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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Dear Don, Sharabeth, Sharla, Shana; other members of Beth’s extended family, her friends, fellow members of Pilgrim Lutheran Church, and other fellow mourners,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
As some of you know, among the citations Beth had made note of on the title page of her Bible near where she had written “for my funeral” was “John 14:27”, in which Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (ESV)
Echoing something Jesus had said in the first verse of John chapter 14, Jesus’s words in verse 27, uniquely recorded by the Divinely‑inspired St. John, speak of Jesus’s peace not only for the troubled and fearful hearts of His Twelve disciples on the night when He was betrayed, but Jesus’s words also speak of His peace for our troubled and fearful hearts, especially this day as we lay to rest the earthly remains of our beloved Beth.
Another passage that Beth, on the title page of her Bible, had noted for her funeral had to do with the love God wants us to have for our neighbor. Mark 12:30-31 records Jesus’s quoting the Old Testament in answering a Jewish scribe’s question about the most important commandment: Jesus not only said to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength, but He also said to love your neighbor as yourself. (ESV; confer Deuteronomy 6:4-5; Leviticus 19:18)
Many of us truly have “precious memories” of this sister, wife, mother, foster mother, “aunt”, grandmother, great‑grandmother, sister-in-Christ, and friend who showed such love for us, as neighbors in whom God hides Himself. Yet, as much as she loved us, as much as we loved her and regarded her highly, her body here before us is evidence, if there was any doubt, that she was not without sin, for, as St. Paul writes by Divine inspiration, the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Such death is the consequence not only of Beth’s sinful nature and actual sins, but such death is the consequence also of our sinful natures and actual sins—thoughts, words, and deeds that we should not think, say and do but do, and thoughts words and deeds that we should think, say and do, but do not. Unless the Lord returns first, the day will come when our earthly remains will also so lie lifeless. We may not go as part of a long battle with a debilitating illness facing recommended open-heart surgery, but we may go suddenly, without any warning, which makes our being ready to go, as Beth was, all the more important. And, we are ready, when we live each day in repentance.
Another passage listed near where Beth had written “for my funeral” on the title page of her Bible was 2 Chronicles 7:14, which speaks of God’s enabling call for His people to humble themselves, and pray and seek His face and turn from their wicked ways, in order for God to hear from heaven and forgive their sin. As God so called Beth to humble herself in repentance, so God calls each one of us to humble ourselves in repentance—repentance from our sinful natures and whatever our actual sins might be. When we so turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to do better than to keep on sinning, then God hears from heaven and forgives our sin. God forgives our sinful nature and our actual sins. God forgives all our sin for Jesus’s sake, out of His great mercy, grace, and love.
Indeed, the first of the passages Beth listed for her funeral was 1 John 4:16, where St. John writes by Divine Inspiration, “We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” (ESV) The context of that passage makes clear that we could only come to know and believe the love God has for us as He made that love manifest in sending His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. Love first and foremost is not our love for God, but love first and foremost is God’s love for us, shown in His sending His Son to be the sacrifice that satisfied His righteous wrath over our sin. (1 John 4:9-10) In dying on the cross, sinless Jesus bore all of the punishment that we sinners deserved, namely, eternal death and separation from God.
Jesus Himself was deeply moved in His spirit and greatly troubled when He saw His dear friend Mary and the Jews who had come with her weeping at the tomb of her brother and Jesus’s friend Lazarus (John 11:33). In order for Jesus to be the resurrection and the life (John 11:25), in order for Lazarus, Mary, their sister Martha and each one of us to live eternally, Jesus on the cross won peace for us with God; Jesus on the cross won the “peace on earth” that the angels had declared the night of His birth (Luke 2:14). Twice the night of Jesus’s resurrection, and again a week later, Jesus declared that peace to His disciples and showed them His nail-marked hands and spear-scarred side (John 20:19, 21, 26), which had won them and us that peace with God.
When Jesus said, “My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you” He makes clear that His peace is a Gospel gift, not something we earn in any way by keeping the law. And, Jesus earlier had made clear that the way to not let our hearts to be troubled was to believe in God the Father, Whom we have access to by believing in God the Son (John 14:1), by the working of God the Holy Spirit. When we so believe (or, trust in) the Triune God, we are justified (or, declared and made righteous) by that faith, and so we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1). That peace is not given as the world gives, but the Holy Spirit, the faith He creates, and the forgiveness that results are all given to us through God’s Word in all of its forms, especially in its Sacramental forms.
In Beth’s final hours here on earth, several of us were gathered around her hospital bed sharing memories, including her granddaughters Shelley and Sara’s recalling their favorite salads that their grandmother made for them. I mentioned that several times Beth had sent me home with pieces of pie she had finished and that I even had an empty clean container from one of those gifts sitting on my desk to return to her, but at that point Don said that I should keep it, since he would not be sending me home with pie. As much as I appreciated Beth’s pieces of pie and her and Don’s other offerings and gifts to Pilgrim in thanksgiving for what God continued to give them in Christ, far more important was what I brought to them at their home and in the hospital, even just days before Beth’s death. Beth had all of God’s gifts already in Holy Baptism, and she continued to receive them anew in hearing God’s Word read and preached, in the Holy Absolution I pronounced upon hearing her confession of sins, and in Christ’s Body and Blood that she received under the forms of bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar, which I was privileged to bring them for months that they were unable to come to Pilgrim.
Beth no longer has need of those Means of Grace, for her soul is already living in the presence of God awaiting the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come, but the rest of us do need those Means of Grace. Especially after the loss of a loved one our hearts can be and are troubled and fearful, but Jesus so gives us His peace. Jesus has overcome the world in which we have tribulation, and so in Him we have peace (John 16:33)—the forgiveness of sins and eternal life—already now. Beth has gone before us in the faith, including the knowledge that Jesus “holds tomorrow”. On some “tomorrow”, He will come again or otherwise take us who repent to the “far side of the Jordan”, as it were, and we will have the promised blessed reunion with Beth and all those who have gone before us in the faith, then living forever with them in God’s eternal peace.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +