to the people who first heard Him in first-century Judea, that Jesus says, “Repent and believe in the good news.”

That good news is what, even in her sorrow, Martha believed and what, even in her trials and suffering, Irene believed: “God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Trust that God’s love is tough enough to love you wherever you are, whatever you’ve done, however weak and unworthy you may sometimes feel.

God endured the cross just because His love for you is resilient, tough, and uncompromising.

Let Him be your Lord today and in all the days of your life. He will give you the faith—and the humor and the toughness—you need to live each day.

And if you let Him, He will give you exactly what Irene is enjoying at this very moment: new life, life as it was meant to be, life forever in the presence of God! Amen

Beyond the Emptiness

[This was shared during a memorial worship service for the family and friends of a member of Saint Matthew Lutheran in Logan, Ohio. The service occurred in the Saint Matthew sanctuary.]

Romans 8:31-39
John 14:1-6
Several weeks have passed now since Elly’s death. While I know that George, Elly’s extended family, and all her many friends saw Elly’s passing as a release from her suffering, the grief—the sense of an empty place at your table, of an empty place in the studio where bowls were spun, glazed, and fired for Empty Bowls, and of an empty spot at the meetings where hospital auctions were planned—that sense of emptiness is great for all of you today. I too will miss my monthly visits with Elly, where I shared Christ’s body and blood in Holy Communion and God’s Word with her and where, as we got to know one another better and better and we laughed over these past thirty-four months.

When the emptiness of grief comes to us, there are several ways we can react. One way is to take death, futility, and grief as the final words over our lives.

But there is another way. It’s the way commended by Jesus in the lesson from the Gospel of John in the New Testament that we just read. Jesus has been comforting His disciples in anticipation of His cross. All the disciples know with certainty is that in Jerusalem, with the Jewish religious leaders and the Roman government fearful of Jesus, bad things might happen. What good, they might wonder, will Jesus' death bring?

Jesus tells them—and us—not to be troubled. “I go to prepare a place for you,” Jesus says. “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

For the follower of Jesus, that person who repents for sin and bets their whole lives on Jesus Christ, which is what faith is—betting our all on Jesus, futility and emptiness, grief and death do not have control of us. The follower of Jesus lives each day in the certainty that the Savior Who died to erase sin’s power over us and rose from death to give us new life, has prepared places for us in the house of God the Father. We know that, as the other lesson we read, from the New Testament book of Romans, reminds us, “nothing…will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Not death.

Not grief.

Not emptiness.

None of this is to say that trusting in what God has done for us in the death and resurrection of Jesus will make our grief go away. Knowing how the stories of all believers in Jesus end—that places are prepared for them with God--doesn’t mean that we don’t grieve the loss of those we love and care about. Jesus knew that His friend, Lazarus, believed in Him. Jesus knew that as a believer in Him, Lazarus would spend eternity with God. But when Jesus considered Lazarus’ death and how Lazarus was no longer there among his family and friends in the village of Bethany, Jesus still wept.

Grief is real and don’t let anyone ever tell you that Christians shouldn’t grieve.

But for the believer in Jesus, there is more than grief and loss. It’s to underscore this truth that, in the latter part of our lesson from John’s gospel, Jesus says to the disciples, “And you know the way to the place where I am going.”

Thomas though, speaking for people like me—thick of head and slow in the pick-up--asks Jesus honestly, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Thomas is so overwhelmed by grief, loss, and fear, that he can’t see what he has already seen and experienced.

Thomas already knew that Jesus was God in the flesh. He already knew from the many signs Jesus had performed, that Jesus had power over death and life. But Thomas was afraid that, without Jesus right there physically present to him, he would lose his way, that all the sorrows and sins of life would overwhelm Him.

It’s then that Jesus tells Thomas words that I hope all of you can claim for yourselves this morning. When you’ve lost your way. When all of life seems vain and pointless. When grief grips you and sadness threatens to morph into despair, recall Jesus’ words: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Jesus, the crucified Lord, reclaimed life…not just for Himself, but for all who believe in Him.

Jesus is the only way to the Father and those who follow Him, even when they grieve, are never without hope!

In a way, the empty bowls that Elly made and helped others to make each year stand as a fitting symbol for us today. For the person who is hungry, there is nothing more daunting or frightening than an empty bowl they can’t fill on their own. But Hocking County’s Empty Bowls events take that symbol of defeat, emptiness, and death and turns it on its head.

The empty bowls that Elly and so many of you here this morning have made, sold, and bought through the years have helped to fill the bowls and the bellies of many people, giving them the power to go another day and the hope to keep waking up the next day. Those empty bowls thus became a symbol of hope, love, and community for the hungry.

Today, you and I gather in the bright, illuminating shadow of another symbol turned on its head. In the ancient Roman Empire, crosses were reserved for the worst enemies of the state. Execution on the cross was a horrible way to die and there was no possible reprieve from death for the criminals nailed to them. But Jesus’ mission of love and mercy could not be stopped even by death on a cross. After the seeming defeat of the cross, Jesus, as I've said many times before, would not stay dead. His resurrection turned an instrument of death and a sign of hopelessness, the cross, into a symbol of God’s deathless love.

This morning, we grieve. But we also have hope. The Savior sought by Elly every time she reached out her hands to take the bread and the wine of Holy Communion, has prepared a place for you.

All who believe in Jesus will be united with God and with all who have trusted in Christ in eternity. Our tears will be wiped away. Our griefs erased. And our emptiness filled with an eternity of joy and laughter. Even today, we have so much to look forward to.

God bless you!

Crazy Newz: Husband's Coffin Killed His Wife

This must be the craziest newz of this year.Who would have thought that the lady herself would be killed when she was going for her own husband's funeral?Well it has happened accidentally.

A women in Brazil, on Moday,died on the way to a cemetery when a traffic accident caused her husband's coffin to fly at her neck.The 67-year old Marciana Silva Barcelos, was in the front passenger seat of the hearse carrying her husband's coffin.She died right on the spot.Marciana's 76-year-old husband, Josi, died Sunday of a heart attack while dancing at a party.Looks like her husband didn't want to leave this world alone!We al hope that they both are now dancing together on a big, fluffy cloud up in the heavens.

Although it's crazy but besides it's also sad.We should all pray for them.