Grace, Mercy and
Peace to you from God our Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text today is the Epistle lesson, especially these words, “But 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 those who have fallen asleep.”
Thus far our text.
Dear friends in
Christ, family and friends of Bud, do not be uninformed, today we mourn. Today we miss. Today we feel a hurt inside as a father, a
son, a husband and a friend is no longer here with us. Today we mourn because death hurts, and
because we feel that pain especially today.
It would be easy
for us to be consumed by that grief, to become so totally distraught that we
cannot function. We did not want Bud to
leave. We weren’t ready for him to be
taken from us. We knew that his body was
slowly wearing out, that he was becoming weaker and weaker as the days went by,
but we were not ready for him to go. And
now that he is gone it feels like we have a hole in our heart, a pain that
feels like it can never heal.
That pain you
feel, and the reason we are here today is because of sin. Sin infects every part of our life, of our
world and of our being. It is something
that Bud dealt with during his earthly life every single day. And friends, it is something that you and I
still deal with. It is something that
will not go away, it is something that we on our own cannot solve. We are sinners, Bud was a sinner, and because
we are sinners, we are here today.
Because we are sinners we must mourn.
But dear friends,
as our text says, we do not mourn as those who have no hope. For we have a great and wonderful hope. We have an amazing promise, a promise that
looks beyond this world and beyond our sin.
We have a promise that even though we face mourning, that one day our
tears will be dried and our pain taken away.
We have a promise that looks to Jesus.
As our Old
Testament Lesson says, we have a hope that “Our Redeemer lives, and that in the
last we shall see him with our own eyes.”
Even as our flesh is destroyed by sin and death, we know that we will
one day stand before God and see him face to face. Our Redeemer lives! Even though he was killed on a cross, even
though he suffered for all our sin, even though he has taken as his own all of
your sin, he lives, and we shall see him ourselves, our eyes shall behold him
and not another!
We see that
promise in our Gospel text today, as Mary and Martha mourn the loss of their
dear brother Lazarus, and say to Jesus, “IF you had been here, my brother would
not have died.” But even in the midst of
their frustration, they confess to Jesus, “You are the Christ the Son of
God.” Jesus himself mourns at the tomb
of Lazarus, even while he knows what he will do, raise Lazarus from the
dead. Lazarus is raised from the dead,
even having been dead for three days, and dear friends, that promise is for
you, and for Bud as well.
For even though we
mourn today, we know that today Bud is in a better place, that he is at peace
with Jesus, and that even though we wish him to be with us, that he is now in
eternal life, and that we shall join him there.
He is in comfort eternal, with God’s own nail scarred hands wiping away
every tear from his eyes.
And we know that
even as he today is in heaven, that one day he too shall be resurrected, that
this very body will rise again and live, no longer sick, no longer weak, no
longer with medical struggles forever and ever without end. That is our hope. That Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life,
will fulfill our hope and give him bodily comfort and peace, even as we are
with him forever.
We do not want you
to be uninformed dear friends in Christ.
Today we mourn. Today we
hurt. But even in the midst of this pain
and mourning, we have hope that looks to Our Redeemer, the Resurrection and the
Life, we have hope that looks to Jesus.
That hope gives us an answer to our mourning. We do not mourn as those who have no hope,
for we have Jesus. Amen.
