Funeral Sermon For Marjorie Kachuik / Saturday February 25th - 2017

Funeral Sermon for Marjorie Kachuik: Saturday February 25th, 2017 at the Regina Funeral Home by Pr. Ted A. Giese from Mount Olive Lutheran Churc , Regina Saskatchewan. John 14:1-7

[Jesus said,] “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. The night before He Himself was to die nailed to a Roman Cross for all the sins of the whole world Jesus said to His disciples, “Let not your hearts be troubled.” Jesus knew He was going to be betrayed, He knew He was going to be falsely arrested, He knew that He’d be put through some sort of kangaroo court and be handed over to men who would then beat and torment Him and kill Him. Jesus knew it was coming; He had even talked about it on numerous occasions saying things like, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed.”[1] And here we have Jesus, the night before His death and what is He doing? He’s comforting the ones who are closest to Him saying to them, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me.”   

I’d asked Denise and Tammy if Marjorie understood that she was dying. They said “yes.” I asked them how Marjorie took the news and they said that Marjorie wasn’t afraid to die. This sort of attitude is a gift. I’m going to guess that many of you are afraid of death. In fact I would wager that many of you avoid the thought of it all together. For some of you it took a lot to even come here today. Are you afraid of death? Did the suddenness of Marjorie’s death trouble you? She was hardly in the hospital at all. It all seemed to happen so fast. Yet you have these words from Jesus: He says, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me.” The Christian is free to view death differently than the rest of the world. In Christ, you then, are free to view death differently too.  

At the end of the Lord’s Prayer Jesus teaches us to pray “deliver us from evil.” What does this mean? When we Christians pray these words we pray that our Father in heaven would rescue us from every evil of body and soul, from every evil that could befall our possessions and reputation, and finally, when our last hour comes, when we pray these words we pray that the Lord would give us a blessed end, and graciously take us from this valley of sorrow to Himself in heaven.[2] In our Gospel reading Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Think on these words, and think again on the ones that started our reading, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me.” And then what does Jesus say? He 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.”   

This promise was for Marjorie: She had it the moment Jesus spoke those words, He won it for her at the cross when death swallowed Him up, and three days later after Jesus had given death such terrible indigestion on account of Jesus’ personal purity and perfection, Death vomited the Lord of Life, Our Way, our Truth, up, regurgitated Jesus up out of His tomb that first Easter Morning, on that day also Marjorie had this promise made ready for her. On Easter morning the jaw of death lays broken; Death’s sting is gone; gone for her, gone for me, gone for you. Because of all of this as Christians we are now free to look at those who die with their faith in Christ simply as people whose bodies now rest in sleep until The Last Day. Saint Paul in the New Testament says, “we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him [, on The Last Day, all] those who have fallen asleep”[3] … all those whose death is wrapped up in Jesus’ death and resurrection. The Bible says Christian death is rest, it is a kind of sleep.

This past Thursdays, at Mount Olive, we had a youth gathering, an overnight retreat, and as we prepared to go to sleep for the night we sang a hymn,

1)   “All praise to thee, my god, this night
For all the blessings of the light. 
Keep me, oh, keep me, King of kings,
Beneath Thine own almighty wings.

3)   Teach me to live that I may dread
The grave as little as my bed.
Teach me to die that so I may
Rise glorious at the awe-full day.”

Not awful, as in terrible, but the day full of awe. The Last Day when Christ Returns and we, and Marjorie, together with all believers receive the gift of the Resurrection of the dead, and Life Eternal in Christ for our body and soul, The Day that our bodies receive the call to wake up, the Day when the perishable puts on the imperishable. In the in-between, in the time between when Marjorie fell asleep in Christ until That Day full of Awe Marjorie will rest in peace in Christ Jesus. Why? Because He is the Prince of Peace and it was this same Jesus who came to take Marjorie to Himself as He promised. Jesus took her into the presences of God the Father in Heaven. By the virtue of her baptism, by the gift of faith that she’d received by the Holy Spirit Marjorie truly had nothing to fear as death came, for Christ is victorious over death and has transformed the grave into a bed of sleep.

This promise was for Marjorie and it is for you. Deep in this promise, deep in your Christian Faith, your faith in Jesus, you too can take to heart Jesus’ words when He says, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me.” Hold fast to Him. In your Baptism He Holds Fast to you. Believe in Him. I am here today to tell you what He says, to bring Jesus’ words to you. Jesus in another part of the Gospels in the Bible says, “Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”[4] Come to Him with everything that is heavy upon your heart, everything that troubles your heart, come to Him with you fear, come to Him with your sin, come to Him with your guilt and shame, come to Him with your weary soul, come to Him with your grief and He will give you peace, forgiveness, joy and rest: all of these things Marjorie now has in Christ. Outside of Him you will not find these things. In Christ Jesus Marjorie has been delivered from every evil of this world, delivered from Cancer, delivered from every trouble. Outside of Jesus you will find no lasting deliverance from these things and it is He who says to you today, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me.” 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.

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[1] Luke 9:22
[2] Luther’s Small Catechism, Concordia Publishing House 2005, pg 22. 
[3] 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14
[4] Matthew 11:28