Jill Stenhouse Funeral

I used to visit Jill, on and off, every 6 weeks or so. Not enought.

To visit Jill you would walk onto the front deck and there would be plants full of colour all around. One weekend before I visited Jill I had been doing my own gardening. My wife and I would measure out how big the pant would grow and dig a hole accordling giving them space. But whan I asked Jill about her garden and how everything was in so neat and tight, the advice she gave was, If you see some dirt, put a plant in it. Simple really.

When we would meet, we would chat about almost everything. And the thing was, everytime I visited, and I should have learned, was that I would stay 45 mins, sometimes an hour longer than I had planned. One time I was late to pick up my kids from school, because we chatted so much.

We would talk about politics, and her travels. About church and her family, especially her grandchildren, what books she was reading. We talks about Peter and how she nursed him and her own plans for dealing with her nurophay. When Mark, her son got sick and passed away, I visited more and we chatted about that. In one of those conversations, Jill asked me what I thought it was like after we died.

I told her, I think there is like a dress code. I had the passage we just read out in the back of my mind when I said this. I think there is a dress code for the new heavens and the new earth. We are currently perishable. We know and feel that, but later, we will be imperishable. And we have to be dress, fit for eternity, and so we need to be clothed in immortality.

Some of you have travlled to our captial today. Today, the rain has kepted some of the warmth in, but its starting to get cold already in Canberra. The leaves are starting to turn and fall. If you were to stick aroun here for the next three months, you will see that it will get more gloomy. The days will be darker, it will get colder. Trees will become just large sticks in the ground. If you didn’t know about the seasons, you would think Canberra would be on a really bad trajectory. It looks like it is all going to death.

And winter in Canberra is our whole world now. We live in the shadow of death everyday. That is why we see doctors and put on seat belts. Our mortality is real and we do things to reduce our chance of death. Living like this, with death on the sidelines, gets us thinking thinking that we have to live our life now, to make the most of it, for death is going to come and then it is no more.

But the resurrection of Jesus tells us that is not true. Because of that first Easter, where Jesus walked out of the grave, it means that death is not the end.

Today it can feel like death wins. A memoral service might make that feel true, we might feel death threathening us. But like with the seasons, we just need to wait a little bit longer. We know that springtime always follows winter. That is when the firstfruits come. That is when life comes after death. For those who believe in Jesus, it is death now and life later.

Death may hurt now, but for a Chrisitan it is not fatal. God has given us Jesus’ victory over death. This means death doesn’t win. God wins. Death is on the losing side of history. Jesus felt the full sting of death and came out the other end. Jesus clothed Himself in death so we can be clothed in life. We may mourn, but not without hope. It maybe Winter but Spring is coming.

When I would visit Jill she would always make me a coffee with her pod machine. She would inist that she would make it, even though it was slow going in her kitchen with her walker. I would offer to help, I was younger and more able. But no, Jill was a fighter, she was going to keep moving, and do her exercises and live independently as much as she can. She was not going to let the neurophay win. She wan’t going to sit passivly and let it take her. She would tell me, “its use it or lose it”.

Her determination and strength of will was encouraging to see. I will miss her grit in the face of adversary. But it was also sad to see, this condition slowly take her movement. I will not miss seeing her body slow down. It sucked watching her slowly move around her kitchen making the coffees.

But because the Easter story is true, because Jesus rose again in a real physical tangalbe body, we know that Jill is now dressed in a new physical body that will last forever.

Our passage says, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, we will be changed. We will be raised imperishable. Jill will be clothed in her new body because Jesus has given us His victory over death to her. Jesus felt the full sting of sin and death, He endured it all and was victorious. And one day, those who are in Christ, will recieve what He has won on our behalf.

And so one day, Jill and I will be able to resume our chats, in new bodies, dressed for eternity.

It is because of Jesus and what He has done that we have this firm foundation about life after death. And we are going to sing about that now, how Jesus saves, and how we are safe in Him, even through death.