Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text (John 10:27): My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
When we’re baptised, we already die. In one of the readings we heard earlier, it said: “For you have died, your life is hidden with Christ in God.” He’s not talking to people on the other side of the grave, St Paul is talking to those who are baptised. “For you have died.”
There’s an old story about Martin Luther. And the devil went to Martin Luther’s house and said, “Does Martin Luther live here?” And he replied, “No. Martin Luther died years ago. Only Christ lives here!”
When we then die, then, we rest with Christ in the grave, until he leads us out of it, in the resurrection on the last day.
And there may some sense in which we might say, when a person has had Alzheimer’s for so many years, that she died years ago. And even if we think like this, we should still say, “Alma died years ago: Only Christ lives here.”
But we don’t say that she died years ago, because her mind and her memory and her health deteriorated. We say she died years ago, because she was baptised. St Paul says, “We were buried with [Jesus Christ] by baptism into death.”
The old saying, “I think therefore I am” means nothing, and it isn’t true. What do we think it means? “I think therefore I am”, “I can remember therefore I am”, “I have all my mental faculties therefore I am”?
Instead we should say, “I believe that God has created me and all creatures.” “I am created by God therefore I am”. Or better say, “Christ died and rose again, therefore I am Christ’s.”
When we are Christ’s, then there are some things that we know are true:
Firstly, what Isaiah the prophet says, “Zion says, “The Lord has forsaken me; the Lord has forgotten me.” Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.”
Secondly, what Jesus Christ himself says: “Even the hairs of your head are numbered.”
And thirdly, we know that it is true what Jesus says in John 10, the verse which is the focus of this funeral sermon today, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”
Do you hear that? No one. No one, no thing, no circumstances. As St Paul says, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
… no one will snatch them out of my hand.
In a few weeks, the church throughout the world will celebrate Easter. And churches throughout the whole world will ring with the words, “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!”
And the message of Easter is not really the fact that “Jesus lives”. Sometimes, when people are driving along, you sometimes see a church that has the words, “Jesus lives.”
But the message of Easter is “Christ is risen.” It’s easy to say Christ lives – he lives on, he lives on in our hearts, he lives on in our memories, he lives on “spiritually”, whatever that means. But that’s not what’s meant.
When we say Christ lives, we are saying that died and rose again. We are saying that he got back up on our feet, by is own power. He rested in a tomb for three days, and he was raised to life again.
Now this is something that is often missing when it comes to funerals. It is easy to say that someone lives, that they live on, that they live on in our hearts, live on in our memories, and all that sort of thing, but the more I think about it, the more I think that that sort of talk only gives weak comfort.
What gives real strength is the promise of Jesus Christ, who has died and risen again, that on the last day, God will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and believers in Christ.
To say that a person just “lives” is comfort, but the sort of comfort when you’ve slipped while climbing a mountain, and you’re hanging onto a rope. It does give some comfort, but only while the rope lasts.
To say that a person will “rise again” is a different sort of comfort – it is the sort of comfort which stands on top of the mountain and takes a deep breath and admires the great view.
Jesus doesn't just say, “I am the life”, he says, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
And so we come back to our verse today, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”
No one will snatch them out of the hand of the one who has risen from the dead.
There is an event in the life of Jesus, where there is an old widow whose only son has died. And Jesus walks up to the boy and raises him up and gives him back to his mother. Now the funny thing is that they both would eventually die again. But in the resurrection Jesus will give the boy back to his mother again, and give the mother back to the boy.
The same goes for us: It’s easy to say when a person has died, that “they’ve gone to be with so-and-so”. But sometimes I think, how do we know in the next life, whether this person and that person will find each other? But there is a promise that we look to as Christians, that in the resurrection, that Christ himself will give us back to those we love, and will give those we love back to us. He will give our mother, our grandmother, our friend, back to us. But not just as they were, but perfect, restored, resurrected: as it says, about a man whom Jesus healed, “clothed and his right mind.”
Jesus is not just any old shepherd. He is the Good Shepherd. My sheep hear my voice, he says, and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”
Kristus ir augšāmcēlies. Christ is risen. And no one will snatch them out of my hand.
Amen.
Lord God, heavenly Father, we thank for the life of Alma and all the many blessings we received from her. Bless us with your Holy Spirit, so that no one will snatch us out of the hands of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.
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