Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (1 Corinthians 15:51-57)
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on immortality, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Prayer: Lord, sanctify us in the truth. Your Word is truth. Amen.
You know: death really isn’t all that mysterious.
At least, it isn’t mysterious in the same sense that St Paul says in these words for us today: Behold! I tell you a mystery!
Death happens, we see it, we know it. We could say it’s kind of mysterious how death has such a profound effect on us. We could say it’s mysterious how death arouses in us a desire for eternity. We could say that it’s kind of mysterious how we grieve when someone dies, like Doug. We could say it’s mysterious.
But that’s not what St Paul’s talking about when he says: “Behold! I tell you a mystery!”
When St Paul says these things: it’s a bit like when the Prophet Isaiah says: A voice says, “Cry!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All flesh is grass... the grass withers, the flowers fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.
That’s a mystery!
Or when Jesus gathers his disciples together on top of a mountain, sits down like a king on his throne with the majesty that belongs to him, opens his mouth and teaches his disciples and says: “Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.”
That’s a mystery! – Blessed are those who mourn.... for they will be comforted. What a promise! But what will they be comforted with?
They will be comforted with the mystery of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Therefore, as St Paul says, we do not grieve as others do who have no hope.
And it’s this mystery that Paul wants to tell to the church of all times and all places when he says these words: Behold! I tell you a mystery.
He wants to draw you in. He wants to invite you into the hidden chambers of God’s heart and show you what lies in store for each Christian who dies in the faith.
In Ephesians, St Paul says: “To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.”
This mystery – he says – was hidden in the dark recesses of God’s heart. It wasn’t for us to know about it yet. But Paul says, I am called to preach this mystery to you. I am called to tell you that the unknown God has a name, and he has risen Jesus Christ from the dead.
So, what St Paul says in our text today, echoes those words of Jesus: Blessed are you ears for they hear and your eyes for they see. For many of the prophets longed to hear what you hear and did not hear it, and to see what you see but did not see it.”
And so St Paul says:
Behold! I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.
Ask yourselves: Do you believe those words? Listen to how simple they are, and feel their power. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.
As we come together today for Doug’s funeral, we come to give thanks for the life of a man that all of us so much enjoyed. We come to thank God for the great gift that he gave many people through the person of Doug.
And in some sense, Doug’s death marks somewhat the end of an era. It brings to end a chapter of family history. All of us here will miss Doug together, but in different ways and for different reasons.
But it’s not the end, full stop. People outside the Christian faith will sit and ponder and consider whether or not there is an afterlife, or as people often say, a “here-after”.
But Christians not only believe that there is a “here-after”, but that it is takes a certain shape and has a certain form, and structure and order to it. It’s not something that’s non-descript, but in all its indescribability, St Paul, with such confidence, with such boldness, almost arrogance, and with such simplicity, sets out to describe what it looks like.
We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.
What a confession of faith it is to come to the church today and say Amen to these words: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.
What courage it requires of you all today to stare into the grave of Doug Mirtschin and confess with simplicity and certainty: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.
Do remember the words of Jesus?: “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, and I go to wake him up.”
Or what about when Jesus sees all the people outside Jairus’ house, weeping and carrying on because of the death of his daughter, and he says: “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.”
So our confession of faith today is not simply that Doug Mirtschin has died, but something even more profound, he has fallen asleep with Jesus, in Jesus, he rests in Jesus.
Behold, I tell you a mystery! We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.
We shall not all sleep, but we shall awake again to see another day, a more glorious, and a brighter day that we have ever seen before.
We shall all be changed. How? In a moment, in a twinkling of an eye. When? At the last trumpet.
For the trumpet shall sound, says St Paul, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.
It’s true when the prophet Isaiah says: All flesh is grass. The grass withers and the flowers fade.
And for many of us, it’s been a difficult thing to see these words come to fulfilment in Doug’s body and in some sense his mind. It’s not an easy thing when a man with such strength looking almost like he was wasting away. We’ve learnt from experience now, that this body is in actual fact perishable. We learn this from our observances, our experience.
Now, we learn something new by faith, and only by faith. We learn something new now not through our eyes, but through our hears. St Paul says: Faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
For the trumpet will sound and dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.
Funerals are not occasions where we commemorate endings. Christian funerals are occasions where we commemorate the preparation for something new, for the future work of God that we still wait for – A Christian funeral is an occasion where we look forward to the resurrection of the dead.
When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
Do you hear those words: Death is swallowed up. Devoured! Chewed up and crunched to bits.
There’s a beautiful Christmas lullaby, which says:
Sing, lullaby! Lullaby baby now awaking, sing lullaby!
Hush, now he stirs the infant King,
Dreaming of Easter, gladsome morning,
Conquering death, its bondage breaking.
Sing, lullaby!
Death is swallowed up in victory!
Dreams are swallowed up with realities!
Hopes and wishes are swallowed up with real things!
Faith is swallowed up by sight!
Tears are swallowed up with joy!
Suffering is swallowed up with peace!
Desire is swallowed up with fulfilment!
Mourning is swallowed up with comfort!
Death is swallowed up with resurrection, with victory.
That’s what we come here today to confess as a Christian church: that each Christian will be healed by Jesus from their perish-ability, each will be healed from their mortality, each will be healed from their corruption, and each will find these words fulfilled in themselves, which are said about a man that Jesus had healed: “And he sat at Jesus feet, clothed, and in his right mind.”
In the Apostles’ Creed we say: I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Christian church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
Can you see the order, the structure here? The Holy Spirit calls us by the gospel into the church, in the church we become a fellowship, a communion of holy people, of saints through Holy Baptism, in this Christian church our sins are daily and richly forgiven, and then this forgiveness of sins blossoms into the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
Everything in our text today from St Paul is completely beyond our experience. These are things that are only grasped by faith. In a sense, the Scripture speaks to us from the other side of the grave from one who has seen what is there and now tells us who are still here. And what is seen there on the other side of the grave is so great and so magnificent, that it can only be told to us, by saying: “Behold! I tell you a mystery!”
In the last two verses of this text today, we read:
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The death of a person is a testimony that they like everyone was conceived and born in sin. The only exception to this is Jesus Christ himself, who became sin for us, and took on sin for us.
That’s the sting we feel and experience today. The sting of death is sin. As St Paul says: The wages of sin is death.
But then we also read: But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We already heard before that death will be swallowed up by victory. But here’s the thing: Here, the text says: But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We don’t earn the victory! We don’t work for the victory. God simply gives us the victory, as a free gift, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
And it doesn’t say, he will give us, but he gives us the victory, now, in the church, through Holy Baptism. He gives us the victory every time we eat and drink the body and blood with all those who have been given the victory before us, with the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.
Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
God bless you this day as we go to bury this man, Doug, whom we knew and loved. Jesus himself knows the sting: he wept himself at the death of Lazarus. But he has died for your sins on the cross, and risen again for them, as a physical and historical proof that you will also rise with him, and also, as St Paul says, “so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope”.
Jesus himself says: Blessed, blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed.
Amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
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ReplyDeleteThank you for the inspiration this Funeral Message gave me. I will be using parts of this and the basic theme in a Funeral today in Florida for a Believer who has died an untimely death due to cancer. It is an excellent message.
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