(Reading of the obituary)
Dear family members and friends of Freda,
May God’s grace, mercy, and especially on this day, peace be with you all from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
On behalf of all of us here at Our Saviour’s, I wish to extend to you our deepest sympathies at the death of Freda. While the death of a loved one is always a difficult thing to endure at any time of the year under any circumstance, when it happens this close to Christmas, it always seems to add a little extra sting to it. Sometimes, we find ourselves asking questions like “Why couldn’t Freda have hung on long enough to enjoy one last Christmas with us?” I’ll be the first to tell you, those questions are not easy to answer. When I was a senior in high school 13 years ago, I was supposed to go to a Christmas party with a friend of mine over in Clear Lake. Our plans originally were that he was going to pick me up, and we’d go over together. For some reason, at the last minute, my plans had to change, so I was going to meet up with him at the party. As I was driving the 13 miles from Garner to Clear Lake, the main highway was blocked off for an accident. The fog that night was so thick, you could hardly see the front of your car, let alone anything else. When I did get to the party, my friend was nowhere to be found. So, I decided to just go on home. When I awoke the next morning for school, the radio had said a Garner teenager had been killed in a car accident on Highway 18 between Garner and Clear Lake the night before. It was my friend, he had crossed the center line and hit a van head on, killing him instantly. A week before Christmas, I found myself serving as a pall bearer for his funeral, asking the very question I posed earlier, “Why did this have to happen so close to Christmas?”
The text our Pastor preached on that day was our Gospel lesson we have before us today, from John 14. It’s a Gospel reading that’s used quite frequently at Christian funerals, such as we have for Freda today. And it’s one that will help us find some comfort, hope, and strength in the days and weeks ahead. So let’s take a look at it in our time together today.
We hear a lot this time of the year about peace, hope, happiness, and joy. To the world, the Advent and Christmas season are supposed to be a time of great joy, and peace. You’ve been hearing a LOT about finding the perfect gift for the important people in your lives, how you’re supposed to be filled with happiness, comfort, and joy! Yet, here we are in this sanctuary this morning, grieving because Freda is not with us any longer. Just because Christmas is next week, that doesn’t change the fact that Freda is in this casket, that she suffered from a lot of physical ailments over the last few years, robbing her of the ability to stay in her own home and as time passed, to do a lot of the things she loved to do. For you, her family and friends, it was equally as difficult for you to see your beloved aunt and friend to suffer from heart problems and other ailments. It would seem, on the surface at least, that for us here today, it would be next to impossible to experience comfort, peace, and joy. Perhaps you feel like Christmas just won’t be Christmas. But, through His Word, Jesus has a message for us, a message I know that Freda would want to have me share with you, a message that although it doesn’t seem to fit with the Christmas season according to the world, it does tell us what Christmas is all about.
As John 14 begins, we find Jesus and His disciples in the upper room on Maundy Thursday. The Last Supper, a scene that Freda had crocheted at one time, has already taken place, Judas has left the room, and the countdown to Jesus’ betrayal, crucifixion, and death is on. Within 24 hours, Jesus will be arrested, beaten, tried, convicted, and crucified. In the verses that immediately precede our text, Jesus had predicted that Peter would deny knowing Jesus, something Peter adamantly claims will never happen. This doesn’t sound like a peaceful scene, does it? Yet, Jesus says to his disciples, “Let not your hearts be troubled.” I often find myself wondering what the disciples were thinking at this point as they hear Jesus say these words, and what they thought of them as the events of the next several hours would unfold. “Let not our hearts be troubled? Jesus, what are you talking about? You’re being falsely accused of things, you’re being beaten, mocked, and they’re going to kill you! Not only that, but if they are doing that to you, will we be next? How can you say “Let not your hearts be troubled?” In the midst of what we’re told we’re supposed to be feeling this Christmas season, maybe you find yourself asking the same question. “Jesus, Freda has died, she suffered a lot, she didn’t deserve to have all those years of declining health. How can you tell us to not have a troubled heart?” It would have been very easy, and perhaps even understandable, for Freda to have been depressed about her situation, to not have hope in the midst of her suffering and ill health. To be honest, when I went to visit her in the hospital the Sunday afternoon before she died, I half expected her to be, understandably, depressed.
