Earl Lefers-Funeral
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So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.
I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 15:42-44, 50-58
Earl Lefers Funeral Message
Brothers and sisters in Christ, towards the end of my meditation last night, I mentioned the importance of us holding onto eternal life. Not just in the way that we hold facts in our memories, and can say that a benefit of Jesus coming again is eternal life, but really grasping it. What an incredible thing it is that as we experience life here on earth, as we come face-to-face with its frailty, its brevity, with all of the pain and sickness and ailments that can occur—God promises there is more life to come. The life that he holds for us, for all who will repent and believe in him, will be perfect. There won’t be any need for machines to scan our bodies for irregularities or medications to take. On Sunday afternoon, Pastor Gary from Harrison said that ministers will be out of a job in heaven, but I think we can doctors and nurses and surgeons to that list too. Brokenness will not exist in the life to come.
It’s difficult to comprehend what that life will be like. From our perspective, it really seems too good to be true. Reading through verses 42 through 44, Paul tells us why that is. The body that is sown—he’s talking about our mortal bodies, “The body that is sown is perishable…it is sown in dishonor…weakness…a natural body.” As we gather today understanding that Earl’s body is without life and that it will go to the ground—that perishing nature is real to us.
Another way we think about perishing though is with food. A couple of years ago, we had our annual Thanksgiving food drive here at the church. After collecting the food, we pass it along to the county food pantry. Well, someone happened to bring some kind of meat in and we weren’t aware of that. A couple of days went by and the bags with food sat in the building here, that perishable meal began to perish; you can imagine a smell went with that. As we think about Earl’s occupation in farming, perishing is something that makes sense there too. The crops need to come in at a certain time, those that are intended to be harvested in the fall can’t just be left over the winter and expected to be good to harvest still come the spring.
I’m not talking this way to gross you out, but rather to make very clear that things that perish cannot on their own become imperishable. When we think of things that we say won’t perish, we probably think of canned foods, things that have been processed or mixed with preservatives. Most people, especially in a rural area, would probably say you can’t beat food that is fresh. Even though fresh food is bound to go bad at some point in time, when they are fresh and ripe, they tend to be better tasting and more nutritious than foods that are imperishable.
Yet the imperishable that Paul speaks of is so much better than what we know now. These things don’t even compare! He’s talking about eternal life with this understanding that we will be resurrected from the dead, raised imperishable, and again verses 43 and 44 tell us, this body “is raised in glory…in power…a spiritual body.” This is significant, because only that which is imperishable can inherit the kingdom. But how does this happen? When we look at our mortality, our finiteness, how can we possibly receive this eternal life if we are perishable?
Paul gives us the key in verse 51 and what follows, “We will all be changed…The dead will be raised imperishable…we will be clothed with the imperishable and with immortality.” Brothers and sisters, if you know and are walking with the Lord, know the power of what he has done for Earl and what he is doing for you and me. For someone to go from perishable to imperishable is a drastic change, and it is not something that we do for ourselves. It is wholly and completely the redeeming and transforming work of our great God.
In the life to come, the life that is before us by faith in eternity, we are not just picking up where we left off in this life. We don’t live in eternity with band-aids or scars or the heartaches of our past—we live refined into something new. We will be clothed with God’s righteousness. Our memories will not be forgetful, but will be filled with the knowledge and praise of God our Savior. It’s easy to just think we can enjoy that when we get there, but the hope of eternal life that God gives us right now can also spur our faith on in times of trial and suffering and grief.
That’s our first point, those who know the Lord will be changed by God, and this gives our faith a great hope. Our second point, the reason why we don’t mourn hopelessly over Earl, is that the change we need has been accomplished in Jesus Christ—he is victorious! For a number of years, verses 54 through 57 have struck me and I think it’s true for others as well, as a battle cry. “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” It’s the Christian’s taunt against death. “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Why can we experience hope right now even as we mourn? What makes us joyful about the future? We have Jesus and we know what he has done. We heard last night again of Earl’s work ethic, and that is something that his children recognize has been passed down to them. Yet we are able to say, there’s no amount or quantity of work, there’s no amount of ethic or action that we can do to beat death. The victory is through Christ Jesus. It is through his death on the cross, that ransomed us from our sins and punishment, and that he rose again. It’s because eternal life is the reward of his action and not our own that we can be certain about this.
Maybe you are here this morning, listening to this message, and it’s surprising that we’re not talking about works and good deeds, that it hasn’t been more about Earl or what we should be doing. If that’s you, good actions, deeds of righteousness and faith have a place in the Christian life, but it begins, is sustained, and finds its future completely in Jesus and his work. If life seems meaningless or that everything appears to be based on whether you have succeeded or failed, I invite you to turn to God.
Our present and our future glory and power is not in what we can do. It is in the change of redemption that God has already accomplished, and that he invites us to live in. See that our death here on earth is not the end, it does not get to cry, “I win,” when a believer passes away—because Jesus has won the complete victory—theologian John Calvin writes, “Salvation [has been accomplished] when death and the grave are reduced to nothing.”
Brothers and sisters, know that our God remains with us for all eternity. He has rescued those he loves and who love him. He is our hope, he is our power, our strength, and he cannot be defeated. Amen.