+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Dear Lucile and Dee, George and Jeanette, and other gathered family and friends of our beloved Gwen,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Psalm 23 was a part of my last visit with Gwen, and it was her choice for the text on this occasion, as it was the text for George A.’s Committal sermon more than six years ago, and was featured on a wall hanging the family gifted me afterwards. The psalm is much loved, as was Gwen, who was a formidable force, as one Pilgrim member recalled on Sunday, despite her diminutive stature, and she was one who could always make you smile. I also recall her love of animals—such as finales and grand finales of cats—and her watching animal shows, and so Psalm 23 with its depiction of God’s people as sheep and the Lord as their Shepherd is perhaps even more fitting for her. In light of Psalm 23, this afternoon we consider that “The Lord was with Gwen and is with you”.
In the psalm, the shepherd is certainly with the sheep, for example, making them lie down in grassy meadows and leading them beside waters appropriate to drink. By the end of the psalm the shepherd almost seems to have turned into a banquet host, preparing a table, and the sheep turned into honored guests, with anointed heads. In the psalm as a whole, like the shepherd, the Lord is said to provide rest and guidance; protection; food; and fellowship. The Divinely-inspired psalmist King David apparently was drawing on the experience of his youthful days tending his father’s flock, perhaps when considering the Lord’s having delivered him from the threat of David son’s Absolom’s rebellion, still confident that the Lord with His attributes of goodness and mercy would follow him all the days of his life.
Gwen certainly was confident that the Lord was with her and in time would deliver her, too. On one occasion several years ago when I visited Gwen down in Katy, she told me that she had been talking to the Lord, telling Him that she was ready to go. And, when I asked what He had been answering her, she said that He told her that she was going to have to wait, which she did, with all the patience she could muster with God’s help. The last six months with the coronavirus’s complicating Gwen’s healthcare and our access to her, we may have wondered about the Lord’s goodness and mercy following her all the days of her life. What in some sense may be righteous anger over a wrongful separation of a loved one from her family and pastor can all too easily become sinful anger and a sinful unwillingness to forgive things that should be forgiven, even if they qualify as neglect and abuse. For, in the final theological analysis, at least, God in His goodness and mercy permitted what happened, in order to serve His good and merciful purposes, both of her death in this world as the wages of her sin and as the beginning of a new phase of her eternal life given to her freely through faith in Jesus Christ.
As sinners by nature, who as a result of their sinful natures commit countless sins of thought, word, and deed, we all deserve not only death in this world but also the eternal torment of hell, unless we also turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to do better than to keep sinning. God’s patience towards us is in order for us to repent (2 Peter 3:9), though God’s patience and favor could end at any point, so we should repent now while there is still time (confer 2 Corinthians 6:2). When we so repent, then God forgives us. God forgives all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives us for the sake of His Son Jesus Christ, Who graciously invites and so enables us to come to Him for the kind of rest that Psalm 23 describes, in grassy meadows beside still waters now, and in the house of the Lord forever (confer Matthew 11:28-30).
In some sense we must admit that Psalm 23 does not speak explicitly of Jesus as God’s promised Savior, the Anointed One, the Messiah or Christ, though practically speaking the psalm certainly applies to Him, for He perfectly fulfills the psalm. For example, St. John’s Gospel account records Jesus Himself’s saying that He is the Good Shepherd, Who not only lays down His life for the sheep, but Who also takes it back up again (John 10:11, 15, 17‑18). Because Jesus is God in human flesh, His death on the cross atoned for the sins of the whole world, including your sins and mine. Out of God’s great love for us, Jesus died on the cross for us, in our place, the death we otherwise would have deserved. When we repent, then God gives us the righteousness of Jesus’s perfect life for us and the righteousness of His death for us. Faith in Jesus can be said to be the path of righteousness for His Name’s sake, His character and reputation of faithfulness and righteousness. Jesus is Immanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23, citing Isaiah 8:8, 10), present even when only two are gathered together in His Name (Matthew 18:20), present now through His Word and Sacraments, and present always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20).
Another time when I went to visit Gwen at that same facility in Katy, I inadvertently caused a couple of staff members to panic, because they thought pastors visited their sheep only when they were on their death beds, which at that time Gwen was not; the staff members apparently were not used to pastors, under-shepherds of the Good Shepherd, regularly visiting the sheep entrusted to their care. Commentators on Psalm 23 differ both as to whether they think the Shepherd Lord’s rod and staff are one item or two items and as to what they think the rod and staff are or represent. Regardless, the rod and staff can lead us to think of God’s Means of Grace, by which He comforts us with the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Gwen was baptized and confirmed once but regularly received Christ’s Body and Blood in the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper—the last time the evening of April 29, when George B. and Jeanette were taking her from isolation at the hospital back to isolation at the assisted living facility and brought her by Pilgrim, where I had prepared a table on the curb in the parking lot. In such ways as Baptism, Absolution, and the Lord’s Supper, the Lord restored, or “recreated”, Gwen’s soul and restores, or “recreates”, our souls, too.
As I expect that you know, having her family in church with her was very important to Gwen during her lifetime, in part I think because Gwen wanted her family with her in heaven for eternity. Until her transfer to the Church Triumphant last week, Gwen was one of the two longest‑term members of Pilgrim at just more than fifty years (a distinction George B. now holds by himself). Gwen was involved teaching Sunday School and as a member of the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League (the LWML), but most importantly she was there where the Lord, her Shepherd, was present to serve her. The Lord was with Gwen as she walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and now Gwen is with the Lord. “The Lord was with Gwen and is with you”, as you, with repentance and faith, let the Lord be with you. You also can fear no evil. Not the difficulty of grieving the loss from this world of your beloved mother or “Ya-ya”, not the coronavirus, or any other such thing. If you let Him help you, God will get you through whatever He in His wisdom, in His goodness and mercy, permits you to face. Nothing is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:39), and God, Who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, along with Him graciously gives us all things (Romans 8:32). Truly, with the Lord as our Shepherd, we are not in want of anything.
I remember when we committed George A.’s earthly remains to their resting place there was some “gallows humor” about the arrangements in the vault, such as who would be closest to the door, and whose head or feet would be towards whose head or feet. No matter, these arrangements are only temporary. As the Lord was with them, so now George A. and Gwen are with the Lord as souls. On the Last Day, their bodies and all bodies will be raised, and all who believe will meet together in the clouds and follow the Lord to the earth to live together in the presence of the Lord in then-glorified bodies. May that sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the body and the blessed reunion in heaven comfort you who repent and believe in your grief, as you look forward to dwelling with them in the house of the Lord forever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +