The text this day is from the prophet Isaiah, the 25th chapter:
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”Thus far the text.
Dear Steven, Pete, Kristine, and my dear friends in Christ,
Lucille was a dear, sweet soul, beloved by this congregation and by her Lord, and we shall all miss her terribly. But, despite that, Lucille now rests in the arms of her Savior. Lucille knew and she still knows that in this place the Lord had a place prepared for her. We speak of this place often. We are often referring to the heavenly home that awaits all who are in the Lord Jesus Christ. But it is also true that the Lord had prepared a place for her, in this church.
Lucille worked to bring men to the stars, but the Lord of Creation brought the heavens to her. He brought all of the heavens down to this place, where Lucille partook of the heavenly feast each and every time it was offered. Every time she opened her mouth to receive from the Lord His true body and blood was a preparation for the time in which she is even now living. Every time she took the Lord’s Supper was a foretaste of the feast which she is now receiving. Every time she had Communion was a preparation for the tears being wiped away from her eyes, a swallowing of death itself.
Lucille had to taste death, for it was the door through which she walked into the open embrace of Jesus. And her death, as horrible as it is that someone should die, was nothing more than the Lord taking it to Himself. Upon His cross, He took to Himself all the pain and suffering of this life, including death, that He might taste it on our behalf, taking the punishment that was meant for her and for us.
Through the Lord’s death upon the cross, He began to swallow up death for Lucille and for you. Through His resurrection, He gave life to all who would believe in Him. Through the gifts of the Church, even now still offered, He delivered that life through Baptism, that peace through His Word, and that strength through His Supper that Lucille now enjoys.
It is through His death that we have life, for the sins that we have inherited from Adam and the sins that we have committed are swallowed up in the cry from the cross, “It is finished!” This Lucille heard week in and week out for decades, and now she sees it with her own two eyes. Now she sees the Lord’s salvation, and needs have no more faith through hearing. Now she believes because she has seen.
And more shall come for her, and for us. More shall happen, that Lucille should experience the fullness of the Lord’s life in her own resurrection from the dead. While Lucille lies before us today, we should be reminded of the pain and tragedy that sin wreaks upon us all. But, more should we be reminded that the Lord will take this earthly body and transform into a body like His own. We will place Lucille in the ground this day to keep her safe through the work of the Holy Spirit, who will watch over her and keep her body until the Lord Jesus Christ returns in glory to judge the living and the dead. He shall come to her resting place and dig her body out, and raise it to life everlasting.
Lucille knows what that outcome of judgment will be; she had hope in this, even as we do. The hope of the Church is life in Christ; it is something that is preached, and something that is believed, so central to all the work of the Church. Without it, we are nothing, and should be undone by death, by pain, by sorrow. But, the Christian, and Lucille is one, believes in the resurrection, for the Lord has promised it to her and He does not lie.
By faith, the Lord tells us that we shall be found faithful, that He shall speak His “well done” to us, and welcome us into that everlasting life with Him. This is what we hold onto with all the life, all the hope that we have. He will give us life. He has already gone to prepare that place for us, and He shall soon welcome us into it. Lucille is already in the presence of the Lord, and soon she will be made whole again. Soon, she will be in that land where there is a never-ending feast, a land where there is no sorrow or grief, a land where there is no death, a land where the judgment of God against sin exists no more for there shall be no sin. And with Lucille, we shall look up at the sun and the stars and see their glory diminished in the light of Christ, and we shall say, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
And we shall rejoice. We shall have peace. We shall be reunited with those we love, for we are already bound up to them in Christ. We have not lost Lucille. We just miss her, for she is already in the place the Lord gave to her to wait for His final coming, where we who are in Christ shall live together forever. In the One Body of Christ, we are still with her, for she has joined the Church Triumphant, never to die again, but to praise her Lord and live in blessedness for eternity. We still await that day for ourselves, which soon shall come, but it is coming. And until then, Lucille continues to pray for us, for the Church of God, that we might all be one and stand to life together with her in the Light of her Sun, Jesus the Christ. In His name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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