Frank Peter Greter Funeral Sermon - John 14:1–7 April 5th 2025 / Adopted into the Family of God

Frank Peter Greter Funeral Sermon / Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Saturday April 5th 2025: Season of Lent / John 14:1–7 “Adopted into the Family of God”

“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. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also. From now on you do know Him and have seen Him.”

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. Good Christian Friends and family of Frank Peter Greter when we sat down to plan the service for today the topic of hospitality came up and just how important hospitality was to Frank. This was important to him whether Frank already knew you, or if you were family, or if you were a complete stranger, which led me to think of this passage from the Book of Hebrews “Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”[1]

As we remember Frank today I ask you “deep down inside what drives hospitality?” For the Christian Jesus, in the Gospel of Saint Luke, teaches “Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you,”[2] Saint Luke also relays to us Jesus’ teaching that, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”[3] Now there is likely no greater gift of hospitality than to adopt someone into your family, and as a recipient of adoption Frank therefore had reason to be generous to others and to show hospitality to those who needed it along the way. Receiving such love with a grateful heart will naturally spill over onto others. Think of what we heard in Psalm 23, how the LORD prepares a table for us where our cup overflows.[4]

Now you may be thinking, ‘that’s great, but I’m not adopted, I don’t have being adopted as a core aspect of who I am as a person, and if that’s what’s needed for me to be as generous and full of hospitality as Frank was in this life then I’m afraid that ship has sailed,’ to which I say to you, ‘hang on, not too fast, let’s think this over a little bit,” you see Frank was adopted into two families, the Greter family and in his baptism Frank was adopted into God’s Family, where God the Father became Frank’s Father and Jesus became Frank’s brother and where Frank gained countless brothers and sisters in Christ.[5] This of course is not only for Frank it is for you too. All through the pages of the Bible, over and over again, you hear this promise of adoption; you may not have been thinking of it in this way but there was a promise of adoption into the Family of God nestled away in the words of our Gospel Reading today when Jesus says “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.”[6] With these words Jesus is saying you will not remain an orphan, in Him you will have a room in His Father’s house.

And Saint Paul explains it like this, when he writes the Christians of Ephesus saying, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in [Christ Jesus] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love [God the Father] predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will.”[7] And near the beginning of our Service today we joined in speaking words from Saint Paul’s letter to the Christians of Rome where Paul asks “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with [Jesus] by baptism into 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 [Saint Paul teaches] if we have been united with [Jesus] in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.”[8] Baptism then is like having the adoption papers signed in the blood of Jesus, in this way—as part of the family of God— you’re name is written in The Book of Life.[9] Such is Frank’s adoption into the Family of God in Christ Jesus.

Are you baptised? Do you have the gift of faith?[10] Then you likewise have this adoption into the Family of God. If you have yet to be baptised listen to what the risen Lord Jesus says “Whoever believes and is baptised will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”[11] Look to Frank, he was a man of faith, and not just faith in general but faith specifically in Christ Jesus the Son of God. Scripture teaches us to “remember [our] leaders, those who spoke to [us] the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.” Yes, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,”[12] Frank knew this and trusted it.

In our Gospel reading when Jesus says, “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,” Jesus says this to His disciples the night before His Good Friday Crucifixion and the place where He says He is about to go is the cross and at that old rugged cross with every nail, and with blood sweat and tears, Jesus makes for us a home in Himself where we can rest from our labours,[13] both in this life and in our death. And in the end Jesus likewise builds in His Father’s House rooms for the whole Family of God: a place for Frank, and a place for you, if you will have it. A place where we are promised to receive eternal hospitality unlike anything anyone has ever experienced in this life.[14]

This is why Saint Paul teaches that “In [God] we have redemption through [Jesus’] blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of [God the Father’s] grace, which [the LORD] lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth in Him. [And] in [Christ Jesus, the Son of God,] we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.”[15] You see it’s not just being adopted into a family, this heavenly adoption that Frank received in his baptism and which in faith Frank clung to his whole life long, comes also with an inheritance. A share in the inheritance, in the Kingdom of God, in the eternal paradise promised to the Christian who dies with their hope and faith in Christ Jesus and for this reason the Christian is free to be generous with all they have, free to show hospitality to others because this inheritance cannot be outspent, it will not run dry; again it is like the cup that overflows.    

The generosity and hospitality Frank shared with all of you throughout his life had its source in the faultless and perfect generosity and hospitality of Christ Jesus, the same generosity and hospitality that drove Jesus to His cross and passion on behalf of Frank and us all.[16] Every river has its source and all the hard work and kindness Frank expressed to you over his life had its source in Christ Jesus, and that source was Jesus nailed to the cross in Franks place, in your place, in our place.[17]  And “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, [is the one] who comforts us in all our affliction [in this life], so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”[18] And so behind all that Frank did in life, for others and for all of you, was God the Son and God the Father. Dear ones, hold fast to this for yourself, as a reminder for those of you who are Christians as you go about your life, and as in invitation to all of you who are even now being called by the workings of the Holy Spirit to a hope rooted in Christ Jesus: yes, everyone can have this same adoption into the Family of God that Frank had, that Frank has even still as Frank now rests from his labours in Christ Jesus.

I didn’t have opportunity to know Frank in this life but as a child of God adopted into the Family of God I look forward to the happy reunion which is to come where I’m sure Frank will only have further perfected his hospitality. And who know in his 94 years Frank may have indeed “entertained angels unawares,” at his table. Until that day, rest in peace Frank, rest in Christ Jesus. 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] Hebrews 13:1–2
[2] Luke 6:30-31 (NIV)
[3] Acts 20:35b
[4] Psalm 23:5
[5] Revelation 7:13–14
[6] John 14:2–3
[7] Ephesians 1:3–5
[8] Romans 6:3–5
[9] Revelation 20:12
[10] Ephesians 2:8–10
[11] Mark 16:16
[12] Hebrews 13:7–8
[13] Matthew 11:28
[14] Isaiah 25:6; Matthew 8:11; Revelation 19:9
[15] Ephesians 1:7–12
[16] Hebrews 12:2
[17] Isaiah 53:5; Romans 3:21-31
[18] 2 Corinthians 1:3–4

Photo Credit: Main photo supplied by family and Mount Olive Lutheran Church, photos of Frank and Frank's Bible from family; photo of baptism font from Mount Olive Lutheran Church; detail of Jesus on cross from pxhere, photo of Frank and cribbage board from Frank's family.