Friedrich (Fred) Becker Funeral Sermon – John 14:1–7 October 11th 2023 / We and Jesus

Funeral Sermon for Friedrich (Fred) Becker - Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Wednesday October 11th 2023: Season of Pentecost / John 14:1–7 "We and Jesus"

“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 Fred Becker. After the sermon we’ll sing the last verses of Amazing Grace, and in the very last verse we’ll sing “When we've been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, We've no less days to sing God's praise, Than when we first begun.” The life of the Christian is one where we are gathered in, gathered in around Jesus. Here in our Gospel reading for this morning Jesus promises His disciples, and by extension He promises you, “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.” Here Jesus promises that He will gather us to Himself. He says these words after the first Holy Communion on Maundy Thursday of Holy Week the night before His crucifixion. As Jesus says these words the cross is the place Jesus is going to, the place where He prepares a place for us: Without the cross and Jesus’ crucifixion and death in our stead, without the forgiveness won there for us all, without His victory over death then there would be no Way to the Father no Life for the Christian. This is all heavy stuff but its important stuff because the end result in this life, and in the life to come which Fred now enjoys, is a gathering in of Christians around Christ Jesus so that as Jesus says, “where I am you may be also.”  

Dear ones this isn’t “me and Jesus,” it’s “we and Jesus.” When Jesus was risen from the dead that first Easter Sunday He was quickly there with His disciples and they were gathered around Him, at the end of the 40 days following that Easter Resurrection of the Christ, when Jesus was about to ascend into heaven, He sent His disciples forth to baptise and teach and preach with the promise “behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”[1] So again Jesus promises to gather us to Himself, even in death, and to be with us to the end of the age in life; as Saint Paul says in Romans, “For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.”[2] This brings us to today. Jesus was Fred’s Lord in life and now as we all await The Last Day Jesus is Fred’s Lord in his death. In life the Holy Spirit gathered Fred to Jesus through the gift of faith and his baptism and in Fred’s death Jesus has come and gathered Fred to Himself that where Jesus is Fred would be there also. Now through Fred’s 96 years he regularly attended Church because Fred knew that as Christians we are to “Seek the LORD while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near;”[3] and he knew church was the place where the LORD could most certainly, and truly, be found in His Holy Word and in Holy Communion. Church is where the Christian is gathered around Jesus at His table so that, as Jesus says, “Where I Am you may be also,” again this isn’t “me and Jesus,” it’s “we and Jesus.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this in relation to Fred in preparation for today because Fred was someone who loved being around people. With family and with friends and in his faith Fred loved to be “gathered in” to be around others. Whether it was playing cards, or gathered around the coffee table or the Communion Rail at Church Fred loved being around others. These last years have been hard on all of us when it comes to gathering together and as some of his closest friends like Elmer Ermel went on to their eternal rest in Christ Jesus, Fred too was feeling the pain of the loss of gathering together with favourite people as he had in the past; but even so at our Elder’s meeting last night a couple of the Elders at the church were only just hearing about Fred’s death and they said “I just saw in him church two weeks ago!” And they did, they had. Fred didn’t let the World get in the way of faithfully listened to the call of the Holy Sprite gathering him to Jesus, when he was able to get ‘back on the horse’ when it came to attending church after the pandemic he did, and this is a good example to us all. And this made me think of a couple passages with words of encouragement from the Book of Hebrews, words I’d like to share with you today, first concerning men like Fred we are told to remember them and “consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith,”[4] and then secondly were encouraged, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. [That’s Jesus by the way; He’s the one with perfect faithfulness] And,” the writer of the book of Hebrews continues, “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”[5]

None of us know how many days we will have, we don’t know if we’ll reach the age of 88,[6] or 94,[7] or 96, or if we will have fewer years than that, so for today and for tomorrow and for all the days we have we are called to simply trust in our Lord Jesus: Be therefore gathered around Him in His Supper were He promises to be present; be gathered around Him in His Word where it is read and preached; and lastly trust that when your last day comes you will be gathered to Him so that in life and at the hour of death you will have what Jesus promises when He says “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.” This Jesus comes again and again and again to us in His Word and in Holy Communion and He comes to us Christians in our time of death whether that hour comes as a tragic accident, or slowly at the hands of cancer or if it was like it was for Fred quietly and peacefully in his sleep.

Today then we can also think of the happy reunion that happens in Christ Jesus as we are gathered in. Again this isn’t “me and Jesus,” it’s “we and Jesus,” so Fred will be gathered around Jesus with his beloved wife Emma and with all those who have gone on before in the Christian faith, and Fred will be there when it’s your time to be gathered in: today and for all time unto eternity Fred will be in his glory as one of the “great multitude [of believers] that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”[8] This Lamb of God is Christ Jesus the Lord, the only begotten Son of the Father; dear ones have your faith in Him as Fred did these many long years and you will not need to be anxious about tomorrow.[9] In Christ, Fred will have no lack of people to be around in the new Heavens and the new Earth. The sermon is coming to its end, so after our prayer, we’ll sing the last verses of Amazing Grace, and as I said in that last verse we’ll sing “When we've been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, We've no less days to sing God's praise, Than when we first begun.” This faith isn’t a “me and Jesus,” faith it’s “we and Jesus” faith, and now as we sing those words think of Fred and think of yourself gathered around Jesus both now in this life and in the blessed time to come. 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] Matthew 28:20
[2] Romans 14:8–9
[3] Isaiah 55:6
[4] Hebrews 13:7
[5] Hebrews 10:23–25
[6] Frank Wagner
[7] Paul Hopkie
[8] Revelation 7:9–10
[9] Matthew 6:25-34

Photo Credits: Main Photo provided by family and Mount Olive; detail of Jesus crucified from pexels; rotated detail of man with playing cards from pexels; photo of fields taken in the valley on the way back from Cupar by Pr. Giese; Photo of the lunch following Fred's Funeral Service by Pr. Giese.