Our Light and Salvation: A Funeral Sermon for Bill

Psalm 27 The text for our meditation on God’s Word is the psalm chosen for this day—Psalm 27.  Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, and especially you, Bill’s family:  I bring you grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Today we gather together to lay to rest a father and grandfather and great-grandfather—a valued member of this community—a dearly loved fellow member of this congregation.  But we also lay to rest a member of what has been appropriately called:  the greatest generation.

These are our fellow Americans who suffered through the great depression and fought the tide of totalitarianism in WWII and rebuilt the world in its aftermath.  Bill was a part of that greatest generation that is quickly fading from our view but will remain in our memory.

Bill fought in WWII on the European Front in Italy.  Only rarely did he share any of those stories of his military service.  I can only imagine what that was like—how frightening it must have been—a small town boy from South Dakota cast into the terrors of war and yet he was also a Christian who knew that God was with him, watching out for him, protecting him.  The words of the psalmist were his own as they are ours today:

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?  When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall.  Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident.

           

            Those battles of WWII were not the only battles Bill would face—the Germans were not the only foes he would fight against.  Over these last five or six years especially he faced the enemies of illness and frailty and his own declining health.  The enemy of his own mortality was no less powerful than the German bullets that once whizzed overhead.

But Bill knew that the Lord was his light and salvation and stronghold of his life.  He remembered his confirmation verse that the Lord would never leave him or forsake him.  Even as he fought against the frailty of his body and the specter of his own approaching death he faced these enemies with courage and confidence because he knew that the Lord was with him just as he is with us today.

Bill and I talked often over these last years and never once did I hear him talk about being afraid.  The light of Jesus Christ had shined into his life at an early age.  He knew that he was saved. 

He had experienced the Lord as a stronghold throughout his life so there was nothing to fear no matter what the future held.  And even as he lay ill in a hospital bed, mourning the loss of his wife, he would always say how thankful he was for all of the Lord’s blessings upon his life.

This was Bill’s confident faith—a faith that had been given him and formed in him and sustained in throughout a lifetime spent in the Lord’s house just like the psalmist who wrote:

One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after:  that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.

Until he was simply physically incapable of attending church on Sunday, Bill was always present in the Lord’s house to worship and receive God’s gifts and that was true him from the very earliest moments of his life. 

God chose him in Christ to be his own before the foundation of the world and caused him to be born to Christian parents who brought him to the Lord’s house as a little baby to be baptized.  In the waters of holy baptism he died with Christ and was raised with Christ.  His parents made a solemn vow to raise him in the faith—a vow which they kept.

He attended church and Sunday School and was confirmed in the Lutheran Church, promising to suffer all even death rather than fall away from Christ and his church.  He was confirmed at St. John Lutheran Church in Tyndall, South Dakota and remained a faithful member of the Lutheran Church throughout his life.

He was married in the church and raised his children in the church.  And even with starting a new, successful business with all of the work that entails—he still made time for worship.  Like the psalmist, he dwelt in the house of the Lord all the days of his life.

He did this, not because he felt it some legal obligation to keep or because it was some good work that earned him a place with God—but he did it because he loved the beauty of God’s salvation that he heard about in God’s Word and the blessings of Holy Communion—he did it because he wanted to thank God for all of the blessings and tender mercies God had given him.  With the psalmist he could say about God that:

He will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock.  And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the Lord.

            I am certain that Bill’s experience in WWII changed him profoundly.  He came home from the war and knew that God really had sheltered him from harm—that God really had lifted him up over his enemies—and it gave him a confidence in the goodness of God that served him for the rest of his life.

            He attended college at Lake Forest at night while he established a career in the grocery business.  He married Vi and began a family.  His life was filled with the joys of a successful career, and a good marriage, and a happy family.

Even there the blessings of God upon his life did not end.  After he retired he moved to Kingsville to start the next big chapter in his life, working with McDonalds to start a restaurant franchise throughout this area.  It was a financial risk and hard work—but if you ever saw Bill around one of his restaurants you know that what it really was for him was pure joy and an opportunity for him to bring joy to others.

Bill was a Christian businessman who saw it as his duty to not only be successful-- but to do good for others in the community.  He served this community on the Chamber of Commerce, and the hospital board, and the Kleberg Bank board of directors.  He supported our local university and gave generously to various charities and provided employment and opportunity to many of our fellow citizens.

I know this last chapter of his life in Kingsville was a special joy and a blessing but like all of earth’s joys, it began to draw to a close.  With the psalmist he prayed the words we prayed earlier in our service:

Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud; be gracious to me and answer me!  You have said, “Seek my face.”  My heart says to you, “Your face, Lord, do I seek.”  Hide not your face from me.  Turn not your servant away in anger, O you who have been my help.  Cast me not off; forsake me not, O God of my salvation! 

            Five or six or seven years ago the golf games began to be fewer—the travel less frequent.  The times that Caroline and I socialized with him and Vi, he always asked me to drive.  As blessed and successful and joyous as his life had been, it began to draw to a close.

For both he and Vi there were increasing bouts of illness.  Their good friends the Haunschilds passed away and then Vi went to be with the Lord.  I can’t even begin to imagine how painful that must have been for Bill to lose his wife of all those years—it was hard to think of one without the other! 

It would have been easy for Bill to think that God had turned his back on him—that somehow God was angry with him.  Those kinds of doubts would have only been natural. 

But I never heard that from Bill—only thankfulness for all the blessings he had already received and a confident faith that the God who had been his light and salvation in the past would be his helper in the future as well.

And so he continued to seek God even when he could no longer come to church.  We would have our worship time there in his room where he would hear the word of God and receive the Body and Blood of Christ and confess his sin and receive God’s forgiveness and confess his faith and pray the Lord’s Prayer. 

As difficult as it was for him to remember some things, he never forgot the words of the Apostles’ Creed or of the Lord’s Prayer—saying them boldness and confidence and conviction even just a few weeks ago and again on the night he passed away. 

He could do this because he knew that even as this life drew to a close there was another life to come.  His confidence was that of the psalmist:  I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!

            That was Bill’s confident hope and certain faith because he knew and believed that Jesus had conquered death and the grave by his own glorious resurrection and promised the same to all who trust in him. 

Because I live you also shall live was the promise Jesus made to Bill—a promise that he kept as he brought him to himself this last Wednesday.  The Lord wants these words to comfort us too and so he says:  Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!

            We are all going to miss Bill—his family and friends and members of this congregation and community.  But the goodbyes we say today are not the last word for we will see him again when we go to be with the Lord.  There is some waiting to do—there are some tears to shed—but the Lord is our light and salvation and the stronghold of our life and he will help us be strong and courageous until that glorious day we too stand in his presence just as Bill does today.  Amen.

May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your heart and mind in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting!  Amen.