You can tell that we are in the Easter season by looking
around. The decorations are up. The spring flowers are in the sanctuary. The cross is draped in white instead of
black. He who died on the cross and was
placed into the tomb was no longer in the tomb on Easter morning. The women were told by the angels that they
should not look for the living among the dead.
The tomb was no longer where Jesus belonged.
The tomb therefore is also not the final resting place for
those whom Jesus has redeemed by his holy precious blood and his innocent
suffering and death. The events of Holy
Week were not for Jesus’s sake—as though he had any need of these things, but
for all who have sinned and are therefore under God’s wrath. That’s us.
Jesus’s suffering and death were done in our place. But now because of what Jesus has done we do
not belong here. We should not look for
the living among the dead. This present
world is full of sin and death. Jesus
has redeemed us so that we are fit for a different place where there is
righteousness and life instead of what we know of here.
In our Gospel reading this morning Jesus says to his
disciples that he will be going away in order to prepare a place for them. Heaven is where all people would like to go,
but nobody can get there on their own. As
we are, with our sins, we do not belong there.
That is why it is necessary that Jesus prepare things. Without his preparation nobody would go to
heaven, but rather to hell. The way that
Jesus prepares a place for the disciples is by his atoning death on the cross
that silences the accusation of the Law against us. He was bruised for our transgressions, he was
crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was
the chastisement that brought us peace, and by his wounds we are healed. Our place in heaven is prepared by Jesus’s
death and resurrection. He is the way,
the truth, and the life. No one comes to
the Father except through him. This is
the message of Holy Week and of Easter.
And so it is nice that the circumstances are such where the
Easter decorations are still up as we commemorate the life, death, and fast
approaching resurrection of our Christian sister, Ann. Death is where the rubber hits the road as
far as being a Christian is concerned.
Without Christ, death is God’s punishment for sin and totally devoid of
goodness or comfort. In Christ, death is
the door to everlasting life. Jesus’s
death on the cross was the death of death.
The sting of death is taken away.
God wrath is emptied out of the death of a Christian because that wrath
has already been poured out upon Jesus in our place. Therefore death has lost its hold on those
who are in Christ and all that remains is the lightest possible sleep. The casket and the grave are not the eternal
resting place for Christians just as Jesus’s tomb was not his eternal resting
place. Just as Jesus rose from the dead,
so also Ann will rise too, to go to the place that Jesus has prepared, so that
where Jesus is, there she may be also.
This new life that is in Jesus is totally different from the
life that we have already known. The
prophet Isaiah and the apostle Paul write, “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor
has it entered into the imagination of the heart of man what God has prepared
for those who love him.” The new life in
Jesus that comes with his resurrection from the dead is curative for all our
ills. Depression, sadness, despair,
temptation, illness, violence, oppression, selfishness, worry, fear, and
whatever else is so annoying about this present life are unknown in the life to
come. Sin, death, and hell are no
more. Instead there is only
righteousness, life, and fellowship with God.
Because of what Jesus has done for us, and the sure promises
of God that have been communicated to us, we have no need to fear death so long
as we do not cast these treasures aside in unbelief. We need not fear death whether we be 45 years
old or 95 years old, so long as we remain Christians. Remaining a Christian is more than anything
else a matter of remaining in the Word of God.
God has taken care of Ann all these years with his holy Word and
Sacraments. As it turned out he even saw
to it that she should receive the Lord’s Supper on Maundy Thursday, the day commemorating
how Jesus instituted this saving meal, only a couple days before she entered
her final illness.
There is nothing more important and nothing more necessary
than that each of us continue to be blessed with the truth of God’s Word. It doesn’t matter if you think you are strong
or not. It doesn’t matter if you are a
charter member of a congregation. We are
all in need of that Word of God that tells us to turn away from every other
source of comfort and hope and to look to Jesus who is risen from the dead as
our only hope of eternal life.
Today, while the warmth of Easter can still be felt, we
commit Ann’s body to the grave, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, in the sure and
certain hope of the resurrection from the dead.
She has finished her course in this world, and now her real and true
life together with her Savior has begun.
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