Funeral for Peter Olling

(Jesus said) "In My Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?" John 14:2

Here's a question for you. What has 90,000 square feet, 23 bathrooms, 13 bedrooms, 10 kitchens, a 20-car garage, three pools, a bowling alley, an indoor roller rink, a two-story movie theater, a video arcade, a fitness center, a baseball field, and two tennis courts?

Give up? I thought so. The answer is Versailles. No, not the palace of French kings; this is Versailles the mansion of tycoon David Siegel. Siegel started building the mansion when his business in timeshares was booming. He stopped building the mansion when the timeshare market got clobbered by the recession.

Right now the mansion is for sale. For those of you who are curious, the cost of the joint is a mere $75 million. If you wish, you can buy the place in a completed state for a paltry $25 million more.

Now, although I don’t know many of you, I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that most of you don’t have that kind of change in your petty cash box.

Now here’s the point, if we cannot scrape together the money to buy an earthly home, how short are we going to be when it comes to purchasing a nice place in heaven?

Honesty compels me to inform you that you cannot purchase a place in heaven. Not a mansion, not a condo, not a starter home, not even a closet space. You cannot buy a home in heaven. You cannot even get close enough to peer over the pearly gates.

Your sin separates you from God. Your ungodly lifestyle causes you to fall short of the glory of God. Your spiritual bankruptcy keeps you from your eternal dream house. If those rooms in heaven are going to be bought and furnished by us, they’re going to sit empty and unfilled for a very long time – for an eternity.

But, thanks be to God, those heavenly spaces with our names on them are not based on what we do or don't do. Those places, even now, are being prepared for us by the Savior. The down payment was made on them with His Bethlehem birth; the monthly charges were picked up as He lived His life, and the last disbursement was made when Jesus laid down His life on the cross. His third-day resurrection from the dead says that all who believe on Jesus Christ as their Redeemer from sin have been given a heavenly home.

And that’s why we are here today. To thank God that Pete has entered the mansions of heaven. Not by being a good son or a caring friend or even a faithful Christian. Pete’s heavenly home was purchased for him by the precious blood and innocent suffering and death by his Savior, Jesus Christ. It is through his faith in Jesus that he has moved into his glorious new room.

A faith that he did not earn or deserve or work for. I met Pete after visiting with Jerry when he became homebound. I would have a devotion with Jerry, then he would confess his sins and we would pray the Lord’s Prayer and then he would receive communion. Pete sat at the dining room table while we did this. Eventually, Pete asked what he needed to do to join the church. After a few weeks of visiting and conversations and then a confession of sins and confession of faith, Pete was taken into membership in January of 2008.

It was a faith that was tested with Jerry’s death and then with Pete’s oxygen and with his constant health problems. But it was a faith that was fed with God’s Word and nourished with Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper.

A faith that enjoyed hearing God’s Word in our church in both Word and song. When Pete was able to come to church, he would sit in the fifth pew from the front. His oxygen tank would make its little noises. He usually didn’t open a hymnal and sing along. He just closed his eyes, smiled and enjoyed the music. But now Pete is healthy, without any tears or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He is in the new city of Jerusalem the Golden. It is such a place of peace and safety that even the wolf and the lamb feed together. It is a place of singing and praise by the saints and angelic choirs. And Pete is literally in heaven enjoying all of this.

Pete certainly had his sins. He knew them. He confessed them. He admitted that those sins kept him separated from his friends, his family and especially, his God. He knew that his deserved punishment in hell.

But that is why Jesus came to this earth, as God in human flesh. He came to save sinners like Pete, you and me. Jesus left His mansion in heaven to come to this earth of pain, sin and shame. He came to take our sins upon His perfect self. He suffered so we might be saved. He died that we might live. He endured hell so we might be given heaven. Now that gift of heaven has been given to you, me and Pete. It is ours through faith in Him.

Pete’s mom liked to say that he was born in the north woods in Meteor, WI in a sawed hut. A few years ago Pete and Jerry moved to Alabama, but that didn’t last very long. Pete liked to stay busy with his antique dealing, even buying right up to his death. I visited with Pete in his apartment last month. He had just come home from the hospital and he was still out buying more stuff. Now all of that is over. Pete has a new place to stay. No more moving. It is home. And it’s a big place – a mansion. And he has an eternity to fill it up.

It is Pete’s room. Through Jesus. Free and clear. Lock, stock and deed. For eternity. Thanks be to God. Amen.

November 30, 2011