PSALM 23
1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; 3 he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. 4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff — they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life long.
FIRST LESSON Job 19:23–27a
23 “Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! 24 Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever! 25 For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. 26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, 27 whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!
PSALM Psalm 46:1–7
1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. 2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; 3 though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. 4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. 5 God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns.
6 The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. 7 The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
SECOND LESSON 1 Thessalonians 4:13-20
13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.
GOSPEL John 14:1–4
1 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.”
MEDITATION
Grace and peace to you this day from God our Heavenly Father and from Jesus Christ, the author and giver of eternal life.
Mary Frances, Boots, Sherry, Scott, Chris, beloved family and brothers and sisters in Christ. We gather today, to say a temporary farewell to Jack Kenneth Carpenter; beloved husband, brother, father, grandfather, great grandfather business partner and friend. But as St. Paul says in his letter to the church in Thessalonica, we don’t “grieve as others do who have no hope.” (1 Thes. 4:13b) We come together today knowing, that our separation from the saints who have gone before us, is but a brief one, for we know in our hearts that in Christ, we have eternal life.
As children of God and joint heirs with Christ in God’s kingdom, we have hope, because of the knowledge that death does not have the final word. Through Christ’s obedience unto death, He overcame death so that we might live with Him forever. This doesn’t mean that we won’t miss Jack; this doesn’t mean that we won’t grieve his absence from us. Nor does this mean that we don’t have question that need to be answered.
If I were to ask, I bet many of us here today have questions running through our minds. And most of these questions focus on the word why? Why did this even have to happen? Why do some suffer before they die? Why has our loved one been taken from us so soon? But when you distill all these questions, you discover the real one behind them all. The thing we really want to know is the age-old question of the book of Job. “If a man dies, shall he live?” This is the real question we’d like the answer to. When someone dies, do they go on living in some other fashion-or is death a final ending?
Many years ago, James Whitcomb Riley wrote, I cannot say, and I will not say, that he is dead. He is just away. With a cheery smile and a wave of a hand, he has wandered into an unknown land. And left is dreaming how very fair, it needs must be, since he lingers there…Think of him still there, I say; He is not dead-he is just away. But is James correct? Is Jack simply away? Or has this love of family, this love of craftsmanship, the love of life itself forever stilled him?
For me, the promises found in the Bible have a valid message for each of us in times like this one. The promises we have because of Jesus’ resurrection is that life is not forever stilled, but that we will go on. Even though a man dies, he does in fact live!
Jesus said several things that point toward this fact, and the first one is: “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matt. 11:28) Many scholars think that this passage, spoken to the disciples, involves death. Jesus rarely used unnecessary words, and when He spoke He chose His words with care. He must have been very deliberate when He used the word “rest” in connection with death. For what does rest mean? Why do we “take 10” during the working day, or rest between halves of a football game or rest with sleep at night? Isn’t it so that we can rise up refreshed and go on working, playing or living?
Rest is never an end to itself, but only a preparation for doing more work; a girding up of one’s strength, so that they might go on living. If Jesus speaks of death in these terms, then isn’t He saying that death isn’t the end-but the beginning? Can’t we then think of death as the girding up of ones strength to enter a new kind of life. Someone once said that, “Death is only a horizon, and a horizon is only the limit of one’s sight.”
I like that statement. For life always goes on beyond our horizons, even though we’re unable to see over the hills. And so it is with death. It’s a new kind of life that goes on, even though we can’t see it. And there’s another thing Jesus said to His disciples as He spoke of death. He said, “again a little while and you will see Me again.” (John 16:16) The reason that death is so frightening for us, is that we have not experienced it personally. We’ve seen death come to members of our family, or to our circle of friends-but none of us can experience it for ourselves until that moment when we die. And because it’s so unfamiliar, we fear as humankind has always feared the unknown.
Someone once suggested that if by some miracle you were able to make contact with an unborn child in the womb, and you were able to ask them if they wanted to be born, they would say no. The unborn child is quite content where they are, safe in their mother’s womb. They have warmth, nourishment and darkness. Why should they want for any other life? It would be of no use for us to speak to them of the joys of living, of sunshine, grass, ice cream and our favorite sporting events. They would be unable to comprehend any of that. The only world they know is that of their mother’s womb. No other world would possibly interest them. Cannot then the same thing be said for death?
Death is a kind of world that we can’t describe since it so vastly different from the one in which we now live. We fear death simply because it’s unfamiliar to us. But Jesus tells us, “You will see Me!” In other words, even though the surroundings of death are different, He’ll be there. The same Jesus that we know, and serve and love in this life, will be there to guide us in the new life we call death. It may well be a completely different form of existence-but there is one thing that will be familiar: our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. And since He has shown us that God is forgiveness and love-His very presence indicated that there’s nothing to fear. Across the horizon is God and this gives us hope!
Finally, in our gospel reading Jesus said, “ In my Father’s house are many rooms.” (John 14:2a) Some translations use the word mansions, but it doesn’t matter whether we use the word mansions or rooms, Jesus is describing death in terms of homes. And what is it that we associate with homes? Is it not families? And when we think of families, do we not naturally think of love? Certainly, when we think of the Carpenter home we think of the love that existed between father and mother and daughter. We think of that love extending to the grandchildren and the great grandchildren, the other family members and even to each and every one of us? I think that one of the things Jesus was trying to tell us was that this kind of love goes on-the love that we see expressed within our homes and families continues to exist even after death. But then, it’s a new kind of love. A love that is lifted up in Christ.
In the book Prayers from the Ark, the prayers at first seem to be about the prayers of animals. However, when read carefully, you find that they really aren’t about animals at all, but about people. If you were to read one particular prayer from the mountain goat, you might catch the spirit of the author (Bruce Ferguson):
Lord, let me live as I will, a little giddiness of the heart, the strange taste of unknown flowers. For who else are your mountains? Your snow, wind, these springs? The sheep do not understand. They graze and graze all of them and all in the same direction and they eternally chew the cud of their insipid routine. But I-I love to bound to the heart of all Your marvels, leap Your chasms and with my mouth stuffed with your intoxicating grasses, quiver with an adventurer’s delight on the summit of the world! Amen
It seems to me that this spirit, this love of life, this adventurous character, hasn’t been quenched forever. Rather it still lives, for death is not the end. We will mourn Jack’s absence from us of course. We’ll miss him each time we place items in the food pantry in the Narthex. We’ll think of Jack each time we lift the lid on the sound system stand. And I know that with each chime of the clock in my office, I’ll smile and remember Jack. Yes, we’ll all miss Jack. How can we help it? We’ll miss his smile and the stories that he shared. Jack has had a wonderful impact on all our lives. He touched so many people in so many ways. But beyond our own grief is the realization that the resurrection, we will all share, is a reality and this life is not so much over, as it is beginning in a new form.
So, despite our tears, we realize that even though Jack is no longer with us, he really does live. He lives in the presence of Jesus just beyond the horizon that this world calls death: and our cry this day is really one of thanksgiving. As St. Paul put it so eloquently in his first letter to the Corinthians, “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory! (15:57)
Amen