Adina Wekerle Funeral Sermon – Psalm 90:1–2, 10, 12, 16–17 August 20th 2024 / The Work of our Hands & the Work of Jesus’ Hands

Adina Wekerle Funeral Sermon / Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Tuesday August 20th 2024: Season of Pentecost / Psalm 90:1–2, 10, 12, 16–17, “the Work of our Hands & the Work of Jesus’ Hands”

       Lord, You have been our dwelling place

               in all generations.

        Before the mountains were brought forth,

               or ever You had formed the earth and the world,

               from everlasting to everlasting You are God.

        The years of our life are seventy,

               or even by reason of strength eighty;

        yet their span is but toil and trouble;

               they are soon gone, and we fly away.

        So teach us to number our days

               that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Let Your work be shown to Your servants,

               and Your glorious power to their children.

        Let the favour of the Lord our God be upon us,

               and establish the work of our hands upon us;

               yes, establish the work of our hands!

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Marty, Susan, Perry Good Christian Friends and family of Adina Wekerle. Our first reading today, with selected verses from Psalm 90, is the only psalm from Moses; most of the Psalms are from King David. This psalm came to mind regarding Adina for three reasons first because of the last lines you heard from verse 17, “Let the favour of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” and the second because of the line we heard from verse 1, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations,” and third because of the line from verse 10, “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty.”

Eighty-nine years is a long life, it required much strength to live it to its end and these last years have been progressively harder requiring even more strength. The illnesses that beset our physical bodies provide a rigorous challenge not just to our body but to our spirit and while Denny lamented the limitations she suffered due to her health problems she was ever grateful for the care she received from her family and especially from her husband Marty and she trusted that her “dwelling place” was more than what could be seen by the human eye, her dwelling place from generation to generation has been, and continues to be, “the Lord.” This has been a great comfort to her as she was being made ready to enter that rest in Christ Jesus which He had prepared for her at His Good Friday Cross, where the mounting troubles of this life have passed away and the heavenly Way was made sure. I pray these words will provide you comfort this day as well.

When you’ve live for nearly 90 years your life is marked by more than a couple hard years here or a challenging decade there, and this likewise is true for Adina; her life was truly peppered with many accomplishments: 70 years of marriage, a family, gainful employment, along with the many ribbons awarded for her baking and preserves (as we heard this morning from Trudy) but then there are the countless stitches in hems and the subtle strokes of calligraphy pens on wedding invitations read with joy by invited guests. These last things are swept away by the passage of time but serve their purpose in the time for which they are appointed. Kneading dough, pulling thread and needle by hand, gently simmering a pot of concord grapes over the burner with a wooden spoon are all tasks that fall under the category of “the work of our hands,” Marty marveled at Denny’s skills when it comes to these things and it’s the reason behind choosing some of the hymns we have today, like the one we just sang where we heard these words:

“Take my hands and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love,”[1]