Yet, when I got there and as we talked, Freda had a big smile on her face in the midst of her suffering, the kind that would just light up your whole day, and when I asked her what it was that sent her there, she simply said “oh, Pastor, I’m just getting old, it happens.” As we talked, I learned why she wasn’t depressed about her condition. You see, Freda didn’t get hung up on the first statement of Jesus, “Let not your heart be troubled”, she listened to what else He had to say. “Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and I will take you to myself that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Freda believed in Jesus. She believed that the infant that was born in a Bethlehem stable with only a feeding trough for his first bed, grew up to live a perfect, sinless life, gave the blind their sight, made the lame walk, cleansed lepers, enabled the deaf to hear, healed the sick, and died on the cross to take all of Freda’s sins there and die for them. Freda knew that Jesus did all of this so that He could prepare a place for her, a place in heaven. Freda clung to that promise, it sustained her in the midst of suffering, trial, and grief. That faith is what enabled Freda to smile in the midst of suffering, and to have a cheerful spirit.
In my brief time with Freda, I closed with prayer. I took her hand and we asked that God would provide healing for Freda. While some of you today might say that prayer went unanswered, if Freda could speak today, she’d stand here and tell you all that our prayer was answered. Freda is now in the very place that Jesus in our Gospel reading has promised that He was preparing for her. Today, Freda is in a place that is so wonderful, so full of joy, peace, and comfort, that even if she had the option of coming back to this world, with 100% capacity of her heart instead of the 25% she lived with toward the end, be able to walk, crochet, and do all the things she enjoyed doing in this life, she wouldn’t want to come back. Right now at this very moment, she is seeing the fulfillment of that promise on our Gospel reading with her own eyes in heaven. Yet, she would want to see that each one of us here today knows that just as Jesus prepared a place for her, that He is preparing a place for each one of us, and that one day, He will call us from this life of pain, tears, and strife, to an eternal life of joy, peace, and comfort! With this being the Christmas season, we remember that the baby born in Bethlehem doesn’t stay in the manger. The world would rather you leave him there, but like Freda, we believe that baby went to the cross, died for the sins of the world, and rose again to give us eternal life.
On that cold December day 13 years ago at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Garner, Iowa, our youth group gathered together a few hours after my friend’s funeral to bake Christmas cookies and to reflect on what had happened in the last few days. We talked about our Gospel reading we’ve been discussing today, and that’s when one of the other members of the youth group said to our Pastor, “Pastor, I get it. Christmas isn’t about getting or giving the right gift, it’s about the baby in the manger, how he prepared a place for us in heaven, and today, Doug can see what that gift is all about!” That Christmas, I learned what Christmas was all about. Yes, it is about gifts, but in the end, only one gift matters. Over the years, Freda probably gave many of your gifts, and you may have given her one too. Those gifts probably eventually wore out, or got broken, or needed to be replaced. Things in a sinful, fallen world do that. Nothing lasts forever. However, on Christmas, God saw we needed a Savior, and He gave us the one gift that never comes in the wrong size, never gets snagged on a filing cabinet and becomes unraveled, never comes with instructions in the wrong language, or breaks after a while. He gave us His Son, to live, die, and rise again for us. Just as Christ provided that gift to my high school friend that December of 1994, he did so again this past Friday for Freda. It is my hope and prayer that as you share your memories of Freda with each other, that you will remember the most important thing of Christmas, that Your Savior took on human flesh to live, die, and rise again so that one day, you can say with Job in our Old Testament reading “And after my skin has thus been destroyed yet in my flesh I shall see God whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold and not another.” In the midst of your sorrow and grief, may the faith that Freda held so dear in her life, be your comfort and strength today, on Christmas Day, and always. Amen.
