Funeral Sermon for Ralph Woolhether / March 30th Holy Saturday 2013

Funeral Sermon for Ralph Adrian Woolhether / March 30^th Holy Saturday 2013 / Rev. Ted Giese Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Service held at Regina Funeral Home, Regina Saskatchewan.  

[Jesus says to His disciples,] “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.”(John 14:1-7 ESV)

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. On the night in which He was betrayed Jesus says to His Disciples, “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.” Jesus knows what’s coming next; He knows He’ll be betrayed by Judas, He’ll be arrested under false accusations, and put through a sham trial and that He’ll be put to death. He knows this, they don’t. He wants them to keep the faith and not be shaken by the events that are unfolding around them. He wants their hearts not to be troubled because He also knows that His death on the cross isn’t the end.

You see before He was Baptised in the Jordan River Jesus, God’s Son, was a carpenter, and He would have know a little bit about building things, about getting a place ready. The Hands and Feet that were nailed to the cross on Good Friday were the hands and feet of a working man, the hands and feet of a builder, a hard worker, who lifted wood and pounded nails, who could saw and plane and make level. He was very qualified to promise a house to His disciples. At the cross the nails that drove through His flesh and pinned Him to the wood were the first nails pounded into that promised Home in Heaven. Every House starts somewhere, whether at the job site or in a pre-build facility, there will always be that first nail driven into the wood, that second nail, that third nail and before you know it, with blood sweat and tears, before your eyes stands a house, and when everything is prepared and people have been moved into it, then you are not just looking at a house, you are looking at a Home. 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?” Jesus takes God the Fathers House in Heaven and He makes it into your Home. He prepares it for you.

Ralph spent many years quietly doing God’s work day in and day out preparing homes for people, moving their valued and prized possessions into houses that became homes, moving the simple things that people need and use every day, lifting and carrying each box, each item as he went. Like a Crane he lifted the heaviest of objects into businesses, and homes. He threw every muscle into it because it was the work the Lord gave him to do. We each have our work, maybe we’re movers like Ralph was: maybe you’re a mom or a dad, or maybe you’re Health care workers, or wrestlers, or cab drivers; whatever that work is, we are called to work hard and to do our best because it makes the lives of others better, and when we do our work well it pleases God. It pleases God when we love our neighbour with our hard and good work: when we love our neighbour with our hands and our feet, with our minds and our lips; when we make houses into homes, when we make pain into joy, and troubled hearts into glad hearts. But in the end when all the dust is settled in a man’s life, in a woman’s life, the work we’ve done is for the ones we love, for the people around us, and not truly for ourselves, and that work, all the lifting, the moving that Ralph did isn’t the thing that saved him. The thing that saved him, or better put, the One who saved Him was that hard working carpenter, the Son of God: Jesus, who in His life, and in His Death, and in His Resurrection from the Dead, has been preparing a place for Ralph, all the work is finished and Ralph is now with Jesus in Paradise. He has been saved, he has been saved along with all those who have confessed, that Jesus is Lord with their mouth and believed in their heart that God raised Jesus from the dead. I give this promise to you, St Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”[1] You can take that to the bank. Ralph trusted this, you can too.

Yesterday was Good Friday, the church and the people remembered Jesus on the cross in His death, today is Holy Saturday and we remember Jesus dead in the tomb, tomorrow is Easter Sunday and we remember that Jesus didn’t stay in that tomb ... and because Jesus didn’t stay in that tomb neither will Ralph. All through Ralph’s life Jesus was the Way, in the tough times when there were lots of questions Jesus was the Truth, and now in his death Jesus is Ralph’s Life. Jesus is the Way and the Truth and the Life for everyone ... for me, for you. On the Last Day, Ralph with all the faithful will have their bodies and souls reunited as they are raised from the dead. His body on that day will be free from every trouble, his back will never break, his mind will never falter, his temperament will be perfect and his memory will be without blemish, every tear will be wiped from his eyes.[2] This is not just for Ralph but for you.

In this life we may want five minutes more with our Husband, our Dad, our Grandpa, our Uncle, our Brother, our Cousin, our friend ... but Jesus has something better than five minutes more here .... Jesus has prepared that House of the Father into your heavenly Home and in that perfect place, that perfect Home you’ll have your five minutes more, (in the happy reunion for all that Believe in Jesus) you’ll have an eternity more, you’ll have forever more with Ralph and with each other in Christ Jesus.  

Each of us will come to the day when we’ll need a mover to take us from this place here to our new Home, Jesus is that mover, He’s the only moving company in town, no one else moves to that location. He makes things ready for you, with His hard work, with His blood and sweat and tears, with His strong back and with the rest of His Body: And when Jesus says that the job “is finished”[3] it is finished, no one needs to add a single bit of work to it, not even five minutes more. Because He knew the Job, because He did that Job perfectly, Jesus can say these words to His disciples, Jesus can say these words to Ralph, Jesus can say these words to you, “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.” Dear Christian Friends, we all look forward to that Heavenly Home: let us thank God for His Son, who prepared that home for us and moves us there when our time has come. In Jesus name. 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 Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.