Sermon: Funeral of Joann Lotz - 2018

28 December 2018

Text: John 11:20-27 (Job 19:23-27a, 1 Cor 15:51-57)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Dear Bridget, Brad, Doug, family, friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, and honored guests.  Peace be with you.

Our Old Testament lesson was taken from the Book of Job.  Job was a happy, prosperous man.  He was also devout toward the Lord.  The Book of Job recounts that Satan was mocking God that the only reason Job was so devout is because he was not suffering.  God allowed Job to suffer temporarily to test his faith, and so that Job could prove to everyone – even the devil himself – that his love for the Lord was not just because he was blessed.

And so, without knowing why, Job lost several family members in a tragedy.  He lost his home.  He became ill.  And though he was befuddled, hurt, and at times angry with God, he continued to submit to God’s will.  Even Job’s close friends mocked him, and urged him to give up his faith, for surely God must be punishing him for something.  But this was not true.

In the end, God rewarded Job for his faithfulness by restoring him back double.  From Job, we learn that God’s ways are not our ways, that we don’t know the will of God.  God created the universe, and it isn’t up to us to question Him.  And we know that He loves us and sends a Redeemer to restore us to life even in death.  

The passage we heard in our reading was Job saying: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth.  And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”

This is true comfort in the face of death, dear friends.  “I know that my Redeemer lives.”  We have a Redeemer, one who buys us back from slavery to sin, death, and the devil.  Our Redeemer lives, even though He died on the cross.  We know that He rose again, and indeed, our Redeemer lives.  And Job confessed that He would see God in the flesh, with his eyes.  

Well-meaning people often try to comfort us in our mourning by reminding us that we have our memories, that they are going to send us good thoughts or positive energy, or something equally unhelpful.  But Job’s confession is real comfort – for far from thinking of Joann as a spirit floating around with a harp, or simply remembering her in past memories, we have the promise of a bodily resurrection – just like our Redeemer, who walked out of His own grave.  His disciples saw Him that first Easter with their own eyes, they hugged Him, they heard His voice, and they spoke with Him – in the flesh.  

This promise of bodily resurrection was given to Joann when she was baptized, as St. Paul said: “We were buried therefore with Him by baptism in to death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.  For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.”

That promise is for Joann, and it is for all of us who believe and are baptized, dear friends.  

St. Paul also said that our perishable body will put on the imperishable, and “this mortal body must put on immortality.”  And then “death is swallowed up in victory.”  We can even show contempt to death itself: “O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?”  And we can say this, dear friends, because “God… gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Think about it, dear brothers and sisters: we grieve now, we miss our dear Joann, we are hurting.  But we also know that we will be reunited – not figuratively, not in our memories, not in our imaginations – but physically, in the flesh, in new glorious bodies that are perfect: not worn down by age, not assaulted by illness, not in pain or in suffering, but perfect: just as God created us to be in the Garden of Eden.  

And this is the message of Christmas, dear friends.  For God did not come to us in our imaginations, not figuratively, not as a fictional super-hero.  Jesus is God in the flesh, completely God and completely man.  He really died, and really rose again to rescue us from sin and death.  He continues to come to us in the Holy Communion that we will celebrate: physically, literally (not figuratively) in His true flesh and blood.  Like a transfusion, His body and blood restore us, strengthen our faith, and fortify us, for those times when we, like Job, struggle with the things we cannot understand.  Holy Communion is, as one of the church fathers called it, “the medicine of immortality.”  Joann knew this, and this is why it was my privilege to give her the body and blood of Christ from my own hand.  

We Christians derive comfort from this physical presence of Jesus.  And it is especially helpful when our loved ones die.  Because they are with Jesus, and in this Holy Communion, Jesus is with us.  This Holy Sacrament of the Altar is as physically close that you will get with your departed loved ones until you see them in the flesh, with your own eyes, on the other side of glory.

Jesus came to breathe new life into all of us, who are mortal, we who bear the load of our own sins and the sins of our ancestors.  We need a Savior.  We need a Redeemer.  And we know that our Redeemer lives.  And our Redeemer gave us a preview of the resurrection when He raised Lazarus from the dead by means of His Word.  And just before this resurrection, Jesus told Lazarus’s sister Martha: “Your brother will rise again.”  He meant it.  And He did it.  Martha had faith in the promise of Jesus.  She confessed that faith: “I know he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”  

What our Lord Jesus Christ said to her next is also of infinite comfort to us, dear friends: “I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live.”

Jesus asks us, though Martha, through this Scripture: “Do you believe this?”  And she said to Him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”

Dear friends, we take our comfort in more than fond memories and the well-wishes of others.  We have the ironclad Word of God.  We have the witness of the empty tomb.  We have the reminder of the sign of the cross when we call to mind our baptism, when the Lord placed His name on us with the promise of resurrection and new life.  

No matter what befalls us in this earthly life in this fallen world, Christ is risen, and Joann “will rise again in the resurrection on the last day,” when the Lord calls us all out of our tombs, and we will be reunited in a new heaven and a new earth in new bodies for all eternity.  

And with Job, the faithful one who suffered and was restored, we defiantly say to anyone and everyone: “I know that my Redeemer lives.”  Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.