A Funeral Sermon

 

Teri's Mom's Memorial Service

17 June 2021

John Knox Village

Orange City, Florida

"The undiscover'd country from whose bourn/ No traveler returns." Thus Shakespeare’s Hamlet, musing on death in his famous "To Be or Not To Be" soliloquy. In his existential desolation over his father’s murder, Hamlet longs for death as a "consummation/Devoutly to be wish'd." But he had a problem: death is the great unknown. Would there be damning consequences if he took his own life? So Hamlet laments, "Conscience doth make cowards of us all." [1] Shakespeare’s matchless literary creation reminds us of one nasty fact: Death is the Great Equalizer. All of us―great or small, prince or pauper, accomplished or pedestrian―must, sooner or later, come to terms with death.  What matters is how we come to terms with it.

For Christians, it's all too common to fall back into a Platonic pattern of thinking in which the "real person" is one’s soul. In this way of thinking, our mortal body is, by implication, merely tangential to our soul and not a necessary, defining component of our identity. Even in cases, like Irene's, when death has come after a long and fruitful life, the temptation is to take comfort in the notion that she has now reunited with her parents with Jesus in heaven, and to leave it at that. Now I don't want to downplay the sliver of truth found in such comforting thoughts. After all, the Apostle Paul does say, in words etched on my own father’s grave marker, that at death a Christian, though "absent from the body," is "present with the Lord." [2] And hence we can surely rejoice in the knowledge that Irene is now with her Lord.

Upon reflection, however, simply focusing on this as if it were the whole story is both unsatisfying and unbiblical. For in the Bible death is portrayed as an interloper disrupting God’s designs for his good creation. As such death is always worthy of grief, just as Jesus himself wept over the demise of his friend Lazarus. [3] Death, from this point of view, must be defeated. It must be destroyed. It must be abolished. And God is not one to do deals or make compromises. Make no mistake, leaving the body in the grave while the “real person” resides in “heaven” would be a compromise of the first order.

The Apostle Paul, as a trained biblical scholar, knew this. He knew, and made central to his thought, God’s promise of a new creation. He knew, from Psalm 102:27, that God had no intention to abandon what he had created; rather, God intended ultimately to exchange this old creation for a new one like a simple change of clothing. Paul knew the implications of this hope for God’s people as well. In Isaiah 25, the prophet wrote:

        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. [4]

 

This promised "swallowing up" of death has one necessary entailment, as the prophet proclaims in the very next chapter:

        Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.

            You who dwell in dust, awake and sing for joy! [5]

Paul understood this scriptural logic clearly. This is evident, above all, in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, where he argues, in great detail, that resurrection is a necessary component of the Christian gospel. The climax of his argument in this chapter comes in verses 50-58:

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 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 the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." [6]

"O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?" [7]

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. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

 

This is a spectacular passage, not least because of what, perhaps surprisingly to many, the Apostle says about resurrection. Resurrection, Paul makes crystal clear, is not the mere resuscitation or re-animation of a corpse. "Flesh and blood"―in other words, humanity as it is now composed: ephemeral, weak, perishable―by definition cannot come into possession of the kingdom of God, that final state of affairs when, as Paul writes in verses 27-28, death will have finally been defeated and God will be "all in all." What is needed, and what therefore will be given when Christ returns, is transformation. [8] And this transformation will happen, Paul says, instantly―in the blink of an eye, as it were. The dead will be raised “incorruptible,” without degenerating decay. [9] And "we"―that is, those still alive when Christ returns―will be “changed,” just like the heavens and earth in Psalm 102. At that time, we will not lose the bodies we now have. On the contrary, the bodies we now have will put on new sets of clothes, clothes that represent a new type of physicality: one that cannot decay, cannot wear out, and, most importantly, cannot die. As Paul later wrote in Irene's favorite book, Philippians, Christ, by his sovereign power, "will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body." [10] The resurrection hope, in other words, is the hope for an immortal physicality. It is the hope of the ultimate death of death.

This is good news indeed―so good, in fact, that Paul rhetorically transports himself into that promised future to taunt death, just as a victorious warrior might mock his defeated foe : "O Death," he says, "where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?"

One question remains, however: On what basis does Paul have this supreme confidence? Is it, after all, mere wishful thinking? The apostle provides a clue to the answer in verse 57, where he gives "thanks to God, who gives us the victory"―present tense, conveying the certainty of its ultimate eventuality―"through our Lord Jesus Christ." At the beginning of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul quotes a pithy, two-part, traditional summary of the Christian gospel: "The Messiah died for our sins according to the Scriptures;" and "he was raised the third day according to the Scriptures." [11] Indeed, Paul’s entire argument for resurrection hangs on the historical occurrence and theological significance of Christ's own resurrection. For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus was not some strange, isolated occurrence that somehow "proved" he was "God." No. Jesus' resurrection was, as Paul says in verse 23 of 1 Corinthians 15, the "firstfruits," in other words, the guarantee and the model of the ultimate resurrection of all his people. Meanwhile, sin―death's poison-filled stinger that facilitates its lethal dominion―has been dealt with and was, as Paul later says in Romans, "condemned" on the cross. [12] Sin's venom, in other words, was absorbed by Christ for the benefit of his people. [13] With its poison thus drained, death’s formerly lethal sting is made, in ultimate terms, harmless. Death, in other words, has been rendered stingless. It holds no terror, for those who sleep in the Lord do so in the certainty of their future resurrection.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have thought often of my mother-in-law Irene. I have perused some old photographs, dating back to her youth back in Pennsylvania. Memories flooded back of all of the trips Teri and I have made over the past 4 decades to Jersey, PA, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida, not to mention the cruise to the Bahamas the family took to welcome the new millennium. I will remember long and interesting conversations with her, her cooking, her unfailing hospitality … and, most of all, her genuine love for the Lord. The thought of not seeing her again in this life brings a certain melancholy. Death, you see, remains a tragedy. But this melancholy we feel is tempered in the faith that death’s stinger has been disabled. We who are in Christ will see Irene again, and for that we can be forever grateful to our Lord and Savior for his victory over sin and death.

So, rest in peace, our dear Irene, "in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ." [14] To God alone be the glory.

[1] Shakespeare, Hamlet 3.1.79-80, 63-64, 83

[2] 2 Corinthians 5:8
[3] John 11:33-35
[4] Isaiah 25:7-8
[5] Isaiah 26:19a
[6] Isaiah 25:8 (Aquila, Theodotion)
[7] Hosea 13:14

[8] Cf. Raymond F. Collins, First Corinthians (Sacra Pagina; Collegeville, Minn.: Glazier/Liturgical, 1999) 573-74

[9] Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans/Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000) 1297

[10] Philippians 3:21

[11] 1 Corinthians 15:3-4

[12] Romans 8:3

[13] Cf. Thiselton, 1300

[14] Book of Common Prayer (Church of England), The Order for the Burial of the Dead