Sermon - Funeral Jean Westfall

Dear children and grandchildren of Jean, family and friends: God’s peace be with you. St. Paul wrote: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” Jean was baptized into Christ, His name and righteousness were given to her, and therefore she shall be made alive in Christ. This is God’s promise to Christians, so that even in death we have hope and look forward to the resurrection of the dead. 

Jean is indeed one of God’s dearly beloved children. During her earthly life she was a faithful sister of Christ here in our congregation, regularly in church in order to hear God’s Word and receive the life-giving body and blood of Jesus into her own flesh. The last few years, when she could no longer make it to services, she gladly received me into her home so that I could deliver God’s gifts to her.

Outside of her attendance at church she served her neighbor by working at the hospital. Her humble service in which she laundered clothes and cleaned rooms for the ill was motherly and even Christ-like. Afterall, our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed, stooped down to wash His apostle’s feet in humble service. So Jean loved her neighbor, like Jesus, by performing the kindly work often ignored and sometimes even looked down upon.

What’s more, Jean’s work in a hospital reminds me of what Jesus says when He refers to Himself as a doctor: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” Christ Jesus has come as our great Physician to heal us who are sick with sin. Sin is indeed a grave sickness, far more deadly and destructive than any other disease known to man.

Satan likes to make sin appear attractive and he even likes to make people call evil things good and good things evil. But this is all a devilish mirage, since our sinfulness is that which brings us every misery in this life and even leads us to death. So today we are starkly reminded that Jean was a sinner, and her sin-sickness is why she today lay in this casket. “By a man came death… in Adam all die,” thus, because of sin, Jean has died and all of us too shall die one day.

Because of this dread disease Jesus is our Physician who comes to heal the sick. He calls the sin-sick sinners to repentance and offers them life. “In Christ shall all be made alive.” What is this medicine of immortality that heals us of such a fearful disease? What is it which brings us life forever? It is none other than Jesus Himself who is our Doctor and our Medicine. Jesus said: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you… I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

Jean’s attendance here at church was more than a mere membership in a social club. She didn’t come her just to see her friends like she’d do over coffee at Kirby’s. Instead, what she received here was the very bread of heaven, the medicine of immortality, Jesus in the flesh! Here in this sanctuary she received the forgiveness of her sins and the healing of her soul because the bread of life came down from heaven right here.

Our Lord Jesus, the bread of life, out of love for Jean and all of us, came down from heaven and went to the cross in order to forgive our sins and give us everlasting life. His death is the atoning payment for all of our sins. By His wounds upon the cross we are healed. Since Jesus died for us, He took away the sting of death for us as well. Instead of remaining in the grave, Jesus rose from the dead. Because He rose, we too will rise from the dead. Instead of eternal death and damnation in hell, we shall rise from the dead and live eternally in paradise with God! All of this is so because Jesus laid down His life for us upon the cross, forgiving our sins and healing us of every infirmity of body and soul.

Thus, today we lay Jean at the foot of the cross. Surely, she’s laying right in front of all of us, yet she’s not the focus of our attention. She lay at the foot of the cross because it is only in Jesus crucified for her that her sin-sickness has been healed. She’s wrapped in the funeral pall, reminding us that in holy baptism she has been clothed with Christ’s righteousness. All of her sins and faults and frailties, even all of her good works and lovely traits, are covered up by Christ. She lays here at the foot of the cross, not on her own merit, but resting in the righteousness of Christ.

So even, and especially now, she is looking to the cross of Christ from which her salvation comes. She is saved by grace through faith. Even from infancy she has received Christ’s righteousness all by faith. Indeed, all who look to Jesus and believe and trust in Him shall be saved. Jesus assures us: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” By faith Jean has received the crown of life and shall be raised to immortality on the last day when Christ returns. 

What Jean has received is for you as well. If you want to see Jean again, and I’m sure that you do, that will happen in the resurrection if you believe in Jesus. If you do not believe in Him, then you won’t see Jean or Jesus ever again. So our hope and our faith is in Jesus only who can rescue us from this body of death. Jean believed in her Lord and confessed faith in Him until the end. But she could only remain strong and in the faith because Christ strengthened her when she heard the Word of God regularly and received the bread of life in holy communion. Jean was here in church in order to strengthen her faith so that she would endure to the end. So let us look to the example of Jean and be strengthened by Jesus here in His house. This way, at the end of our lives, we too will be laid with Jean, and all the faithful, at the foot of the cross from which our salvation comes. So that on the last day we too shall stand and see our Lord Jesus face to face.