Doris Jones Funeral Sermon – Psalm 23 March 16th 2024 / The Lord is With Me

Funeral Sermon for Doris Jones - Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Saturday March 16th 2024: Season of Lent / Psalm 23 “The Lord is With Me”

         The LORD is my Shepherd; I shall not want.

                He makes me lie down in green pastures.

        He leads me beside still waters.

                He restores my soul.

        He leads me in paths of righteousness

               for His name’s sake.    

         Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

               I will fear no evil,

        for You are with me;

               Your rod and Your staff,

               they comfort me.

         You prepare a table before me

               in the presence of my enemies;

        You anoint my head with oil;

               my cup overflows.

        Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

               all the days of my life,

        and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD

               forever.

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. Friends and family of Doris Jones in your bulletin you have a book mark that says “in loving memory of Doris Jones” on the one side and on the other side you’ll find a poem that meant a lot to Doris called “Footprints in the Sand.” Some of you may be acquainted with it and know it very well. That poem “Footprints in the Sand,” isn’t found in the Bible but it is inspired by what we find in the Bible especially in Psalm 23. Psalm 23 is found in the Bible and the psalms are a sort of poetry. They are like song lyrics, like prayers put to music. The original music is long gone but the words remain. And like “Footprints in the Sand,” Psalm 23 also meant a lot to Doris. Psalm 23 was a Bible passage that helped mark many of the important moments in her life: it was read at her wedding, it was prayed over her recently as she walked through the valley of the shadow of death and now you heard it read for you all today as we come together to remember Doris. She would be most pleased to see you all together today hearing these words.

Before we have a closer look at Psalm 23 let’s look at that poem “Footprints in the Sand,”   

One night I dreamed a dream: As I was walking along the beach with my Lord.

Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand,

one belonging to me and one to my Lord.

After the last scene of my life flashed before me,

I looked back at the footprints in the sand.

I noticed that at many times along the path of my life, especially at the very lowest and saddest times,

there was only one set of footprints.

This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it.

“Lord, you said once I decided to follow you, You'd walk with me all the way. But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life, there was only one set of footprints. I don't understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me.”

He whispered, “My precious child, I love you and will never leave you, Never ever; during your trials and [times of testing], when you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”

We all have times where we need to be carried; with hearts heavy with grief and sadness, with hearts ablaze with a dark fire of anger towards death you’ve had days and are having days where your feet don’t want to go one more step. When you look back on these days the single set of footprints you’ll see along the path will be the footprints of your Lord Jesus carrying you through these trials and times of testing. Doris knew this for herself and she wants you to know this too.  

The most humours part of that footprints poem is when the writer says, “Lord, you said once I decided to follow you, You'd walk with me all the way.” It’s humorous because making a decision to follow Jesus only happens after God has been at work in your heart. The Holy Spirit has entered in and prepared the soil of your heart removing the rocks and stones and the thorns, implanted God’s Word there, and made it grow and cultivated it; He is the one who brings forth the fruits of faith. The moment that the thought of believing in Jesus becomes real in your heart, the moment the words “I have decided to follow Jesus,” fall off of your lips these things are not the start of something but the result of something, the result of God working on you. And this is the point of the “footprints in the sand” poem; we are not always good judged of when and how the Lord is at work in our hearts. We often only have eyes to see it after the fact.       

As an example: It’s like when there’s a truck stuck in the ditch. It’s stuck. Does the truck say to the toe-truck, “when I decided to be pulled out of the ditch ...” No. The toe-truck is there to pull the truck out of the ditch, that’s the way it is for us. We are the truck in the ditch and Jesus is the Toe-Truck that pulls us out.

When Doris was baptised she made a Facebook post with a picture of her holding her Baptismal Certificate and candle and the crucifix we gave her as a gift; she’s all smiles in the photo and the post read, “Well I finally did [it] last night. My number 1 off my bucket list.” Now we all know Doris and she was a little bit of a stinker when she did it because she didn’t invite you all to be there, she kind of did it quietly, but it still meant the world to her. And like the footprints poem, while she thought at first that it was her doing it for God in truth it was God doing it for her. The footprints there in the sands of her life, when she was going through cancer at that time and the waters of baptism rolled over her, were not her footprints they were Jesus’ footprints as He carried her both into the waters of baptism and up out of them. For our part we are all little rascals when it comes to our faith, we all run amuck, we all go astray, we all make a break for it, and when we think we’re doing a great job at it, it turns out that that’s when the Lord is carrying us slung over His shoulders. 

And that’s what we get in Psalm 23. “The LORD is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.” If it were up to us we’d have our little lamb’s head stuck in the branches of some bush, if it were up to us we’d be rolling down the side of a cliff wedged in a crevice with our little lamb hooves pointing into the dark sky. “He leads me beside still waters,” we like adventure; we like to be doing our own thing in life, we like the rough waves of the high seas because they are exciting. And yet the Lord is patient with us. As our Good Shepherd Jesus rescues us, as the one who’s gone on ahead of us He now can lead us. When you look at the Psalm its all Jesus doing stuff for us: He restores our souls, He prepares a table for us, He anoints our heads with oil, He comforts us, He is with us all the way even when we think we’re all alone.     

Near the end of the Psalm we hear these words, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life ...” the word “follow” that we find there, in our modern understanding of that word, is a little weak when we hear it, but in the original language it’s more active. This isn’t some toddling along behind us sort of following. The Goodness and Mercy there in that passage is Jesus Christ the Lord, our Good Shepherd, and the “following” is chasing after, perusing, like a hound dog, like a Tracker or a Ranger hot on the trail. And so we have this picture of Jesus already ahead of us, always with us, and pressing hard behind us no matter where we go, no matter how far off the path we stray into the wilderness, This is a picture of Jesus as the very one who rescues us from Sin, Death, the Devil and the World, even from ourselves, throwing us up onto His shoulders to bring us home. Doris grew to understand this.

Tomorrow is Saint Patrick’s Day, and Patrick was a Christian who understood this very same thing. He has a poem of his own that’s like Psalm 23 and a little bit like that “Footprints in the Sand” poem. A poem that get’s at this same idea. With confidence Saint Patrick writes,

“Christ with me, Christ before me,

Christ behind me, Christ in me,

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down,

Christ when I sit down,

Christ when I arise,

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.”

In baptism I handed Doris a candle lit off of the candle that stands by her urn today and I said, “Receive this burning light to show that you have received Christ who is the Light of the world. Live always in the light of Christ, and be ever watchful for His coming ...” Now we don’t always do this perfectly yet the idea here is that the Light of Christ Jesus is in us after our baptism and for those around us, when the clouds part that Light from time to time will shine forth. Because Jesus is with us, people will see Jesus in us, especially when they look past our faults. And of course the Light of Jesus is stronger than any storm cloud in life.   

So here you are today, your heart is full of happy and crazy memories of Doris, all the ups and downs and zigs and zags of life, your heart is full of the sadness and grief that comes when you lose someone you love who loved you, the waves of it crash against the sands on the shore of your heart as you walk the path. Remember those footprints and who walks with you. Remember the one who leads you away from the chaos to the still waters and green pastures, the one who promises not to give up on you, the one who chases after you no matter where you run to.

For you who are baptised today is a day to remember your baptism into Jesus. For you who are not yet baptised rest assured the Holy Spirit is at work in your heart today; Jesus walking with you is leading you to those still waters just as He led Doris. She described her baptism as her “number 1 bucket list” thing in life. She would want the same for you. You can have this same gift. 

Listen, God is calling; the Lord is with you even now. 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.