+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Dear Domingo, Lillian, Christina, Lindie, Christi, Julian, Phoenix, and other family-members and friends of our sister in Christ, Emily,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed. Alelluia!)
This past Saturday I had the privilege of being at the hospital in Tyler when Emily came to the end of what today’s Psalm (Psalm 23:1-6; antiphon: v.4) termed “the valley of the shadow of death”, and when she drew her last, what our Hymn of the Day (Lutheran Service Book 761) called, “fleeting breath” and her “eyelids close[d] in death”. Christina, Lindie, Phoenix, and I sang for her then all three of her favorite hymns that we are singing today in her Funeral Service. They also shared with Emily and with me some of their favorite memories of her, including one from about three years ago—you may when a wrong turn extended a one-mile hike into a four-mile hike, up hill and down hill, and Emily seemed to hold up better than people who were considerably younger than she was.
That hike, hymn, and Psalm all came back to my mind this past Sunday, as Emily’s family and I considered which passages of Holy Scripture to include in various ways today in this Funeral Service—passages that included the five verses from Isaiah chapter 40 that I read just a few moments ago, with their mention of people’s fainting and being weary, contrasted with the Lord’s giving power to the faint and increasing the strength of those who have no might, so that they soar on wings like eagles, run and not grow weary, walk and not be faint. In short, the Divinely-inspired prophet Isaiah told those Israelites captive in Babylon, who thought that God had disregarded them, that they would be strengthened by His deliverance.
After weeks of struggling, Emily certainly seemed to lack the strength that she needed to beat the coronavirus, and prayers for her deliverance may have seemed to go unanswered. We can easily imagine how she might have felt isolated in the hospital with family kept away. Likewise now, those who are grieving her loss from this world might wrongly think that God is unaware of their day-to-day situations, or they might wrongly think that God is not fulfilling His promises to them, that those promises are meaningless, a complaint that ultimately flows from a lack of faith. As the Divinely-inspired prophet Isaiah told the captive Israelites, so he tells us, that the Lord’s understanding is unsearchable, His plans unfold in ways that we cannot even imagine.
I was told that Emily enjoyed the beauty of flowers and gardens, though not necessarily working on or in them. Certainly she understood what Isaiah described earlier in chapter 40 (Isaiah 40:6-8), how the beauty of the flower fades when the Lord blows on it, likening the fading flower and withering grass of the field to people whose lives come to an end. The author of the Epistle of James similarly likens human life to a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes (James 4:14). God created humankind to live forever, but the first man and woman’s fall into sin changed that, both for them and for all of us. Emily’s earthly remains before us this day are a reminder that she was a sinner, and they are a reminder of what is coming for each and every one of us, on account of our sinful natures and all of our actual sin.
We deserve both death here in time and eternal torment in hell, unless, as God enables us, we turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to do better than to keep sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives us. God forgives our sinful nature and our actual sin. God forgives all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives our sin for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
God neither disregards us as we might wrongly think that He does, nor does God disregard us as we rightly deserve. Rather, God delivers us and so strengthens us. If we do not know from personal experience, then we certainly know of His deliverance from His Divine revelation. God showed His love for the world and for each one of us by sending His only Son into the world, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, in order to save the world. God’s plans unfold in ways that we could never imagine! On the cross, Jesus, Who had kept the law perfectly, died in our place, the death that we deserved, on account of our sin. Jesus was disregarded, forsaken, so that we are not. Neither God the Father in the Old Testament, nor God the Son in the New Testament, “fainted” or “grew weary”. They have infinite and unchanging energy! The Creator of the ends of the earth and the Redeemer of the world and the Holy Spirit, Who leads us to apply the benefits of Jesus’s death to ourselves, do not run out of nourishment or become exhausted. But, They are able to give power to the faint and increase the strength of those who have no might, and they do so through their Means of Grace.
Emily’s immediate family recalls—and others of you may recall, too—how she would gather and then give little gifts, and occasionally I also would be the recipient of her generosity, as before I would leave for vacation she would slip me a little cash and tell me to buy my mom a cup of coffee as my mom and I travelled together. Emily imitated well the generous giving of gifts of her Heavenly Father, Who not only gives forgiveness through His read and preached Word to groups such as this but Who also applies His Gospel to individuals through Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and the Sacrament of the Altar. Prior to the pandemic, Emily regularly received, from the altar at Pilgrim Lutheran Church in Kilgore, bread that was Christ’s Body given for her and wine that was Christ’s Blood shed for her, and, as she received Him, she would always whisper “Thank you, Jesus!” She knew that she was receiving the forgiveness of her sins, and so also eternal life, and salvation, and she was grateful for those generous gifts.
In talking with me, one of the members of St. Paul Lutheran Church here in Big Spring recalled Emily as one of the “saintliest Christians” she knew. Emily was not perfect, of course, but she was forgiven, and she was forgiven not by her good works but by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, which faith saved her and then led her to do good works. God did not disregard Emily but fulfilled the promises He made to her in her baptism, and God did not leave prayers for her deliverance unanswered, but He answered them—including the petition in the “Lord’s Prayer” (or, the “Our Father”) to deliver her from evil—by taking her from this valley of sorrows to Himself in heaven, where even now she is alive with Him. God likewise does not disregard us or leave our prayers unanswered but acts in the times and in the ways that He knows to be best. As we heard in the First Reading (2 Corinthians 5:1-10), we walk by faith and not by sight. And, as Paul exhorted us to do in the Epistle Reading (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18), we grieve but not as others do who lack the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the body and the blessed reunion in heaven, which in the Gospel Reading (John 5:24-29) we heard Jesus Himself promise.
Like the captive Israelites before us, neither Emily nor we are disregarded, but we are strengthened. We wait for (or, “hope in”) the Lord with daily repentance and faith, and so we live in His forgiveness of sins. Emily has had her last big adventurous trip, but, in one way or another, all who believe similarly will be making it. The Lord will accomplish His purposes for us: our mounting up like eagles, running, or simply walking. But, thinking about both how much Emily loved to dance and what the Bible says about dancing, we can say that our mourning will be turned to dancing (Psalm 30:11; Ecclesiastes 3:4) and that we who also repent and believe can look forward to dancing with Emily, in praise of the Lord, for eternity (Exodus 15:20; 2 Samuel 6:14; Psalm 149:3; 150:4).
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed. Alelluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +