Walter Muth
November 13, 2006
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? Wait for the Lord; be
strong and let your heart take courage.
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is an everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth. He gives power to the faint, and
strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the
young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their
strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not
be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:28-31).
Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me,
even thought they die, yet shall they live, and whoever lives and believes in
me shall never die. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the
end, the first and the last. I died, and behold I am alive forever more.
Because I live, you shall live also.”
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first
earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City,
the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a
bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the
throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with
them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be
their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more
death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed
away. He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything
new!” (Revelation 21:1-5).
There are a lot of things I suppose that could be said today. Generations of
preachers have tried to find just the right words, just the right turn of a
phrase, just the right combination of thoughts to make sense out of death.
Even though we know that death is the price of life, we are still fairly
unprepared for it. It is the last great unknown, or to use a phrase from a
couple of decades ago, “the final frontier.”
But no matter what we do or say, the facts speak for themselves. Walter
Muth has died and we are here to mourn his death. We are here to ask the
hard questions. We are here to find some comfort in the presence of loved
ones. We are here to search the heart of God for peace and understanding.
All in all, we find that this is a good day to cry. Walter, who was with us
just a few short days ago, is no longer in our midst. Left behind are Lavaun,
Bob, Tom, Muriel, Nathan, Joshua, and Megan. Left behind are, who knows
how many friends and acquaintances. Left behind are, who knows how
many people Walter touched as a teacher, as a businessman, and as a music
judge and singer. Because he is gone from our midst, it is a good day to cry.
We cry because we realize that our faith is neither so mindless nor so
heartless that it is immune to grief. Even though we cry, we realize that our
hope is based – not on some knee-jerk optimism - but rather on the profound
awareness that even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of
death, we will fear no evil. We cry today just like Jesus wept outside the
tomb of Lazarus. We cry today, but our tears do not dissolve the certainty
that Christ conquers death for us and for our salvation.
We cry today, but we do so with the knowledge that our tears are only
temporary, only transitory. We wait for that day when all of our tears shall
be dried and all our pain taken away. We have confidence is that coming
day when death and mourning will be taken away. We wait for that day
when this old order is taken away and we are reunited in the New Jerusalem.
I have said this many times before. I am sure that some of you have heard
me say it. I don’t hesitate to pray at hospital bedsides for healing. I have
seen God do miraculous things…not all the time, but sometimes, and I am
not willing to put limits on God regarding his ability to act or his timetable.
I have seen people who I have believed to be in their very last days, recover
and leave the hospital to continue a productive life. So I am always open to
the possibility that God will choose to heal. I don’t hesitate to pray for
healing.
But I also know that when we are praying for healing, we are actually
praying for cure. There is a big difference. Even if people are cured, they
are not made immune to future death. We all know that Jesus healed many
and even raised some from the dead. But they all eventually succumbed to
death. That is the lot of humankind.
Walter fell and broke his hip. His heart and lungs were not strong enough
for surgery. Lavaun and Bob both told me that the doctors said that he was
using enormous energy just for the task of drawing breath.
So Walter was not cured. But without hesitation, I announce that he has
been healed. The broken hip doesn’t matter any more. The weak heart
doesn’t matter any more. The tired and scarred lungs don’t matter any more.
He has been healed in body and spirit. The Apostle Paul says that these
perishable bodies must put on imperishability. These moral bodies, he says,
must put on immortality. That is what Walter has done. He has joined his
Lord in life everlasting life, with a new body and a new relationship with
God.
There was a lot of stuff about Walter that I didn’t know. We would talk on
Sunday mornings and tell jokes to each other. He wasn’t afraid to tell me
when and how the worship service could be improved. When my sermon
for the day made absolutely no sense, he would tell me. Still, there was a lot
of stuff about him that I didn’t know. For example, I didn’t know that he
was staunchly conservative. The family joked that they were sort of glad he
wasn’t aware of last week’s election results because he would not have been
happy.
I wasn’t aware that he was such a good golfer, until I came here to the
funeral home and saw his two hole-in-one trophies. Most golfers (and I
know because I used to be one) go their entire lives without a hole-in-one,
and Walter had two of them; the second of which was just a few years ago. I
guess I can understand a young man getting a hole-in-one, but not an eighty-
year-old man. I gave up the game a decade ago because it is so frustrating.
But now I’m beginning to rethink my decision.
But I think I know something about Walter’s faith. Last week – it was either
Monday or Tuesday – I was up to the hospital to see him. He had been
unresponsive for quite awhile. I talked with Lavaun for a little bit and then
walked over to the bedside. I called his name and told him who I was even
though I didn’t expect any reaction. He opened his eyes and looked at me. I
then told him that I wanted to pray with him.
Suddenly he started saying, “I pray, I pray.” Over and over again, he said, “I
pray, I pray.”
On another occasion, he looked at Lavaun and said, “Our Father, our
Father…” So she prayed the Lord’s Prayer with him.
Like I said, there were a lot of things about Walter that I didn’t know, but his
response to prayer told me all that anyone would ever need to hear. This
was a man who believed in prayer. This was a man who had a strong faith
in God. This was a man who knew that he was loved by his Lord.
So let us mourn today. That is a fitting thing to do because one so loved has
been taken from our midst. But let us also rejoice in the knowledge that
Walter has passed from life militant to life eternal and triumphant. He has
received his new room in heaven. He has been restored. He has been
healed. He has been reunited with his Lord. His tears, pain, suffering, and
sorrow have been taken away. For that we thank God as we remember
Walter, and we pray that we might be worthy to carry on his legacy and
faith.
Let us pray. Lord, we know that your love never ends. We know that even
if everything else fails, you are still God. We pray to you today for each
other in our need. We pray for everyone, anywhere, who mourns with us
today. To those of us who doubt, give light, to those of us who are weak,
give strength; to those of us who have sinned, give mercy, and to all of us
who sorrow, give us your peace.
As we continue to celebrate the life of Walter Muth, keep alive in us his
memory and his witness, so that he will never really be gone from our
presence. May his friends and family all remember him, and take comfort in
the fact that he loved them deeply. And give us faith to know that he is now
at home in the heavenly mansion with many rooms. Receive your servant
Walter. Keep his memory alive in us. We trust in Christ for our salvation.
Teach us how those with faith are never disappointed. Amen.
Benediction:
May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in
harmony with one another, so that together, you may with one voice glorify
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Go in peace. Amen.
