Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father
and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Dear
family and friends of Russell, our thoughts and prayers go out to you as you
mourn his death. But, Russell wouldn’t
want you to grieve as one who doesn’t have any hope. He would want you to know that he was a
baptized child of God, who was brought into God’s Kingdom through the waters of
Holy Baptism here in this church at St. John Baldwin on Oct. 31st,
1943. On the same day Russell was
baptized he was also confirmed in the Christian faith. The confirmation verse he received that day
was from Psalm 26:8 which says,“8O Lord, I love
the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells.” Why do we love the house of the Lord as
God’s people? Because it’s the place
where we receive the gifts of salvation to free us from sin, death, and the
power of the devil that Jesus freely offers us through His Word and Sacraments
of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The
message from God’s Word today is taken from Psalm 26:8 and 1 Thess. 4:13-18,
it’s entitled, “A Joyful Reunion in the
Lord’s House,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
I
will miss Russell. In my visits with
Russell, he always liked to joke around with me and he would remind me to make
sure that I would keep things short when I shared God’s Word with him. For this reason I’m going to have a short
funeral sermon this morning in his honor.
Russell lived a long and blessed life.
He and his wife Elvera often spoke to me about their experiences on the
family farm, but they also would tell me about the travels they had taken
across the world to Africa, Australia, and other parts of the United
States. Russell was a committed family
man as well, I could tell from all the pictures of their children and
grandchildren that they had in their home.
He loved his wife Elvera, who fell asleep in Jesus a year ago, and he
deeply missed her. As Christians we
grieve with hope because we don’t have to fear death, instead we look forward
to eternal life that we will share with our Lord Jesus and with the saints of
God who have gone before us in the Christian faith. This is what Russell looked forward to: seeing his wife Elvera, his daughter Diane,
but most importantly his Savior Jesus in the glories of heaven. He
looked forward to that joyful reunion with Jesus and his loved ones who died in
the Christian faith in the Lord’s house.
3. We who believe in Jesus Christ
don’t grieve without hope and don’t fear death, because our faith in Christ
assures us of the gift of eternal life. Jesus Himself said this in the best-known
Bible verse of all when He declared, “For
God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him
should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). But, there are those who don’t know of this
hope of eternal life we have through our Savior Jesus. A husband and wife were leaving church after
a funeral service. Squeezing her husband’s arm, the wife whispered, “Honey, how can anyone who doesn’t believe
in Jesus cope with the death of a loved one?” How true! To be separated by
death from a loved one is a frightening experience.
4. That’s why in a world that’s
filled with all sorts of doubts about death and what happens to the body after
death, it’s understandable that hopelessness and insecurity will mark people’s
attitudes toward the deaths of those dear to them. And we as God’s people will not be unaffected
by these attitudes of a world lost in sin.
But, if “we believe that Jesus
died and rose again,” then there’s no reason to grieve over our deceased
loved ones as those without hope. That’s
why the Apostle Paul encouraged the Thessalonians that they might conquer their
grief born out of the hopeless views of an unbelieving world. It’s the same faith in our Savior Jesus that
needs to be firmly established in us to help us bear our grief in the face of
death.
5. St. Paul reminds us in 1
Thessalonians 4 that the death for the child of God is the beginning of an even
better life, and we look forward to a joyful reunion in heaven. He speaks of that day of celebration when he
writes in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17: “The
Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of
an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ
will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up
together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will
always be with the Lord” (vv. 16–17).
Paul tells us that to experience
hope in the midst of grief, we need to believe in the living Jesus. But, how can we believe? Paul tells us in Romans 10:17 that, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing through
the Word of Christ.” Continuing to
hear the Good News of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus will give us that saving
faith we need to have hope in the midst of death. When Jesus’ good friend Lazarus died and his
sisters were grief-stricken, Jesus turned their attention to Himself, “Your brother will rise again… I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though
he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (Luke 11).
6. On this day we mourn the death of
Russell remember the resurrection of our Lord Jesus. That is something the Thessalonians didn’t
do, and it’s something even Jesus’ disciples didn’t do. One would think the disciples would’ve been
waiting at the grave of Jesus on Easter Sunday for him to come out. Instead they went into hiding when they heard
the grave was empty. Though Jesus had
told them he would spend no more than three days in the grave and though they
had visible proof in the resurrection miracles that Jesus had performed in raising
the widow of Nain’s son, Lazarus, and Jairus’ daughter from death, the
disciples were sad and without hope in the moment of Jesus’ death, because they
didn’t anticipate the blessed hope of the resurrection.
7. As the reality of sin and death
is before us this morning let us not forget our blessed hope in Jesus. We have confidence that those who die in
Jesus, like our dear brother in the Christian faith Russell, God will raise
from the dead. Our Lord Jesus will bring
their souls together with their risen bodies to enjoy the happiness of heaven
forever in a joyful reunion in the Lord’s house that will have no end. May our sorrowing hearts be uplifted in this
blessed hope! Prayer; Lord Jesus, our resurrected Savior, teach us to anticipate with
the hope of faith the glorious resurrection of all those who live and die in
you and to look forward to a joyful reunion that will have no end. Amen.
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