In my forty years as a pastor I visited many people in their last years, months, and days. Many of these people were in nursing homes, or were shut-ins in their own home. For some, my monthly visit would be their only visitor. These people, who at one time were busy raising families, farming the land, running businesses, and travelling the world, were now limited to life in a single room, with nothing to look forward to except three meals a day and bed-time.
But many of these folks still had two life-long friends always there to keep them company and give them strength: the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm. People whose minds were long ago darkened by dementia, or who were comatose in the last days of dying with cancer, would still oftentimes be able to join in with at least a few of the familiar words of these old friends. And if not that, otherwise motionless hands would squeeze my hand or try to fold themselves as the words were spoken by me. I would say other prayers, and read other verses, but always, also the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm. Many people told me that they said those words every day as part of their own devotions.
——————
Speaking of the Dead is a book of funeral sermons by Lutheran pastor Russell Saltzman. In the following two sermons from that book, he describes the importance of those two old friends to two men he visited. (American Lutheran Publicity Books, 2014, pages 121-3 and 127-9).
Funeral for Leonard Ehlers, January 10, 1998, Stover, Missouri:
As a child of mortal parents, Leonard has become a victim of his inherited mortality. From the day he was born, it has been true and evident this day would come – this day, when family and friends would gather and return him to the earth. Because he was born of mortal parents, the cycle of mortality has come to its final outcome.
Leonard, of course, is not the only child of mortality. We all are. The death of Leonard reminds us of that. I too am a child of mortal parents and someday I shall die. It is the one thing about being human that we cannot escape.
We are born to die. And we know it. The Book of Job speaks of our situation. “Only a few years will pass before I go on the journey of no return. My spirit is broken, my days are cut short; the grave awaits me” (Job 16:22). What Job knew, so we all know.
I visited Leonard at the nursing home. Some days he would talk. Some days he would not. Some days he had no idea who I was. Some days, I’m convinced he thought I was Pastor Rode, with whom he did not have the happiest relationship. Some days he was back driving the milk truck.
Some days we would share Holy Communion. But I had to take him through every step. We’d come to the Lord’s Prayer and I’d ask, “Can you say it with me?”
He’d say, “I think so.” And we would say it: sometimes together, sometimes he would repeat the phrases after me. And always – without fail, there was never an exception – he would weep, and then he would ask me if he had said it right.
We are the children of mortal parents and death is the outcome of our lives. We know this.
But the Christian knows something else as well. The Christian knows that through the water and word of Baptism, we already have passed beyond the boundaries of death. Death is not the last word to be spoken over our lives.
“Our Father, who art in heaven” we pray. We are the children of that Father. Time and again through his 88 years, Leonard said those words. In three years I knew him, he never said them without tears.
Today we have all the symbols of death around us. Everything we see reminds us of death: the casket, our somber faces, and even the flowers which will soon wither and die. Death, which is our inheritance from mortal parents, is very vivid.
Only one thing stands against death, one thing only: The Word of God. All that’s left to us is that Word. “Our Father in heaven,” spoken through Jesus Christ.
When the day of our death comes, when we are stripped of our life, our breath, only one thing will remain, only one hope will abide. And that hope is the promise of Christ, spoken by our Father in heaven, whose children we are through Christ. (continued…)
****************************************
Luke 11:1 — One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”
Matthew 6:9-13 — (Jesus said), “This, then, is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
Related Posts
