The Last Word
Notes
Transcript
1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. 6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.
Blessed Lord, You have caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning. Grant that we may so hear them, read, mark, learn, and take them to heart that, by the patience and comfort of Your holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
When Dorothy Moss passed away, she had just recently celebrated her 87th birthday on August 14, 2021. Her last Sunday in church, August 26, 2021, was the 13th Sunday after Pentecost. I received a phone call late Wednesday afternoon, August 25, that she was in the hospital. The next morning, Dorothy was gone, as the Lord quietly answered her request to rest.
For around 50 years, Dorothy has served the Lord and her neighbor as a member of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Gary, IN. I have been privileged to serve her as a missionary pastor for the past year. Dorothy died as a Confessional Evangelical Christian, I come to you today as a Confessional Evangelical preacher, and today, we worship the Lord, willingly or not, in a Confessional Evangelical setting.
Most of the time, my choice of texts is prescribed by the Lutheran Service Book Lectionary, a collection of readings that are shared by every Liturgical Lutheran congregation in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, of which Good Shepherd and St. John Evangelical Lutheran Churches are member congregations. Funerals, like today, are different. Today, I am tasked to select texts that will communicate something of the theme of the day. Because those texts are God’s Word, I believe, just as Dorothy and her brothers and sisters at Good Shepherd and St. John’s, that they are living and powerful, that the Holy Spirit works with those texts to either birth, or strengthen faith in those who hear them and receive the truth that God declares in them.
The first text that you heard today was the Old Testament reading from last Sunday, Isaiah 35:4-7
4 Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.” 5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6 then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; 7 the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; in the haunt of jackals, where they lie down, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.
In this text, the Lord makes a promise to His people who suffer from the anxiety of feeling abandoned by Him to the forces of death, destruction, and ruin, the Thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy. He works through people, through circumstances, and through situations to convince us that God does not care, even that God is not there-for you. With a grim determination born of the certain knowledge of his defeat, he seeks to bring as many of the children of Adam to ruin with him and his angels. Sometimes boldly, other times stealthily and behind the scenes, he has but one goal, to destroy the faith that God has given to you, to strip you of your confidence in Christ, and to direct your attention away from His certain love for you, to the circumstances that seem to scream at you that there is no one who truly cares either about you or for you, as you go through your version of the Apostle Peter’s attempt to join Jesus on a late-night stroll on the sea of Galilee, surrounded by the winds and waves of a world that seems to be hell-bent on taking you under.
What is this promise? It is simple - your God will save you from the one who seeks to destroy you. He will restore the refreshing waters that you need, the living water, as Jesus described it to a Samaritan woman, that springs up in your soul unto everlasting life as His Word brings healing to the hurt that exists in your soul.
The Gospel text, which I read to you, came from Mark 7:24-37. It begins describing Jesus’ efforts to get away, I think just to get some rest from the incessant demands for relief from seemingly insurmountable trials and tribulations of body and soul, experienced by those who had heard of His preaching and power. After two separate incidents, the crowds who followed Jesus and His disciples testified both to His ability to answer their prayers and his failure to convince them to remain silent:
Mark 7:24–37 (ESV)
36 And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
It is this Jesus, The Word of God who took flesh and lived among us, so that He could die for us to save us from our sins, whom Dorothy taught her children to love and trust in above all things. By word and example, she was His witness, confessing the truth that Jesus Christ was for her and is for you. Just as during His walk on earth in Galilee and Judea, Jesus healed many, and raised some from the dead, but did not heal all, nor did He empty all of the tombs of those who slept in death, not at that time, so it is now. While the Church exists today to bear witness to the truth that Christ is risen, He is for you, and He is returning in accordance with His promise, to bring life and immortality to those who wait for Him in faith, hope, and love, she does not exist to usher in utopia, to remove every aspect of injustice or sorrow or pain from this world. Instead, she exists to encourage you to wait for Him, knowing that as surely as He gave you eternal life through the Gospel by forgiving you of all of your sins that satan would use to keep you separated from His love for you, so surely will He return to restore you to life and peace at His coming in glory.
That is the confidence that we confess as we celebrate the Lord each Sunday, as we hear the Word, remember that we have been united to His death and resurrection through Holy Baptism, and receive the gift of forgiveness as we eat His Body and drink His blood in Holy Communion. This is the confidence in which Dorothy lived, and with which she died. On the morning of August 26, 2021, Dorothy received the promise that is expressed in Isaiah 54:17
17 no weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed, and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their vindication from me, declares the Lord.”
The Church militant - Those who live on earth, bearing witness to the Gospel, worships with the Church Triumphant - those who now rest in Christ and await His return in Glory and the Resurrection of the body, as we confess in the Creed, and serve our neighbor in this life, not in order to earn a place in the life to come, but because we have received it as a free gift by God’s grace through faith, awakened in us as we heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the Word that the Epistle text that I selected for your ears today charges me to declare to you. This is the Word that Dorothy encouraged me at the end of every Sunday Divine Service to faithfully preach, that she joyfully received, and in which she rested from her labors in this life. This is the Word that I bring to you who are alive and remain today. It is my prayer that this Word would not fall to the ground without reaching your hearts and awakening you to life in Christ through faith. There is only one alternative to life, and that is death. And so, today, I set before you an opportunity: remember your baptism when water and God’s promise came together to bring you into the newness of life in Christ, or if you have not had opportunity, know that God is faithful, and His promise that “He who believes and is baptized will be saved,” declared in Mark 16:16, is not an empty word, but is a real promise upon which you can live with joy and peace.
And may the peace of God, that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds, through Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.