Monday, April 08, 2019

Memorial service message


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.

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