Here we see the same sentiment found in Psalm 90: That the work of our hands would not be detached from our faith, that the work set before us would be “established” by the LORD, that they would be accomplished at the “impulse of God’s love,” that the love He pours out on us would through our hands be poured out on others. This is why Martin Luther once said ‘when a father washes diapers or performs some other small task for his child, he may be ridiculed by some … but God with all His angels and creatures is smiling—not because that father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith’[2] so too with mothers, so too with Adina. You can sing in a choir or you can sing a lullaby, you can do the work people see first or the work that people see last, only after looking hard, and all of these things are pleasing to the Lord when they are done in Christian love. Most diapers these days are disposable, cloth diapers are washed; grape jams and jellies can be bought off the shelf in a store, or they can be made from scratch by hand; even if no one else can see it the Lord can and more than that He can see into the heart of the one who sets their hands to work. God can see if the hands are set to motion by greed for gain, or by selfish pride or by Christian love; what sets your hands in motion, what governs your heart? If you call yourself a Christian and have not considered the driving force at work in your heart, there is no time like the present, each day you have been given is a gift from the Lord; make the best of it to the glory of God and the good of your neighbour. And remember there are times when your hands are the ones working to provide the help and then there are times when you are the one in need of helping hands. It is also a lesson to learn how to receive the help and care of others. It is often a lesson taught in times of pain and grief and loss, a lesson learned for Christians in the shadow of the Good Friday Cross of Christ Jesus.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works [Saint James says], and I will show you my faith by my works.”[3] Do not miss seeing Denny’s faith in the work of her hands, don’t miss seeing Adina’s faith in all the things she did that the world counts as small, and don’t miss seeing Christ even behind the blue ribbons and the things the world counts as great: are the award winning buns less wonderful because they are served at the kitchen table? Do the strokes of the pen mean less in a personal birthday card than in a wedding invitation announcing a grand ceremony and reception? All of these things and more can be counted as a hand pointing to the one who is the source of this love and kindness, this skill and dedication, they all point to Jesus, without Jesus they wouldn’t amount to much. In Christ Jesus God took on human flesh and blood, He hand hands that were trained up by His guardian and earthly ‘father’ Joseph to be skilled at the plane and the lathe and while you don’t get a carpenters calloused and weathered hands from pulling needle and thread they are nevertheless capable of wondrous things. The hands of the Lord healed the sick, raised the dead, comforted the distressed and blessed the children and at the impulse of His love for everyone, at the impulse of His heavenly Father’s love for you and Adina and me Jesus’ hands were moved to work out the sacrifice of salvation when they were nailed to the wooden beams of the cross in His crucifixion. We are called to love our neighbour and to give what we can give for their good and in Christ Jesus we see the one who gave everything, His hands held nothing back as the nails were driven in, His heart held nothing back as His blood was poured out for our redemption. This loving work of the Lord makes all the good we say and do and think pleasing in the eyes of God without Jesus it would all be for nothings just a list of things done and gone with time.

The night before Jesus went to His cross He said to His disciples, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to Myself, that where I Am you may be also.”[4] These words are as much for them that night as they have been for Adina and they are for you today as well. Dear ones we don’t prepare a place for ourselves in heaven by our works, it is the Lord who prepares our place for us, and as I said He prepared that place at His cross. Adina doesn’t bring herself into the presence of God by the works of her hands and neither do you or me, it is Jesus who says “I will come again and will take you to Myself, that where I Am you may be also.”

The disciples saw Jesus come to them risen from the dead and alive that first Easter Sunday and then forty days later they saw Him bodily ascend into heaven with the promise to return along with the promise to be with us always each day of our life in our faith. In the Lord’s Prayer when we pray “deliver us from evil,” we pray that the Lord, in His time, would fulfill this promise to come and take us to Himself at the moment of our death, so that “finally [He would] take us from this valley of sorrow to Himself in heaven”[5] Dear ones take heart, have faith in Christ Jesus He is the one who promises to lead you by His hand and by His word, and so we will sing in a moment these words “Lord, take my hand and lead me Upon life’s way; Direct, protect, and feed me From day to day. Without Your grace and favour I go astray; So take my hand, O Savior, And lead the way.”[6] Adina had this throughout her long life, and again this is as much for her as it is for you and in the last stanza of the hymn we will sing, “Lord, when the shadows lengthen And night has come, I know that You will strengthen My steps toward home. Then nothing can impede me, O blessèd Friend; So take my hand and lead me Unto the end.”[7] When we think of the work of Adina’s hands and what governed Denny’s heart remember the work of Jesus’ hands and what governed His heart toward her and toward each of us: This love, this work of Christ Jesus is eternal. For as Moses says of the Lord in our Psalm “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting You are God,” Moses says this of the Lord, he says this of Christ. Today join your prayer with Moses and ask the Lord to “teach us [each and every one] to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom,” so that we can see that our true “dwelling place” is not in houses made by hands but is in the Lord. And that it is He who, by His grace and favour, by His glorious power, establishes “the work of our hands.” Amen.    

Let us pray:

Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] “Take My Life and Let It Be” Lutheran Service Book, Concordia Publishing House 2006, hymn 783 stanza 2.   
[2] “The Estate of Marriage,” Christian in Society, Luther's Works American Edition, vol 45, Concordia Publishing House 1962, page 40.   
[3] James 2:18
[4] John 14:1–3
[5] The Seventh Petition “But deliver us from evil” the Lord’s Prayer; Luther’s Small Catechism, Concordia Publishing House 2017, page 22.
[6] “Lord, Take My Hand and Lead Me” Lutheran Service Book, Concordia Publishing House 2006, hymn 722 stanza 1.   
[7] LSB 722 stanza 3.