Funeral Sermon for
Tom Cochran
January 31, 2005
Giving honor to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, fellow clergy in this Gospel Ministry, Mayor Cunningham, Distinguished members of City Council, Honorable Judge Jim Humphrey. To Jo Nee, the children and family members.
I am humbled to stand before you today to share in this home going service. I had the unique privilege of knowing Det. Cochran on three different fronts.
I knew Tom as a police officer, when he served with the Dearborn County Sheriff Department as a detective, and then working with him on the Lawrenceburg Police Department.
There were times I would watch Tom interview suspects and by the time he had completed the interview, I was confessing. He was truly great at what he did. I remember watching a video of him interviewing a suspect who had been reviling him self to women and with then Detective and now Sheriff David Lusby, Tom in talking to the suspect began to put the man at ease by saying, look I understand, everybody does, Dave even does it, don’t you Dave. If you could have seen the look on Dave’s face. Tom got a confession.
I also knew him as a Christian; one Sunday Tom visited our Church and sat quietly probably wondering what in the world we were doing, but the next Sunday he came back, I saw his foot pat and his hands clap and then he stood up. And at the end of the service he walked up to me and said I can’t wait until Jo Nee gets home so she could come to Church with me.
I believe it was the following Sunday Jo Nee and the kids came and as the pervious Tom stood up and began to clap and the look on Jo Nee’s was as if to say what in the world is wrong with my husband.
But Tom had found peace with his God and his place in his God and soon the family, join the Church.
But, I also know Tom as a friend, someone who was committed to his family his job, but most of all his God.
So we have come to pay tribute and honor a life well lived; a life that has touched many.
Tom was a special person to all those that knew him. He confessed his love and belief in Jesus Christ to his family.
Until you got to know Tom, you would had known him to be a quite but, sincere man.
However, after you became his friend his relaxed humor came to the fore front and his quietness was pushed aside. When you became his friend - you were his friend in deed.
But Tom know that everyone who is born into this world will also have to leave it. For most people their deepest instincts and convictions tell them there is something beyond the grave.
Creation teaches that life can pass through different forms and that life may even come out of death.
The caterpillar lives the first part of its life crawling on the ground. After fulfilling its course, the caterpillar curls up and seemingly dies.
Then out of that body a beautiful butterfly comes to life. No longer forced to crawl on the ground, it spreads its wings and flies upwards.
Men and women also spend a short time on earth and then we have to move on.
For each one of us there comes a moment when time ceases, a moment when we leave the bonds of time and enter another world, the world of eternity.
Death is our universal fate because of the sin of Eve and Adam our first parents, but death is not the end.
Death for the Christian is the beginning of Life. Death is Life with God and all those loved ones
that have believed on Gods Son; Jesus Christ and have gone on before.
Life is a journey. A journey to eternity.
Death is the vehicle that takes us home.
This place in time - with so many troubles, pain, anguish and hurt cannot be home.
There is a better place!
Tom or any of us - aren’t going to heaven because we have been good. We are going to heaven because Christ died on that cross for us. Tom believed it and confessed it and lived it with a Christian heart.
For each of us a time is coming when we will open the door step from this life and step into eternity.
Jesus Christ opened the “Door to eternity” when he died on the Cross.
When we pick the door to heaven we enter through the door of death and sleep in the arms of Jesus.
It is hard to rejoice but we should rejoice in our souls because Tom accepted Christ in this life. He proclaimed publicly how he loved the Lord.
Tom wrestled the world and Satan and now is in the presence of God. He is set free!
We should rejoice that he now knows God perfectly, to behold the glory of His presence and to thank Him for saving him and bringing him safely home.
This is something we should all remember as we look to the days ahead. The grief we feel and all the emotions that go with that grief should draw us closer to Christ.
God knows about every breath we take, every pain we endure, and every groan we utter.
The greatest joy is when we let Jesus into our life. It is so easy to receive Christ Jesus - that millions stumble over its sheer simplicity.
When we step over into eternity will it be into the arms of Jesus?
I know that Jesus wants everyone here to come and live with him in his heavenly home.
Jesus said, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.
I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. I died, and behold I am alive forever more, and I hold the keys of hell and death. Because I live, you shall also live.”
Though we are assured that Tom is with Jesus there is a vacancy that he leaves in the lives of those left behind.
God is here with us and has come alongside you to help you through this very difficult time.
Today, I can tell you with confidence that God not only knows your pain but he understands because He has experienced it through Jesus. God knows your grief and shares your pain.
You and I can know with certainty that today Tom dances and rejoices and worships in the presence of his Savior.
He has waited and received new life in his body and in his spirit. God has surely made all things new in him, just as he will do in all of us who trust in him.
This afternoon my desire is to encourage you with the knowledge that, not only has your Husband, your father, your brother and your friend received all of these new things, you too can receive them, if you receive the forgiveness of Christ through His sacrificial death on the cross. Let this time of remembering become also a time of reflection on your own life and allow God to speak to your heart.
Poem:
Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemn or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without a ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well.
We come here today with sorrow in our hearts and questions on our minds as to why these things happen. Can we really know?
There are many unexplanable sorrows in life and we must simply leave these in the hands of God who know all things.
All of us are sorrowful here today but, the Bible teaches us of 2 types of sorrow.
I Thess. 4:13 "But I would not have you to be
ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep that ye sorrow not even as others which have no hope"
Some here may have a sorrow with no hope beyond the grave while others have the sorrow of a friend that has gone on a long journey and we will be joining that friend shortly.
The Christian who dies and the believer who remains will one day meet again. There is a glad reunion day.
Tom knew the Lord. He settled it at the Cross years. ago.
To comfort your hearts and ease the pain of loss, I want to make 2 statements.
1st Tom did not die. God’s children do not die. Jesus said it Himself in John 11:26, "Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die". 2 Cor.5:8 says, "absent from the body and present with the Lord".
Tom did not die. He simply changed residents.
Like the old poem:
I cannot think of them as dead
Who walk with me no more
Along the path of life I tread
They have but gone before.
Tom simply changed residents from this world to the city of God.
We are told that when those who serve in the ranks of the
Salvation Army die they are listed, not under the heading of
"deaths" but under the heading "promotions". Promoted to
Glory!
Even now Tom walks among the patriarches of the Bible . He did not die. He simply fell asleep in Jesus.
I believe Tom has already seen the angels
for the first time. He has heard the angelic choirs, seen
sights man has never seen, walked the streets of gold, talked
to the greats of the Bible. But best of all, he has seen
Jesus for his self.
Tom was willing and truly did pay the ultimate sacrifice.
So we say rest my dear brother, for you have fought a good fight, you have finished your course and you have kept the faith. You may be fallen, but you will never be forgotten.
Your watch has ended, but your life has just begun.
