Fredrick Arthur Molnar Funeral Sermon - 1st Peter 3:18–22 February 15th 2025 / Brought Safely Through

Fredrick Arthur Molnar Funeral Sermon / Speers Funeral Chapel / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Saturday February 15th 2025: Season of Epiphany / 1st Peter 3:18–22, “Brought Safely Through”

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which He went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to 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 Fredrick Arthur Molnar in our second Scripture reading this morning Saint Peter reminds us that baptism isn’t just about getting wet. It’s not like when your mom wets her thumb to wipe away a smudge of dirt from your cheek or to flatten out a cowlick in your hair just to make you look more presentable to the world. No, Christian baptism is about life and death, about eternal life and the death of death, about being saved and not by what we say or do but by what Jesus said and did in our place. Noah and his family and the animals two by two didn’t survive the flood because they were good swimmers; they were brought safely through because of the love of God and the wood of the ark that floated them to safety. The Christian doesn’t survive the flood of sin, death, the devil and the world because we are good at swimming against the harsh currents of all of these things in our lives; the Christian is brought safely through because Jesus, on the wood of the cross, swam against those harsh currents perfectly in our place and Christ Jesus and His sacrifice upon His Good Friday cross, and the love of God, floats the Christian to their eternal safety.

In his letter to the Christians of Rome Saint Paul brings Jesus’ death upon the cross into our understanding of baptism when he writes, “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 [Jesus] was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

Saint Paul continues, “For if we have been united with [Jesus] in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with [Jesus] in a resurrection like His. … Now if we have died with Christ,” Saint Paul says, “we believe that we will also live with Him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death [Jesus] died He died to sin, once for all, but the life [Jesus] lives He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”[1] So while we gather to mourn Fred’s death together today we also celebrate Fred’s life in Christ Jesus that was given to Fred in his baptism. Dear ones because of that baptism into Christ we can confidently say that Fred is dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus, and so we see what Saint Peter means when he says, ‘Baptism … now saves you.’ This baptism is about being free in Christ to live your life as one loved by God without the fear of death hounding you day and night. It’s not an outward act of obedience for the Christian to show how much they love God, it’s not a way of you dedicating yourself or your child to God, it’s the reverse of all that; it’s God the Father showing how much He loves you, it’s about Him dedicating His Son Jesus to the work of rescuing you from everything set against you, it’s about Him dedicating His Son Jesus to even rescue you from yourself.

Fred was blessed to know farming, blessed to know farming inside and out, to not just know it but to live it day by day for a considerable amount of his life, and in many respects ‘once and famer always a farmer.’ In Psalm 23 we hear of the Good Shepherd, and in the Gospel of Saint John Jesus speaks of Himself, saying, “I Am the Good Shepherd. I know My own and My own know Me,”[2] so today think of the Lord not only as the Good Shepherd but also as the Good Farmer.[3] As such Fred is the recipient of all the back breaking sweat and hard work of the Good Farmer. And it was this Good Farmer, Jesus, who 40 days after His Easter Morning Resurrection from the dead commanded His disciples saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I Am with you always, to the end of the age.”

As the Good Farmer sends His workers into the fields what does this all look like as its happening? Well the farmer can’t expect a crop without first seeding; the farmer can’t expect a crop when there’s a drought and no water; the farmer can’t expect a crop if the warmth of the sun doesn’t shine upon the earth. In The End there’s no crop, no yield, no harvest, if no seed is sown. With all of this in mind consider how the Good Farmer prepared the soil of Fred’s heart, seeding it with faith by the work of the Holy Spirit, watered it in the waters of baptism and then tended the crop through the whole growing season through the good and bad weather of life, through hot and cold days, through pests and biting wind and the cloudy days and calm and sunny days right through to the end and the appointed time of harvest. Right through all of it to where we stand today. Dear ones a field with no seed sown, a field left uncultivated, without irrigation, unfertilised, untended won’t have a harvest when the end of the growing season arrives.    

Going back to where we started, with Saint Peter’s example of baptism being like Noah and his family in the ark riding out the Flood by the grace of God, consider what Peter says when he writes that they were “were brought safely through water,” and how “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you,” notice that it’s not just them but you and not just you but Fred. The Bible also says, “For as many of you as were baptised into Christ have put on Christ.”[4] And if we, like Fred, are likewise clothed in Christ in this way then the words Jesus says today in our Gospel reading are equally for us, “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.”[5] These words are a promise from Jesus’ lips to your ears to bring you safely through. Today we thank God for the man Fred was in our life, for the help we received from him over the years, for the times we spent with him and for the LORD’s promise to Fred in the waters of baptism to bring Fred safely through to The End, safely through to Fred’s eternal rest in Christ and to His heavenly home.

These words of promise are not only for Fred, and for his life, but they are also for you and your life and for the life of your family and your children. Baptism into Christ Jesus opens up for us the hope of a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. A good conscience not built on our goodness but on Jesus’ perfect goodness. And remember, every field needs to be cleared, needs to have gnarled and stubborn stumps and roots dynamited out, hard stones picked and piled away, every field needs to be prepared for the seed of faith, the field of your heart is no different. Where the seed of faith has been sown in your heart I pray that it is brought safely through to the harvest in Christ Jesus. Where it is sown today I pray that it takes root and grows and then likewise, by the grace of God, it too will be brought safely through to the harvest in Christ Jesus. Dear ones the ripened waving golden wheat of the field doesn’t harvest itself, Noah and his family didn’t save themselves from the flood, and you and I and Fred don’t save ourselves either. Thanks be to God that He sent us His Son, Jesus the Good Farmer and the gift of baptism and Christian faith. 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] Romans 6:3–5, 8–11
[2] John 10:14
[3] Jesus Himself tells parables of the sower sowing seed and not just in the field, and these parables come with a warning: Matthew 13:1–23, Mark 4:1–20, Luke 8:4–15
[4] Galatians 3:27
[5] John 14:1–3

Photo Credit: Main photo provided by family and Mount Oilve Lutheran Church; photo of waves from pixabay; illustration of Jesus crucified from pixabay; tinted photo of baptismal font provided by Mount Olive Lutheran Church; photo of Vincent van Gogh's "The Sower at Sunset" (1888) from getarchive; photo of man in wheat feild from pixabay; photo of wheat from pixabay.