Daniel Giese Funeral Sermon

Last week I was called to a family's farm where a tragedy occurred. A three-year-old boy died in a farming accident. As a father of three boys, it was hard for me to distance myself from the pain that this family was going through so that I could minister to them. My associate and I conducted the funeral services for Daniel on Saturday. What follows is the sermon I preached at that funeral.

I ask that you keep Daniel's family in your prayers as they learn to live without him for a little while.

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Grace, mercy, and peace to you, the grieving family, and those friends gathered here today, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I know that you are heart-broken, sad even unto death. Angry – at no one in particular, just angry. I truly wish I had the words that could take all of that away, but sadly I do not. No one does. For the pain of death, for those that die and those that live on after someone they love dies, is a pain that is not easily lived with. You will never “get over it.” You will learn to live with it. It will get a little easier over time. But the best thing for you right now is the comfort and peace of the Word of God. That is why we gather here in God’s House. We seek Him, we cry to Him in anguish, we need the comfort that comes from His presence in His Word. When we travel through this valley of the shadow of death, we cry to God for peace. He answers by telling us to “Be still and now that HE is God and that you are His child, never be to forsaken, never to be left.”

I freely admit that there are no words that I can say that will take your pain away. I wish there were. I wish to God that I could find the finds to say this evening that will help. He answered me by drawing to my attention the words of Hebrews 4:16.

“Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

You may be wondering why what has happened causes so much pain. Of course it is a sad, tragic, occasion. But why is it, exactly, that this particular time is so painful? The answer is because “we are not built to bury our own children.” There are a few of you who know first hand the truth of that statement. We are not built to bury our own children. Actually, we are not made with the capacity or fortitude to bury our fathers, our husbands, our brothers or anyone. But bury them we must for death has invaded our world. It was introduced by Adam and Eve through their sin and is passed on to each of us. Death was not part of God’s plan for us, yet we must deal with it. We find ourselves living each day under death’s shadow. No, we are not built to bury our loved ones.

It appears to me that parents who must face the death of their children go through one of the hardest thing there is to go through. I do not know what it is like. I do not presume to know what you are going through. But there are others who do and I pray they will reach out to you to help you in this your time of need.

There is one more who knows what you are going through.

God knows what you are going through for He had faced the death of His own Son. He felt as you do, heart-broken. Even though His son was completely innocent, He still had to watch His own son die.

The comfort today is that you have a God who knows. You have a God who knows what you are going through, what you are feeling, because He felt that way also.  Having a God that can truly sympathize with how you are feeling drew me to the fourth chapter of Hebrews. It says that we have a savior who knows what we are going through in this life because He went through it as well. That’s a summary of verses 14-15 of Hebrews chapter 4.

Jesus knows what you go through in this life because He was a human being just like you. God the Father also knows what you are going through because He also faced the death of His son. The comfort is that Jesus’ death destroyed death forever. Jesus’ death transformed Daniel’s death. Because of the death of Jesus, Daniel now has approached the throne of grace with confidence, because He received mercy in the waters of Baptism. He heard the simple but powerful words of the Gospel every time he sang “Jesus Loves Me.”

And now God urges you to approach this same throne of grace through your prayers and worship so that you can receive mercy and grace in this time of need.

You may have asked yourself why this happened. It’s a natural question to ask. Perhaps you can look at Daniel’s death in this way.

The other night I did something that every mom and dad has done dozens of times. I carried my son to bed. My 4 year old son, Mark, fell asleep on the floor, and I picked him, carried him upstairs, put him in his bed and tucked him in. Why? I knew it was time for him to rest and I knew that rest was better up there than down here.

God has done the same with Daniel. He knows, better than us, the best time to carry us to the place of rest He created.

For God, death is no tragedy. Because when Jesus destroyed death by dying and rising again, death was reduced to being simply the beginning of eternal life in heaven!

Can you imagine if Mark’s brothers objected to my decision to carry him upstairs? “Don’t take him, we’ll miss him. Please keep him here so we will all be together.”

How would I answer? “Oh, but he’ll rest so much better in the room I have prepared for him. Besides, you’ll be coming up yourselves soon.”

By calling Daniel home, God is doing what any father would do. He has provided a better place for him to rest. It is a place He has “prepared for us” through the life, death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ who took away our sins and opened to us the way of eternal life. (Adapted from Max Lucado’s A Gentle Thunder, Word Publishing, Dallas, TX, 1995, pages 61-62).

No, I do not have the words that will take your pain away. I do not know what to say. But God knows. God knows how you feel. God knows what to say. It will be my prayer that you will listen to God speak to you as you “approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that [you] may receive mercy and find grace to help [you] in [your] time of need.”

I pray it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.