Sermon: Funeral of Patricia Stoltz – 2023

1 May 2023

Text: John 10:10b-15, 27-30 (Job 19:23-27a, 1 Cor 15:51-57)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Dear Robert, Bryan, Lori, and Jason, dear Bessie, Joan, and Beckie, family, friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, and honored guests, Peace be with you.

It was my privilege to serve as Patricia’s pastor for eighteen years.  She received the Lord’s body and blood from me hundreds of times, and thousands of times from the pastors who came before me.  She heard the Good News of Jesus Christ again and again in this very sanctuary.  In fact, she was baptized right here, when this building was new, and right here in this very font, given the new birth by water and the Holy Spirit by Pastor Eugene Schmid, seventy-two years ago.  She took the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist for the first time sixty years ago when she was confirmed, also by Pastor Schmid, with the verse: “But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us all from sin.”  And in the last few days of Pat’s life on this side of glory, I brought her the Good News of Jesus Christ, and His body and blood, as she was unable to come to church any more.

Patricia was prepared and ready to leave this life of sorrow and pain, this vale of tears, to enter eternity victoriously with her Lord, according to His Word and promise. 

For although pastors of Salem brought Word and Sacrament to Patricia over the course of 72 years, her real pastor is Jesus.  For the word “pastor” means “shepherd.”  We pastors are simply servants of Jesus, the Good Shepherd.  For hear these comforting words of our Lord once more, dear friends: “I am the Good Shepherd.” “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” “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 will snatch them out of My hand.”

Jesus has shepherded Patricia to the still waters and green pastures of eternity.  She now waits for the “resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” And when her body is reunited with her spirit on the Last Day, according to the promise of Patricia’s Good Shepherd, her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, she will have a body that is not suffering.  For Patricia heard the Word of God and took Holy Communion in faith, hearing and believing the promise – the promise that she would be shepherded by God Himself.  And so she has been, dear friends!

Many times in this sanctuary, Patricia sang the hymn that we will sing again together today: “I Know That My Redeemer Lives.”  This is a quote from our Old Testament reading from the Book of Job, and this is specifically an Easter hymn: celebrating the bodily resurrection that we Christians confess.  As Job confessed so many thousands of years ago: “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.”

Patricia confesses this promise in heaven, dear friends, as we await our eternal reunion, as we all wait for the resurrection, as Jesus promised.  This faith is why, week after week, year after year, Patricia came to this holy sanctuary with her mother and sat right there in the back, on this side, as permanent a fixture here as the baptismal font where she was born again, hearing this promise again and again, and taking the Lord’s body and blood, even when her aching body could no longer come forward and kneel.  Jesus, her Good Shepherd, fed her where she stood.  And I shepherded her and gave her Jesus according to His command and His mercy, dear friends, even when she was no longer able to return here.

This is how it is that we are saddened to lose Patricia in this life, that we mourn her loss, that we can grieve – as well we should.  But we do not grieve as those who have no hope.  For Patricia heard this promise many times in her 72 years of grace as a baptized child of God, hearing and believing the promise, again and again: “For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.”  And then, dear friends, St. Paul says that we will say defiantly: “‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?’”  Yes, we feel the sting of death, but Patricia does not.  For God has given her “the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

And just yesterday, we heard a Sunday Gospel reading that Patricia heard many, many times over the years, in which Jesus describes the time between the cross and the resurrection as “a little while.”  Our separation from our loved ones is hard to bear, but it is only a “little while.”  Jesus compares it to when a mother suffers labor pains.  The pain is sharp.  When after the baby is born, the mother is so filled with joy that the pain is soon forgotten.  Patricia is now filled with joy in the presence of her Lord!

This, dear friends, is what we have to look forward to.  For this is a promise of God.  It is Patricia’s faith that she heard, believed, and confessed right here in this sanctuary: week after week, year after year, for seventy-two such years.

For Jesus called Patricia by name at her baptism, as she was cleansed and sanctified in His name.  Jesus fed Patricia heavenly food, even as a Good Shepherd cares for His sheep.  And when her body began to wear out, our Lord did not forsake her, but drew ever closer to her.  For He is Patricia’s Good Shepherd.  He doesn’t cut and run when things get hard, the way that a hired hand would.  Jesus took care of her to the end of her life on this side of glory, even as Robert lovingly took care of Patricia’s every need, shepherding her as a devoted husband.  Jesus is the Good Shepherd.  Patricia knows Him, and He knows her.  She now has that life, and has it abundantly. 

And we pray that our Good Shepherd may do the same for us, so that we can be reunited with Patricia for eternity.  And just as all Christians confess, and as Patricia said many times over the years, confessing Christ’s resurrection and hers:

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Amen

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