Christ Lutheran Church: Welcome

Be a Thief - November 4, 2007

Be a Thief

Luke 23:39-43

November 4, 2007

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

Last year we only got a month beyond All Saints Day before Marge Rasmussen succumbed to Alzheimers and diabetes and became the first among us to be transferred to the eternal realm.  And then exactly one month to the very day, her husband George followed, due to complications of advanced diabetes, a badly fractured leg and a broken heart.  Together the last farmers of this congregation would leave this congregation almost a quarter million dollars.

A month after that, Florence Breen finally died from complications of a bad fall in her apartment, even after three years of miraculous recovery in a nursing home in Minneapolis.  She had been baptized in the first church of this congregation and remained to be a continuously active member longer than anyone else in the history of this congregation.

The next month Russ Jerde's older brother, Loren, passed away after years of convalescing in a nursing home.  Loren had no church and so I conducted the funeral for him at the funeral home in Watertown.

Three days after that the only blind member of this congregation, Gordon Cummings, died from multiple organ failure after weeks of surgical complications, just days after he saw parts of his life published in Ruth's new book.

We had a three month break and then I was called to do the funeral for a middle aged mother of a friend of a member of this congregation.  Linda Schumacher died after three years of lingering with cancer.  Neither she nor most of her family had a church involvement and I was asked to do the service at the MN Landscape Arboretum - a first for me.

A month after that I was the police chaplain who was called to the scene of Kee Peterson, who suddenly dropped dead from a heart attack while preparing his RV on a beautiful summer day.  He had been a member of this church thirty hears ago but had not church involvement ever since then which is why we were asked to do the funeral.  As police chaplain I also escorted many other families through death this year.

And then finally two weeks ago Renee Burrow's mother, Ruth Marko, succumbed after three years of struggling with Alzheimers.

So altogether, this congregation held the commencement ceremonies for ten who graduated from this life.  All ten were up in years.  Only three of these ten have any family left in this congregation to remember them today.  Maybe only half of them had any sign of an active Christian life.  I only knew half of them to any extent at all - and of those I did know, I only knew a tiny slice of just the last few years of their life.  As with most people, their lives had lots of mysteries, lots of unanswered questions, and complications of living.

But my All Saints Day sermon today is not for the ones we call the saints "triumphant" - the ones who have passed on.  The lesson here is for the ones we call the saints "militant" - those of us who are still here, who have a few steps yet to take here on our journey Home.  To be blunt, I am preaching this for you to remember every day that may be your last day here.  I am hoping this sermon will give you peace of mind should the Evil One try scaring you with self-doubts when your day of transfer approaches.

One of the most common things I experience with people at that point is their ear that they had not done all they could have in this life.  The truth is, no one has done all they should have in this life.  Although I am asked to remember only the best things about people in my funeral sermons, I know that every one of them was a mixture of good and bad - what Martin Luther used to call "simul eustis et pecatur" - Latin for the fact that all of us are some mixture of saint and sinner at the same time.

But I cannot comfort them with the lie that I know they were "good" enough.  And I cannot tell them that God does not care about this or that which they had done.  But I can point to the only person whom the Bible tells about Jesus promoting directly into heaven.  He was a thief.  And by his own admission, he had been so bad that crucifixion was exactly what he deserved.  In the lesson that you just read the apostle Paul assured us that, among other things, thieves will never inherit the Kingdom of God.

Yet THIS thief did.  And for one reason only.  He confessed his sin - at the very last moment - and simply asked Jesus to remember him when Jesus came into His Kingdom.  You see, Paul said that many of his listeners HAD BEEN guilty of the things that would otherwise cos them heaven.  But then Paul added this:  "But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God."  You were washed in baptism, you were set aside as a saint by God FOR God and then you were justified by sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ who paid the cost of your sin, "just as if I'd" never committed those sins in the first place.

In other words, by ourselves, we have a past which makes us toast.  Those who think God can be mocked by ignoring His will and deliberately following their own, need to pay attention to the warning about where that will get you.  But those of you who fear the Lord as you should, need to focus on something else:  that when we repent and ask Jesus to stand up for us, we have a very hopeful future.

At the bottom of the bulletin I printed a quote from Oscan Wilde who said, "Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future."  Neither depend on your past nor be held captive BY it.  Instead, start training yourself now to think of yourself as the thief on the cross.  Know that Jesus suffers right beside you FOR you; repent of your past and turn to Jesus and simply ask Him to remember you when He come into His kingdom.  You know the rest.  Amen - may it be so.