Funeral for a young man killed after a driver did not stop for a red light.
Just ten days ago today, Rick woke up to a normal morning on a normal day. He dressed for work, had breakfast, kissed Kathy good-bye, got in the car, and headed to the office. He had a green light at the intersection of River Road and Highway 38, so he began to cross; and in an instant his young life was ended.
Thus began this time of deep sadness for all who knew and loved Rick. Rick was loved by so many and his death has touched us all. We have all experienced a whole range of emotions; shock, grief, and compassion for the family. And fear. We have also experienced fear.
Tragedies like this sadden us and frighten us. You were all shocked to hear of Rick’s accident. You no doubt immediately thought of the family, and you grieved for them. But you probably also thought about yourself. You don’t need a sermon to tell you how this works. And you don’t have to believe in the Bible to know these things can happen, suddenly, to anyone. This is how quickly life can end. “In the midst of life, we are in death,” we say in the graveside committal service. Death can come slowly or it can come in an instant, at age 33 or at age 86. Either way, each day you move 24 hours closer to the end of your life. We get pretty good at keeping our minds on other things; until a time like this. Then we are again reminded, and it terrifies us, doesn’t it?
The Bible says we should pay attention to these things. Psalm 90:12 says, “Teach us to number our days aright, O Lord, and so apply our hearts to wisdom.” Our days are numbered, it says, and also: “The length of our days is 70 years, or 80, if we have the strength. Yet their span is but sorrow and trouble, and they pass away quickly… and we finish our days with a moan… You turn us back to dust, Oh Lord, and we are swept away in the sleep of death.” The Bible does not hesitate to say clearly and directly what our problem is. “Death is at work in us,” says Paul in the New Testament. Our days are numbered, says the Psalmist.
So, what can we do? The Bible is the only book that has any real help to offer at a time like this. Consider these verses from Psalm 121:
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth…
The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: He shall preserve thy soul.
The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.
“From whence cometh my help…?” That’s a good question. We all need a little help now and then, and it is good to know where to look when you need it. But no matter how much is ever done, there is only so much anyone can do for another person, and the rest has to be done or endured alone. Even in the closest of relationships, there are those places in our hearts that remain hidden, those things that will never be understood, those thoughts and emotions just too hard to express. Not only that, but when your dying day comes, even if you are surrounded by family, friends, and hospice nurses, it will still be just you there dying, just you that will take that next step into the unknown, all alone.
“I’ll get by with a little help from my friends,” says the old song by the Beatles. That’s a nice thought, and we can help each other in all kinds of ways. One reason you are all here today is to express your love and your support, as one way you can help. It does comfort the family to see how much Rick was loved. But in all the biggest ways, including the very biggest thing of all, death and what comes next, we can’t do much for each other. There is nothing any of us can do for Rick now.
“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,” said the shepherd Psalmist, looking around, perhaps all alone out in the fields tending to the flocks by night and by day. It was a dangerous job being a shepherd, trying to protect the sheep from wild animals, thieves, and from the sheep’s own stupidity by which they would wander off and get lost. “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help?” That question of a lonely shepherd has been repeated by millions of people over the years, people who may have received help from someone, but were still quite alone in their troubles. If they, if we, always had all the help we ever needed, there would be no need to be looking off into the hills for help. But we, like the shepherd, know that we need more help than anyone can give us, and so we are looking. We all know the feeling; that is why this Psalm has been a favorite of many.
The Psalmist doesn’t find the help he is looking for in the hills, but he does find help. “From whence cometh my help?” he asks, and then says, “My help comes from the Lord.” The Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth, the one who made me, who gave me life, and “who can preserve my soul.” There is a comfort on a day like today to hear talk about our soul, because we see here what happens to our body. Some bodies wear out over many years, and then quit. For some, like Rick, life is taken out of the body in an instant. One way or another, that will happen sometime to all these bodies sitting here today.
But the Bible says that we are more than a body. We have a soul; and the Psalmist, looking for help, says, “My help comes from the Lord, who can preserve my soul.” That’s getting the help we need. The Psalmist concludes by saying, “The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.” Think of it: even forevermore. ‘Forevermore’ is beyond what any of us can imagine, but we can understand this: the Lord will not allow death to have the last word. The Lord does not intend that it all has to end here, with ashes in an urn. That is only the body. “The Lord shall preserve thy soul,” it says; and then, as we say in the Apostle’s Creed, when the time comes for your soul to leave this body, “We believe in the resurrection of the body to life everlasting.” And there, says in I Corinthians 2:9, “God has prepared for those who love him joys beyond all imagining.”
“From whence cometh my help? My help comes from the Lord.”
Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he dies, yet shall he live again.”
So now, as it says in Rick’s confirmation verse, spoken by him before this very altar almost 20 years ago, from Hebrews 12:2– “Let us keep our eyes on Jesus.”
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With reverence and affection, we remember before you, O everlasting God, all our departed friends and relatives. Keep us in union with them here through faith and love toward you, so that hereafter we may enter into your presence and be numbered with those who look upon your face in glory everlasting, through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
—Lutheran Book of Worship, Occasional Services, (#235), 1978, Augsburg Publishing House
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