18 April 2018
Text: John 10:10b-15,
27-30 (Isa 25:6-9, 1 Cor 15:51-57)
In the name of +
Jesus. Amen.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Dear
Shelia, Cynthia, Judy, family, friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, honored
guests: Peace be with you.
It
was my privilege to be Joan’s pastor for many years, to visit her with the Word
of God and the Holy Sacrament, to pronounce Holy Absolution over her, and to
proclaim the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to her.
This
word “Gospel” is lost on a lot of people.
Either it calls to mind a certain style of music, or some kind of fluffy
religiosity. But that’s not what “Gospel”
literally means. “Gospel” means “good
news.” And in spite of the sadness of
losing a beloved aunt and step-mother and friend, in spite of the normal
mourning that we all do in the passing away of a loved one, I’m here to bring
you good news, dear friends, just as I brought good news to Joan.
It’s
the same Good News that we Christians have been proclaiming for nearly 2,000
years now. Too many people mistakenly
think of the Christian faith as rules and regulations, or some kind of
mythology, or worst of all, just a code word for being nice and inoffensive.
Jesus
was, and is, offensive. He insulted the
self-righteous Pharisees with frank and shocking language. He overturned the tables of the moneychangers
in the Temple. And most offensive of
all, He suffered crucifixion so that unworthy sinners might have everlasting
life: unworthy sinners like me, like Joan, and like you. None of us deserves salvation, and it doesn’t
matter how nice we may seem. There is
nothing more scandalous than the cross of Jesus and the promise of salvation
that it delivers.
Joan
knew this. It’s what Scripture
teaches. It’s what Jesus teaches. It’s what the Church teaches. And this
shocking truth makes the Gospel just that more unbelievably good news.
Jesus
didn’t come so that Joan would live on in our hearts and memories. Jesus didn’t come so that Joan would be a
good person and as a result, “go to heaven.”
Jesus came so that Joan would literally be rescued and raised from
death, just as He literally walked out of His own tomb, was seen and touched by
eyewitnesses, and began a worldwide movement that not even Caesars and Caliphs
and kings could extinguish; not even Communist dictators, Nazi fascists, or
even people in our own country who hate Christianity – can ever destroy. For you cannot destroy the truth.
Jesus
didn’t come so that Joan could become an angel or float around some imaginary
sky as a butterfly. Jesus came for the
sake of true, literal, physical resurrection: His own and Joan’s: “I came that
they may have life, and have it abundantly,” says Jesus, our good
shepherd. “My sheep hear My voice, and I
know them, and they follow Me. I give
them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no-one is able to snatch
them out of My hand.”
This
comforting ironclad promise was made to Joan when she was baptized. This promise was reiterated to Joan each and
every time that she took the body and blood of Christ. This promise to Joan was signed at the cross,
sealed at the baptismal font, and will be delivered on the day of the “resurrection
of the body and the life everlasting.”
Joan
knew all this very well. This was her
confession. It is the confession of the
church catholic, that is, the Church universal, from the days of the apostles
until the day when the Lord returns in glory, when “the trumpet will sound, and
the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed,” as St. Paul
wrote to the ancient church at Corinth. “When
the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality,
then shall come to pass the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in
victory.’ O death, where is your
victory? O death, where is your sting?”
That,
dear friends, is what Christianity is.
Yes, we are hurting. Yes, we are
mourning. Yes we grieve. But we have hope: the hope the resurrection
of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that hope
allows us to mock death, to taunt the devil, and to shockingly claim communion
with God Himself, though we don’t deserve it.
It is a free gift given by grace, given by our crucified Lord, given for
our eternal life.
That
is indeed good news! That is the
Christian faith – the faith Joan confessed, the faith that delivers to her
eternal life in Christ, the reason why I visited her with Word and Sacrament. That promise is Joan’s, and it is hers for
all eternity.
So
many people think of heaven as a kind of Pagan paradise with clouds and spirits
floating around. That is not
Christianity. Our faith teaches
something quite different: something infinitely better. The prophet Isaiah speaks of a physically reconstituted
earth. And “on this mountain the Lord of
hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged
wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined…. He will swallow
up death forever; and the Lord will wipe away tears from all faces… for the
Lord has spoken.”
And
even in our mourning, even in our sadness that we are temporarily separated
from our beloved Joan, in the promise of Christ’s fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy,
we can indeed, “be glad and rejoice in this salvation.”
And
so, dear friends, I challenge you, even in your grief, to take comfort in the
good news, the Gospel, that Jesus died for our sins and rose for our
justification, that He is the good shepherd who has come to give us life –
real, physical life that will have no end.
This victory is Christ’s. This
victory is Joan’s. This victory is ours –
now and even unto eternity! Amen.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
In the name of the Father
and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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