Judy Ann Smibert Funeral Sermon – John 14:1-7 July 16th 2025 / True and Lasting Peace

Judy Ann Smibert Funeral Sermon / Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Wednesday July 16th 2025: Season of Pentecost / John 14:1-7 “True and Lasting Peace”

“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 Judy Smibert Jesus says to His disciples on the night before His crucifixion, “Let not your hearts be troubled,” and little further along in this same conversation with His disciple — while promising to send them the Holy Spirit — Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”[1] Those words are on the front of your bulletin today. Jesus said these things to them knowing that in less than 24 hours He’d be dead. Death is one of the things people have classically been most afraid of through history. For some it’s the fear of the unknown, for Christians who know the promise of eternal life in Christ it’s more the fear of an unknown experience. Death isn’t the kind of thing you do over and over and over again, it’s not like a fear of public speaking or a fear of flying in an airplane or a fear of needles or a fear of thunder and lightning when it comes to those sort of things experience can help a person grow through them. The more you experience them the more opportunity you have to get past the fear. Because you can’t gain the same sort of first hand personal experience with it fear of death is more complicated; it can easily start seep into other areas of life and leave a person afraid of illness or even leaving the house for fear of something bad happening. Has the fear of death caused you anxiety in your life? Is it disrupting your peace in your life?  

Often just telling someone who is struggling with fear to “be at peace,” or to “not be troubled” or to “be not afraid” isn’t enough. So first Jesus gave His disciples, and you and me, an example of courageously facing death without fear when He went willing to the cross of His crucifixion; this wasn’t an easy death, it was brutal and painful and bloody and humiliating and ugly and yet He passed through it even forgiving the ones who were taking His life all while putting Himself in His heavenly Fathers hands, committing body and soul into the care of the God the Father. This is the ultimate ‘if I can do it you also can have courage in the face of death’ example. But the second and perhaps even more important part of what Jesus did to give His disciples and you and me, opportunity to move past the fear of death is when three days later on that first Easter Sunday Jesus is risen from the dead promising resurrection unto life everlasting for all who believe in Him.

Jesus knows that for us the spirit is willing, but the flesh can certainly be weak,[2] so He Himself paves the way ahead of us. In fact when He sees these same disciples again on the evening of that first Easter — as they are all locked away in that same upper room where they had gathered together the Thursday night before that first Good Friday — afraid for their lives because maybe the people who crucified Jesus might be coming to crucify them too, the very first thing Jesus say to them, when He sees them in their fear, is “peace be with you.” Jesus had promised to go a prepare a place for them in His Father’s house and at the cross in His death Jesus did just that, and then on the other side of death He stands before them and says “peace be with you.” Like I said these are words not only for them that day but they are words for us today and for Judy too. Jesus says them to men who were actually afraid, and in whatever anxiety your find yourself in over death, or over anything else in life that troubles your heart, Jesus says them to you. In life fear may keep you from doing many things but fear won’t keep Jesus from loving you and taking you to Himself as He promises. Remember what Jesus says, “I will come again and will take you to Myself, that where I am you may be also.” Of Himself Jesus says, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” And He is the one who takes you to His Father’s house. The one who brings you home.

What then will it be like to be with Jesus in His Father’s house? What will it be like to be with Jesus where He is in the here and the now; in that time between today and The Last Day and the resurrection of all flesh? In the Book of Revelation the same Saint John who recorded our Gospel Reading today is told to, “Write this [down]: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labours, for their deeds follow them!”[3] The Book of Revelation also describes what follows that rest in Christ when it explains how the new heavens and the new earth the Lord promises to personally “wipe away every tear from their eyes,” saying that “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”[4] This is what was promised to Judy by Jesus in Holy Scripture and this is what is likewise promised to you in God’s word.

When Jesus 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,” an important thing to remember is that the Christian life is not simply a me and Jesus faith. Being a Christian means to be together with your fellow Christians. Now again the ‘spirit is willing but sometimes the flesh is weak’ when it comes to all this, yet we are called to be together in this life and we are certainly promised to be together with Christ in the life which is to come, in our eternal rest with Him. So for Judy she will have now one of the things she pined for the most over these last number of years which was to be with those Christians in her life who had gone on ahead of her in the faith who had already arrived at their rest in Christ Jesus. So we trust that she will of course be reunited with her mother Anne with whom she had a very close relationship but in particular Judy will be reunited with Ian her beloved departed husband. This reunion was often on her mind and in her prayers.

Dear ones the World emphasise our physical separation from each other in death working to make us fearful that we will never see the ones we love who have departed in the faith again but Jesus provides us peace as Christians when it comes to these things if you’re willing to have it. In death Jesus promises to take us to Himself, that where He is we will be also. He makes this promise the night before His own death, He then proves death to be a defeated enemy by rising from the dead in glory on that first Easter Sunday and then 40 days after that at His ascension to the right hand of God the Father Almighty Jesus goes to His Father saying these words to His disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing 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.”[5] So if you’re keeping track, Jesus promises to take the Christian to Himself in their death that where He is they will be also and to the living Jesus promise to be with them, to be with us, “always, to the end of the age.” This means that in Christ we are less separated from each other than the World would like us to think, which also means we have less to be anxious about, or to be afraid of concerning this than the World would like us to think. Judy then is with Jesus and Jesus is with you so in Jesus you are together even now. Today we are called to be patient until it is our time to be together there the way we are together her, and then at The Last to be together fully in Christ Jesus for all eternity.  

When you know and trust that you’re in Jesus’ hands you are free to embrace life with all its ups and downs, from the small things to the big things. And even when you’re not able to do it all perfectly we are called to trust the one who did, to trust in Jesus the one who redeems us out of our troubles, out of death, out of all our fears and anxieties, the very one who says to you, “Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,”[6] the one who today, and in the end, wipes away every tear from your eyes and gives you — in His perfection — what the World can never give, true and lasting peace. 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] John 14:27
[2] Matthew 26:41
[3] Revelation 14:13
[4] Revelation 21:4
[5] Matthew 28:18–20
[6] Matthew 11:28

Photo Credits: Main photo provided by family and Mount Olive Lutheran Church; photo detail of stained glass window of Jesus with disciples Maunday Thursday from Flickr; recent photo of Judy supplied by family; photo detail of stained glass of Jesus on the way to the cross from Flickr; photo of judy from the past supplied by family; photo  detail of stained glass of Jesus on risen from the dead from Flickr.