Family Names in Stone
Owen Cemetery Decoration Day Service 2017
Well I hope you have a spot in the shade as we enjoy this summer like day. We gather here today to reflect and remember loved ones who have gone before us to their eternal reward.
While the parting of a loved one is difficult it is a deep comfort to know they rest in the arms of Jesus.
Here we pause to visit their earthly resting place but in eternity they are busy with God’s Kingdom work waiting for us to join them.
We have headstones and monuments to mark their place here at Owen Cemetery as we remember their lives and their names.
I was fascinated to discover that right from the very start of the Bible people had been using stones to mark family boundaries as well as family graves.
I wanted to draw your attention to just such a passage today as we remember our family names in the stones all around us.
Genesis 31:45-49
So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar. He said to his relatives, “Gather some stones.” So they took stones and piled them in a heap, and they ate there by the heap. Laban called it Jegar Sa-ha-dutha, and Jacob called it Galeed.
Laban said, “This heap is a witness between you and me today.” That is why it was called Galeed. It was also called Mizpah, because he said, May the LORD keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other."
This place had the same name but in different languages. In Aramaic which Laban spoke it was called “a heap of witnesses” and in Hebrew which Jacob spoke it was called Galeed but Jacob added the word Mizpah. Which means Lord Watch over us while we are away from each other.
Interestingly we have a heap of witnesses in the stones surrounding us. I can only think that our dearly departed also pray Mizpah over all of us as we live out our lives until we join them in Glory.
“Lord Watch over us while we are away from each other.”
They have gone before us to show us the way to peace with God through our Saviour Jesus Christ. We must remember not just their lives among us but their lives in Christ. How they demonstrated the love of God in their daily living.
St. Peter tells us in 1 Peter 2 that Jesus is "the living stone that the builders rejected" and that we too are like living stones as we live out our lives for our Lord. We are being built into the Lord’s house – His dwelling place. But we are being built by Jesus hands and not by the hands of earthly builders.
People can sometimes trip or stumble over stones. Even a living stone like Jesus. It reminds us that it does not take much for us to lose our footing.
That was the case for many people in Jesus time as they failed to see Jesus as the living stone the corner stone upon whom our Heavenly Father would build His Kingdom.
Jesus made reference to stones in the Gospel of Luke. As Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. He reminded the religious leaders that if the crowd held back their praise for Him that even the stones would shout.
Luke 19:40
Friends, I’m sure that the voice of your loved one is still heard in your heart. That their voice now shouts with the voices of God’s Angles as Jesus is praised in Heaven today.
As we recognize our family names in stone today let us also recognize that Jesus name was made higher than all other names because of a stone that was rolled away nearly 2000 years ago.
Imagine what that stone might say if we could hear it?
It might say your sins are forgiven and eternal life is yours as death has been defeated.
That stone is far away in Jerusalem today and it still shouts out for those who would hear it. Here we have the living stones of our brothers and sisters in Christ and they can still speak to us today. If we would listen.
They are saying thank you for the Mizpah of today for remembering us before the Lord and for remembering that our lives can still speak to you through the stones that mark our resting place.
For one day these stones will also be rolled away... “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 1After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-18
Be encouraged today dear ones for we are among the witnesses whose stones remind us that the Lord is coming for all of us.
Until that day I say to you Mizpah “May the Lord watch over us while we are away from each other.”
Amen.
