Welcome to
the memorial service for R.
A memorial service is a time for remembering and reflecting. We remember the life that R lived and
reflect on the implications of his death for all of us.
R mattered
to people. His military service mattered
to those he worked with. His work as a
mechanic mattered to those whose equipment he repaired and maintained. His motorcycle racing made him a significant
part of that community, and his love for being around people and helping them
when he could made a difference in many people’s lives. For these things we can be grateful. It strengthens our community and enriches our
lives to have people around who are willing to fix what’s broken, to give
counsel where they can, and to invest a portion of their lives in military
service to defend our country.
But R is dead. No longer can he do
the things that he did to contribute to people’s lives. As his cancer was killing him, it was taking
away his ability to make a difference in these ways. This is a loss. Some of you have felt this loss for a while,
as the man who loved to help people, to fix things, to grill, to ride his
motorcycle and to go to the movies gradually disappeared. And the more you appreciated his
contributions to your life, the more painful it will be to see that taken
away. When love is deep, grief will also
be deep, for we must come to grips with the loss of much good that we had
enjoyed in having a person in our lives who is no longer there.
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There are
other reasons for grief as well. You may
have wanted something from R that there is now no hope of ever
receiving. You may have wanted to give
him something that he is now no longer able to receive. Whatever the cause, grief is a natural and
normal response to someone’s death, and it is important to acknowledge this. And sometimes grief comes before the person
dies, as we see the effects of the fatal disease taking its toll and suffer the
loss of much of what made that person special to us before the person actually
dies. We may do our grieving ahead of
time, and when the funeral comes, we may be largely done with grief.
So, as we
remember R, and we reflect on the implications of his death for us, we may
experience both gratitude for what his life meant for us and grief for the lost
possibilities resulting from his death. Beyond
that, we are forced to come to grips once more with the fact that this story is
repeated in every one of our lives. We
are born, we have a chance to enjoy life for a while and make whatever
contribution we can to the lives of others, then we die and all contributions
we make by our life are over. The great
prophet Moses, who lived over three thousand years ago, described it this way
in in the Bible in Psalm 90:
The days of our lives add
up to seventy years,
or eighty if one is
especially strong.
But even one’s best years
are marred by trouble and oppression.
Yes, they pass quickly
and we fly away.
…
So teach us to consider
our mortality,
So that we might live wisely.
Three
thousand years later, our life expectancy hasn’t changed much at all; we get
seventy or eighty years on this earth, and then it’s over.
But it isn’t
over when it’s over. The upcoming Easter
holiday teaches this, for it is not so much about eggs and bunnies as it is
about the commemoration of Jesus Christ, who, after being crucified and buried
in a grave, rose from the grave in a new and transformed life which he makes
available to his people. This short,
troublesome life that Moses describes is only prologue, a first small step of
our vast existence which will continue forever in the life to come. When we fly away from this world, we are
entering a deeper reality, for we are flying into the presence of the creator
of the universe, God himself, and his son Jesus Christ.
Even now,
R is having this encounter. We don’t
know much about what this experience will be like, but we do know that it will
be awesome; far more awesome than meeting Oprah, or Mark Zuckerberg, or LeBron
James, or the president or the pope.
There’s no meeting we could have with anyone in this life that would be nearly
as awesome as meeting God. The last book
of the Bible, Revelation, tells of one such meeting in which John, the author,
describes Jesus this way:
14 His head and hair were as white as wool, even as white as
snow, and his eyes were like a fiery flame. 15 His feet were like polished
bronze refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters.
John was
blown away, and we would be too by such an encounter.
How do we
approach such a God as this? We can’t
even approach the powerful people in this life so easily; they live in gated
communities with walls around their homes and body guards keeping little people
like us away. How then do we approach
God?
Even with
the powerful people of this world, there are little people who can approach
them, namely their children. President
Trump’s children have ready access to him. So do Mark Zuckerberg’s. If you’re part of the family, you belong, and
you can have access that no one else gets.
So it is
with God; if you’re part of His family you get access to him. Jesus Christ, God’s Son, gets complete access
to God. What’s more, Jesus makes it
possible for us to be adopted into God’s family so we can be God’s children too
and get the same access he does.
But how are
we adopted into God’s family? It can’t
be by paying our way in. If a child on
the street came up to me and said, “Here’s $50, I want to be adopted into your
family,” I’d say, “No way – go home to your own family.” And that’s what God will say to us if we tell
him, “Here’s all the good stuff I did, now adopt me into your family.” But if we become friends with God’s son Jesus
Christ, and he goes to his Father and tells him, “this person is a friend of
mine and I want him to be adopted into our family,” then God listens to him and
will adopt us into his family.
A thief who
was crucified along with Jesus shows us how this is done, for he could say to
another criminal being crucified, “We are getting what we deserve for what we have
done, but this man [he’s talking about Jesus] has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you
come into your kingdom.” And Jesus said
to him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”
He told Jesus
that he deserved punishment for the bad things he had done and asked Him to
remember him. This was how the thief
became friends with Jesus, and it will be how we do it too. And if we are friends of Jesus, and through
Jesus are adopted into God’s family, then God will welcome us into his household
when this life is over, and we will enjoy his company and the company of his
family forever. And it will be wonderful. Nothing in this life can be compared with the
joy of that experience. If you combine
the joy of a wedding, the Super Bowl celebration, the victory day parade after
WWII and a super graduation party and then multiply it all times a thousand,
you might get a hint of what heaven’s joy will be like. It will be filled with love and beauty, God
will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and all the sorrow and heartache we
have ever felt will be swallowed up in an endless celebration of the goodness
and magnificence of God.
So in this
memorial service for R, not only do we remember the life that R lived and reflect on its significance for us, but we look forward with hope to
a glorious celebration to which all who are invited who are friends of Jesus. Let us pray.
