Funeral sermon for Glenn Sherwood
God is all about family
1 John
3:1-3 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be
called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not
know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are
children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know
that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
3 Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.
Two decades ago, comedian
Bill Cosby wrote a book simply entitled “Fatherhood.” If you ever get a chance
to read it, I suggest you do. Cosby does not offer advice on being a father, he
simply makes some observations about what it takes to be a father and the
leader of the family. For example, he tells one story about his father now in
his role as a grandfather:
“Now that my father is a
grandfather, he just can’t wait to give money to my kids. But when I was his
kid and I asked him for fifty cents, he would tell me the story of his life. How
he got up at 4 a.m. when he was seven years old and walked
twenty-three miles to milk ninety cows. And the farmer for whom he worked had
no bucket, so he had to squirt the milk into his little hand and then walk
eight miles to the nearest can. All for 5 cents a month. The result was that I
never got my 50 cents.
“But now he tells my
children every time he comes into the house: ‘Well, let’s see how much money
old Granddad has got for his wonderful kids.’ And the minute they take money
out of his hands I call them over to me and I snatch it away from them. Because
that is MY money.”
As I sat down with Jackie,
Lynn, Cindy and the rest of the family on Sunday afternoon, the overarching
theme of Glenn’s life was that he was all about family, all about being a father
and leader for his family. Glenn served as a firefighter for 25 years in Racine
Glenn loved his daughters,
but from what I hear, maybe not all of Cindy’s boyfriends. But he did whisper
in her ear during Cindy’s father-daughter wedding dance that she had picked a
good one in Pete. Glenn loved his grandchildren, with Jackie and Glenn spending
a lot of time babysitting for the grandkids. And he loved his great grandson,
Aiden. Lynn
Glenn was all about family.
But God, our heavenly Father, is even more so about family.
Isn’t it extraordinary that
God describes Himself in the Holy Scriptures in family terms? God is the
heavenly Father. Jesus is His Son. Through Holy Baptism God has placed His
Triune name and symbol on us as we were baptized at the font and the pastor
spoke, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit.” Then He placed the sign of the cross on our head and on our
heart, marking us as the redeemed children of God. We were taken from being
born spawn of Satan, children who belonged to the devil, people who only cared
for ourselves and God changed us. He recreated us. He made us His own. How
amazing is this statement: “How great is the love the Father has lavished on
us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”
No
matter how faithful of a father, brother, friend, parent or grandparent Glenn
was, he still failed. He was still flawed. He was like us – sinners from birth,
people whose inborn sin does not stay hidden but reveals itself in hurtful
words, jealous actions, vengeful thoughts and angry looks. Glenn did not die
because of any one specific sin. Instead, like the rest of us, because he was a
sinner through and through, he had to die. The result of sin, ever since Adam
and Eve, is death.
But
what great love the Father lavished on us, that we should be called children of
God! God did not want to see His children, the crown of His creation, die an
eternal death in hell. Our God is really into family. So He sent His own
beloved Son to enter our world … to enter it just like we do – born wet and
naked, defenseless, crying and hungry – and His needs were met by … a mother
and stepfather.
The Son
of God entered our sinful world, not to provide us with enough to eat. Not to
make sure we have something nice to wear or someplace comfortable to sleep.
Those things are nice, but not necessary for salvation. The Son of God came so
that we might be adopted into His holy family. So we might be washed clean of
every failure. So we might be covered with His forgiveness and embraced as one
of His own.
Remember who your Father is. God sacrificed His own
Son to adopt you into His family. Then He raised His Son to life to assure you
He meant what He said.
Jesus
went to the cross and to the tomb, so that our first redeemed relationship with
God is not as His employees or His royal subjects or as prisoners of war … but
as His kids. The
Bible promises, “You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus”
(Galatians 3:26 ). Even if your earthly family has let you down,
your heavenly Father will never stop loving you, claiming you, cleaning you up,
and beaming approvingly on you. Your picture is on His fridge! He formed your
fingerprints, and then He made a plaster molding (like we all do of our kids’
hands) and has it hanging on His wall. He is the caring Father who tucks you in
at night and the concerned Father who stays up all night waiting for you to come
home to Him.
Sin and death separate
families here on earth. The widow of Nain felt that separation and pain when
her young son died. Jackie, Marge, Lynn, Cindy and the rest of the family feel
that pain and separation now that death has claimed Glenn. But our God is all
about families. During the funeral procession, Jesus raised the widow’s son
back to life and gave him back to his mother. But eventually that son would die
again and the pain and separation would be felt once again.
But Jesus has a better
resurrection in store for us – one where we never have to feel pain and
separation or sin again. The sound of weeping and crying will never be heard
there again. Glenn’s body won’t be raised from the dead during this funeral.
That’s because His soul is already alive with Jesus in heaven. Glenn is already
enjoying His new home in the holy city of New Jerusalem
During his lifetime, Glenn
saw Jesus through the eyes of faith in stained glass windows and paintings, in
His Word, in the waters of Baptism and in the bread and wine of the Lord’s
Supper. But the apostle John says in our sermon text that Glenn is now seeing
Jesus with his own eyes as Jesus really is, in all His heavenly glory.
The last few years as Glenn
was homebound, I would go visit him and Jackie to serve them with the feast of
Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper and the bread and water of life in
God’s Word. Glenn was appreciative. He would shake my hand at the end of our
visit and slip a $20 bill into my hand. Unlike Bill Cosby, Glenn was willing to
give freely. I felt it was very lavish. But God has now lavished on His
baptized, confirmed and redeemed son, Glenn, a new home, new meals, and a new
place of honor … all around the throne of the Lamb. He forever will be a child
of His heavenly Father. Amen.
Nothing will be able to
separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
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