A domesticated animal is an animal that is no longer
wild. You can put domesticated animals
in a pen or in a fence and they are pretty much going to stay there. A person is able to control a domesticated
animal. A wild animal is not like
that. It does whatever it wants. You can’t control it.
We have a tendency to domesticate animals; we also have a
tendency to try to domesticate God. The
stuff that gets done in churches can give this impression. We tend to do the same things over and over
again. Routines make it seem like we are
the ones in control. Like a dairyman
milks his cows for his own benefit, so also it can seem as though we in our
churches milk God and use him for our own benefit.
Some people like to drink milk, others don’t—some people have
more use for a dairyman than others. That
is similar with how churches are thought about.
Some people like the God talk, others do not. And so it is not surprising that most folks
say, “To each their own. If that’s the
way you want to spend your time, then fine, but I don’t have to if I don’t want
to.”
If we were lords and masters, and if God were a cow to be
milked, then I suppose there would be nothing wrong with this picture, but
that’s not the way that things are. We
have not domesticated God. We are not in
control of him. God is going to do what
he wants whether you like it or not.
This is something that is brought out very forcefully in our
readings today. Something unheard of is
going to happen in a very short time.
There will be a resurrection from the dead. This resurrection will be for a purpose as
you heard Jesus say, “Those who have done good will be resurrected to
life. Those who have done evil will be
resurrected to judgment.” It doesn’t
matter one bit what you think of this idea, because you are not the one who is
in control. God is in control, and he is
going to do it, whether you like it or not.
And so you must get it out of your head that God is someone
you can use, however that might be, to suit your own purposes. It is also good for you to realize that what
we are engaged in here today at this funeral and burial are not routine. Stupendous matters are laid out before us
here today. Mary Lou’s course of life in
this world is done. We are placing her
body into ground. “The time is coming,”
Jesus says in our Gospel reading, “when all who are in their graves will
hear his voice and be resurrected.” Mary
Lou will hear this voice and she will come out of this very casket with her
glorified body.
Unbelief and hardness of heart wants to tamp all this down
and say, “Oh no, nothing so nearly as exciting (or perhaps frightening) is
taking place today. This is all totally
routine. This is just yet another person
who has died. She’s not the first and
she won’t be the last.”
Those who do not believe want to hold on to their delusion
that they are in control and everything is well in hand. Amazingly, believing this and living this way
works pretty good for the time being.
These folks are cool, calm, and collected. The problem, though, is that it isn’t true. It’s like playing pretend or make-believe:
“Let’s pretend that God won’t resurrect us or judge us and that we can make
whatever we want of our own life.”
I can’t make anybody stop doing this kind of thing. All I can say is that it is just wishful
thinking, and will prove itself to be untrue when the time comes. If you won’t believe my warning, then there’s
nothing that can be done for you. But
perhaps I can also alleviate your fears by telling you more about this God who is
in control, so that you can know what he is like. We naturally think that only those things
that we are able to control are safe, because if something is outside of our
control, then who knows what might happen?
But God has not left us in the dark so that we do not know what he is
like and what he desires to do with us.
This is why he has given to us his Word.
It is so that we can know him and believe in him and look to him for
help in time of need.
What God in his Word reveals to us about himself is that
even though we have done what God has told us not to do, and not done those
things that God has told us to do, he still somehow, strangely, incomprehensibly
loves us. God’s commands are good and so
those who break them must be punished.
But in order that we might not be punished as we deserve for our sins in
this life, as well as in hell in the next, God promised us a Redeemer from our
sin. God makes this promise with the
very first sin in the Garden of Eden. He
will send his own eternally begotten Son to redeem us from the punishment we
deserve by being punished in our place.
And that’s just what happened. In the fullness of time God sent forth his
Son, born of the Virgin Mary, to redeem us from our sins by taking them upon
himself so that he became sin. All the
wrath of God for all the sinners of the world—including each one of you—was
poured out upon Jesus so that even though he is true God with all the strength
and vigor that goes along with that he truly died on the cross—crushed for our
iniquities.
And why? For
you. So that you are no longer a son of
the devil or a daughter of the devil, which is what everybody is who remains
enslaved to sin, but so that you may know the truth and the truth may set you
free, and that by faith you lay hold of the inheritance you have in Jesus
Christ of being a child of God.
Jesus says in our Gospel reading today: “Truly, truly
(he’s being emphatic here); truly, truly I say to you, whoever hears my Word
and believes him who sent me has eternal life.
He does not come into judgment but has passed from death to life.” Jesus says that in your hearing of this Word
of truth that comes from him you will not be judged for all the awful,
disgusting things that you have done.
Jesus was judged and condemned in your place. Therefore, instead, you have already passed
from death to life.
God reveals to us what his intentions are towards us in his
Word. There isn’t a single one of you
who can’t turn to this God for mercy and the full and complete forgiveness of
your sins. This is what Jesus tells you
to do in what was read to you! Through
faith in this Word that rings in your ears at this very moment you are swept up
into God’s great acts of salvation that continue to this very day, this very
moment. For it has pleased God to save
people through faith. He is the one who has
ordered the circumstances so that you could hear of Christ today. You are forgiven by this Word that comes from
him.
And this is also how we must understand Mary Lou’s life if
we wish to get to the very essence of it.
The very essence of it is that she is the recipient of God’s great
saving actions. She also shared in God’s
goodness and providence that extends to both believers and unbelievers because
God is very generous. She was blessed with
her husband and her children and her grandchildren. She was blessed with diligence and
industriousness—a fact I can testify to since I worked with her closely as the
secretary of this congregation. She had
friends and good experiences and lived a rich life particularly because she was
content, even though she was not stuffed to the gills with money. These gifts from God—and there are many
others—are great and precious, but they are not essential to who she was.
For that we recall the way that God has dealt with her for
her salvation. From before the foundation
of the world he chose her for salvation as a sheer gift of grace. And he brought it about that she was
justified together with all other people by Christ’s life, death, and
resurrection. In order that she could
make use of this grace he sent the Holy Spirit in the Word and the Sacraments
and these were liberally applied in Mary Lou’s life.
Jesus, through the hand of her baptizer, baptized Mary Lou. Jesus shepherded her along all these years. By the power of the Holy Spirit he brought
her to repentance, forgave her sins, and admonished and encouraged her in the
new life of love. It was by his grace
that she stood, and it was he that lifted her up when she stumbled and fell,
restoring her to faith.
And now he has seen fit to bring this chapter of her life to
a close. This was a bit unexpected, to
be sure, but we are not the ones in control.
That’s alright. God is in
control. And it is necessary for this
life of sin and death to be put to an end so that we can be brought into that
life with God where our true life is.
She has lost nothing.
It is we who have lost something by her being taken away from us. But if you believe in Jesus and the
forgiveness and life he has worked for you, then you also will lose nothing by
death and you will see her again when you both worship our God and Savior
together with the rest of the multitude of heaven.
May God be as merciful to us and he has been and continues
to be with Mary Lou.
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