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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear family and friends of Elfriede, here in-person and on-line, and brothers and sisters in Christ of Pilgrim Lutheran Church,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Maybe since God last week summoned Elfriede’s soul from this world, you have thought about when, where, and how, if at all, you got to know Elfriede. What was the “way” that you met? In Elfriede’s and my case, our mutual friend Debbie was the “way” that we met: Debbie introduced us here at Pilgrim out in the parking lot one weekday afternoon, and I subsequently got to know Elfriede better as she came to Sunday services here at Pilgrim a few times, until her declining health had me ministering to her at her home for more than two years. Thinking about Elfriede’s traveling from Germany to the United States, thinking about Elfriede’s vocation as a “Travel Counselor”—not just a transactional “travel agent”, but a more advisory and relational “Travel Counselor”—and thinking about Elfriede’s love of travel, the Holy Spirit guided me (confer John 16:13) to today’s Gospel Reading, in which Jesus not only speaks, as it were, of booking lodging and arranging passage, but Jesus also identifies Himself as “the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.” Considering primarily today’s Gospel Reading, this morning we direct our thoughts to the theme, “Jesus was Elfriede’s ‘Travel Counselor’”.
As we heard the Divinely-inspired St. John uniquely report in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let not your hearts be troubled”, and, although in a slightly different context, Jesus also says to you and to me, “Let not let your hearts be troubled.” The sense of what Jesus says perhaps is to stop letting our hearts be troubled. Jesus’s disciples likely were troubled then by the physical separation that they were going to have from Jesus for a time, as you and I may be troubled now by the physical separation that we are going to have from Elfriede for a time. To be sure, as St. John uniquely reports in connection with the death of Jesus’s friend Lazarus, Jesus Himself knew what it was like to be troubled at a death (John 11:33). Yet, Jesus called His disciples then and calls us today to faith—faith not only in God the Father, but also to faith in Him, God the Son in human flesh. Faith in Jesus is the answer for our troubled hearts! Jesus said that He was leaving His disciples for a time in order to prepare a place for them, and Jesus said that His disciples knew the way to where He was going. But, Jesus’s disciple Thomas objected that they did not know where Jesus was going (confer John 13:36) and so that they could not know the way, and so Jesus identified Himself as “the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.”
Those of us who book our own travel on-line today may have a hard time remembering or imagining that one ever needed a “Travel Counselor” as much as people did at the height of Elfriede’s career years ago. When it comes to our ultimate destination, of course, by nature, Jesus’s disciples, Elfriede, and each one of us of every generation needs Jesus as our “Travel Counselor”. Jesus had been teaching His disciples, but before His death and resurrection they did not fully understand what he was teaching them. Similarly, maybe you previously have heard God’s call that would enable you to be sorry for your sin and to trust God to forgive your sin for Jesus’s sake, but maybe for whatever reason you previously have resisted that call. You may wrongly think you can go your own way or that all ways end up in the same place. As we heard in today’s Psalm (Psalm 1:1-6; antiphon v.6), the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish; the wicked are like chaff that the wind drives away, so they will not stand in the judgment. Each death of a familymember or friend is a reminder that death is the wages of sin (Romans 6:23); each one of us deserves not only death here and now but also torment in hell for eternity, unless, enabled by God, we are sorry for our sin and trust Him to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake.
Enabled by God, our dear Elfriede certainly heard and answered God’s call to repent. Each time I visited her, she confessed both her sorrow over her sin and her trust in God to forgive her sin for Jesus’s sake. And so, I absolved her—forgave her sin on Christ’s behalf. “Jesus was Elfriede’s ‘Travel Counselor.’” As we sang in the Entrance Hymn (Lutheran Service Book 744), God’s amazing grace saved her and has led her home, as God’s amazing grace can save you and lead you home. Out of God’s great love, Jesus prepared a place for all people—not by ironing sheets for a bed, as Elfriede at one time may have done, but—by taking the sins of the world to the cross and there dying for us, in our place, the death that we deserve. As the duet will sing in a few minutes, on the cross, God’s Son gladly bore our burden, bleeding and dying to take away our sin (LSB 801). As the congregation will sing in the Closing Hymn (LSB 887), Deine Gnad und Christi blut Macht ja allen Schaden gut—God’s grace and Christ’s blood, as it were, make everything good. In the Epistle Reading (Romans 5:1-11), the Divinelyinspired St. Paul said-well that we have obtained access by faith into God’s grace in which we stand justified, forgiven, made righteous, by His blood. When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, and, in a sense, we will be saved by His life, His resurrection from the dead.
At least one time I saw Elfriede and her friend Barbara at a restaurant that we all enjoyed downtown, and other times I heard Elfriede talk about her own restaurant experiences, including food that she liked to eat and wine she liked to drink. Yet, the most important food and beverage ever served to Elfriede were—and the most important food and beverage ever served to us are—the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar, that are the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us, and so that also gave her and give us the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. On the Lord’s behalf, I had the privilege and pleasure of regularly serving Elfriede those life-giving gifts; at our last visit, she fondly recalled our Closing Hymn about going to rest, and the next time that I tried to see her, just days before her earthly death, Michelle told me that Elfriede was too tired to be seen.
Elfriede reportedly described her granddaughters Karen and Michelle as “angels” of a sort, as they took turns caring for her 24 hours each day, 7 days each week, for more than the 52 weeks of one year. Talk about honoring a grandmother! When any of our keeping of God’s Commandments flows from our faith in Him, such good works are truly pleasing in His sight! Karen and Michelle may no longer have to care for their Omi, but they, like the rest of us, have other callings in life, opportunities to love and serve God in the person of our neighbors, our fellow human beings, some closer to us, and others further away. As Elfriede knew firsthand from the various untimely deaths of loved ones that she experienced, there is suffering in this life. Yet, as we heard in the Epistle Reading, that suffering produces endurance, and so character, and so hope that does not put us to shame but leads us to glory. With Elfriede’s earthly death, God has fulfilled the promise that He made to her in her baptism; He has answered every Lord’s Prayer that she ever prayed, with its petition to deliver her from evil, for God has given her a blessed end and has graciously taken her from this valley of sorrow to Himself in Heaven. And, as the Divinelyinspired Job could say in today’s Old Testament Reading (Job 19:21-27), so Elfriede’s Redeemer lives and at the last will stand upon the earth, and in her resurrected and glorified flesh she will see God, Whom she shall see for herself, with her own eyes (confer John 11:25-26). Christians grieve, but not as those who lack the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the body and the blessed reunion in heaven, with all those who have gone before and will come after them in the faith (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Those who had died before her in the faith, Elfriede looked forward to seeing again in heaven, and she told me that, in due time, she would like to see you there, too.
“Jesus was Elfriede’s ‘Travel Counselor’”, and Jesus also can be your, “Travel Counselor”. If Elfriede’s earthly travels, her pictures of them, and her writings about them have inspired a love of travel in some, then let her final journey and its destination help inspire your final journey and its destination, not via an airline, to a temporary hotel room, but by way of faith in Jesus Christ, to a permanent residence in heaven, where by God’s grace you also can be victorious over death, never to die again.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +