If you want to know what a church or pastor believes, go to one of their funerals. What’s at the heart and center of a pastor’s teaching? He’ll reveal it during a funeral sermon. Here’s why: A funeral sermon is the most-serious sermon a pastor will ever preach. And so, that’s when you find out what he believes and what he thinks is worth preaching. It’s then that he’ll put the pieces of his theology together to highlight the hope that someone has beyond the life of this fallen world.
If the pastor only praises the person who died, but doesn’t go beyond that, then he is saying–by what he does–that your life now is what only matters. He may not say that’s true–but that’s what he’s showing by what he does. For if a pastor can’t preach the truth of the Christian faith when death’s ugly face is staring us down at a funeral, he simply can’t preach.
Today is All Saints in the Church’s calendar. It’s a day set aside in the church year to think about those who have died in the faith, who are now with Jesus in eternity. Originally, the day remembered martyrs, those who sacrificed their lives instead of renouncing Christ. From there, it developed into a day remembering all the saints.
But as we ponder and remember those saints who are now in heaven, we should also remember that life, death, and salvation are even relevant for us right here and now. Where is your eternal hope? For where you place hope is the difference between eternal life and eternal death.
Like most of you, I’ve been to many funerals. And I’ve heard many pastors preach funeral sermons. But sadly, few preach us forward to the eternity we have in Christ. Most celebrate the person’s life here, as if that’s all there is to life. Now, that’s sad!
Last week, we celebrated the festival of the Reformation. Last week’s sermon reminded us that God saving us by faith, apart from the works of the Law, is at the center of the Christian faith. And what’s especially wonderful about God saving us by grace is that it’s not about what we do. If that were the case, then the Christian faith wouldn’t be about God’s grace. You see, grace is about God and what He does.
The truth is that God’s love for us, which causes Him to shower us with His grace, is beyond our human imagination. Listen again to the opening words of our Epistle reading: “See what great love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1)
It’s hard to understand such love because we naturally don’t have that love within us. We aren’t able to love like God. So then, how can God love us when we reject Him, break His commandments, or worship ourselves and our wants? That’s why His love is what it is.
That’s also why the world doesn’t understand the Christian faith. That’s why we often barely understand it. The world doesn’t understand how God can call us His children. That’s because the world doesn’t know Him (1 John 3:1b). And when you don’t know God, you can’t understand His love–a love that is so marvelous that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). That’s a God whose love for us is beyond understanding.
Indeed, such is God’s love that He even gives everything needed to save us. After all, that’s what makes grace grace. That’s what gives us our Christian hope, our assurance of eternal life. It’s grounded in God. And that’s what makes it sure and unshakable.
You live in God’s Kingdom of grace by faith. And even the faith you have is a gift. “For by grace you have been saved by faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). What is it? Faith, for even the faith you have is a gift from God.
But that still leaves us with the question, “How do we live as God’s children?” We now go again to our Epistle reading. “Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. But we know that when Christ appears [that is, on the Last Day], we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is. So, everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as He is pure.”
True Christian hope isn’t merely the power of “positive” thinking; it’s also a gift, based on something outside of us. God gives us true hope. Hope is ours because God has called us His children. Hope is ours, for we aren’t just called to be God’s children. He even makes us His children through His Son, Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit!
The Apostle John says that we live how we live because we know what awaits us in eternity as God’s children. Now, our sinful nature thinks that if we are children of God, and eternity awaits us, we then should live however we want. Of course, to our sinful nature, living however we want is to be living in sin.
But the new self given to us in our baptism wants to do what only pleases God. Our new self doesn’t want to sin. Our new self wants to live out the holiness that God gives us and calls us to live. It’s as the Apostle John wrote, “So, everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as He is pure.”
So, how do you purify yourself? That’s what John says we are to do and how we are to live. Yet, if we answer that question wrongly, we’ll get the Christian life all wrong. What are your natural inclinations when it comes to purifying yourself just as Jesus is pure? Your natural inclinations are to focus on yourself, what you have to do. I need to try harder to be like Jesus. I need to work harder on being holy.
And so, once again, you throw yourself under the bus. The Christian life is not about what you do, but about what Jesus does for you and through you. Again, the Christian life is not about what you do, but about what Jesus does for you and through you.
If you want to be pure as Jesus is pure, then that means you need more Jesus, not more of yourself. And how do you get more Jesus? Ah, that was the topic of last week’s sermon. You get more Jesus through His means of grace–through Word and Sacrament!
So, if you want to purify yourself just as Jesus is pure, you need to be where Jesus purifies you. It’s that simple. It’s not about you. It’s about Jesus for you! The part you do is to get up and receive Jesus when He comes to you in His means of grace.
It’s then, after being “Jesused,” that you go to be Jesus to others in this world around you. You become the face of Christ to others as you serve where God has placed you to serve in your everyday life. That’s how you purify yourself just as Jesus is pure.
Our Christian hope is centered on Jesus. If it’s centered on you, then you’ve got it backwards. It’s as the Apostle Paul said: “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were, therefore, buried with him through baptism into death, so, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:3-4).
Baptism is how we first “put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27). Baptism brings us into a divine union with Jesus, uniting us with both His death and resurrection.
After baptism, the Lord’s Supper becomes the preeminent way we continue to put on Christ in the New Covenant. In fact, Jesus, in His words of institution, even calls His Supper “the New Covenant.” So, from Jesus’ own words, He makes His Supper His Covenant for us. If His Supper is His New Covenant for us, then to be in His New Covenant is to have His Supper as the center of our lives in Him.
In His Supper, we eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Since the blood of Jesus is the blood of God (Acts 20:28), we receive God whenever we come to drink from the cup. It’s as 1 Corinthians tells us: We are the body of Christ because we receive the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:17). Indeed, we are what we eat.
So, on this All Saints Day, we find that Jesus is the answer for what we need in this life now, in death, and in the life that is to come. Now, we have life, but we can’t fully see it or experience it. It’s now and not yet. It’s as John writes, “Now we are God’s children, and what we will be has not yet been revealed.”
So, what will be revealed? What awaits us is our bodies’ resurrection on the Last Day. That’s when our bodies, recreated sinless and perfect, will reunite with our souls for all eternity. But even more than that awaits us. John says, “We will be like Him!” That’s the eternal destiny of all Christians–to be “like Christ.” That’s the fullness of our salvation, which is life in all its fullness, which God created and redeemed us to be.
Through His Incarnation, Jesus joined our humanity and glorified it in Himself, uniting us to God, fulfilling the purpose of why God originally created us. On the Last Day, God will fully glorify us in Christ Jesus. We will be joined to Jesus in all His glory–and so we will be fully united to God. Through Jesus, we, indeed, share in the divine nature, fully realized on the Last Day. Through grace, united to Him, we will become as He is.
On the Last Day, Christ will come in all His glory and “the righteous will shine like the sun in their Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 13:34). Christ’s splendor and glory will fill the faithful, who will rejoice in eternity and live in the fullness of Him who has given us His glory and radiance. That’s what awaits you on the Last Day: You will be like Jesus. Now, that’s worth living and dying for. Amen.
