Helen's Redeemer Lives: A Sermon for the Funeral of Helen Westphal
Christ is risen! He is
risen, indeed! Alleluia!
It is never easy when a
loved one dies. A death during Holy Week complicates things with all the other activities
and worship services. But on the positive side, it really gives us another
opportunity to proclaim Christ’s death and resurrection. Today, I won’t speak a
lot about Helen, but I will tell you about Helen’s Redeemer.
The message of Good
Friday is that Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God, died for the sins of the world.
Every sin has been paid for by Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of
the world. On Easter, we celebrate the Good News that the Good Shepherd who
laid down His life for His sheep has taken it up again. His sheep hear His
voice and follow Him. He gives eternal life, and we will never perish, and no
one will snatch us out of His hand. The message of Easter is of life in the resurrection
of the crucified Son of the living God.
This has been the hope that
God’s people have always had, believed, and confessed. It is the hope that Adam
and Eve had when they beheld the body of their slain son. The promise of the
resurrection was all that they had. Abraham trusted in the resurrection of the
dead, even as he prepared to slay his son by the Lord’s orders. Job did as
well, and dear friends, I direct your attention this morning to Job’s words
written in time, confessed for millennia, sung throughout the centuries, and
lived unto and throughout eternity.
“Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed
in a book! Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock
forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon
the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall
see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not
another. My heart faints within me!” (Job 19:23-27).
Job was a man who was
severely tested. Indeed, when we consider what happened to him, we are even
more amazed that he could make such a confession as: “I know that my Redeemer
lives.” Job was a blameless and upright man in the sight of God… a man who feared
God… a man of repentance who was clothed with God’s righteousness… a man
blessed with ten children, thousands of livestock, and numerous servants.
Then God allowed Satan
to afflict Job. In quick succession, Job lost all his children and possessions.
To make matters worse, Job was afflicted with hideous sores that covered him head
to toe. Job had but three things left: his life (at least what was left of it),
friends that failed to give him wise counsel; and his wife who encouraged Job
to curse God and die.
Job did not do this.
Instead, he made a remarkable confession of faith: “I know that my Redeemer
lives.” It seems to be at odds with his circumstances. But Job kept his eyes
focused on the Word of promise and his Redeemer. In the midst of the turmoil
and trials God permitted to happen to Job, the foundation of his life was the
Word of God. Centuries later, the Lord Jesus would repeat this truth Job confessed.
Jesus told His disciples of all ages, “Whoever believes in Me, though he die,
yet shall he live” (John 11:25). The risen Jesus proclaimed to His Church: “Be
faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10b).
The promise of the
resurrection of Job himself and of Job’s Redeemer was what kept Job going
spiritually even as his world was falling apart. He knew that not only was this
Word of God, the object, or focus of his faith; but it was also the means by
which his faith was sustained. Job was sorely troubled. He complained. He moaned.
But in all of it, he did not blame God.
The foundation of Job’s
great hope was the Redeemer. The Hebrew word is “Goel,” which is used to
describe the situation where a man had sold himself into slavery and the
obligation to buy him back rested upon a kinsman, a relative, a goel. Job,
because of the promise first given to Eve in the Garden of the Seed of the
woman who would defeat Satan, was confident that his Goel, his Kinsman, would buy
him back from the slavery of sin and the bondage of death. This Jesus did for
Job and for Helen and for you and for me and for the world when He died on the
cross.
From his confession of
faith, “I know that my Redeemer lives,” Job is telling us at least three truths
concerning his Redeemer. First, he knows that his Goel is Divine. Job recognizes
that his redemption is not going to come from another man. Job’s friends were
trying to convince him that he was suffering God’s judgment because of a
particular sin or sins that he had committed. They assumed that Job was getting
exactly what he deserved. They forgot about God’s mercy and grace, and that the
Redeemer is God Himself.
Only God Himself could
be our Goel, our Redeemer. God has sent His Son, not to punish us, but as the
Kinsman to buy us back. God does not punish His children. All the punishment
that we deserve from God was taken out on His Son when He died on the cross for
all the sins of all people—past, present, and future.
Second, Job understands
that His Redeemer is personal. “I know that my Redeemer lives,” he confesses.
Job knew that His Redeemer is not just a god who set the world in motion and left
it to itself. Job knew, as Helen knew, and you and I know, that God is present
with us—not just during the happy times of life, but especially when the days
are dark, and the future seems uncertain. He keeps us in our baptismal grace,
sustains us with His Supper, and is always with us to the end of the age.
Finally, Job
understands and knows that his Redeemer is a living Redeemer. Jesus is not a dead
god made out of stone or wood, or a dead man still buried in the dust of the
earth like Buddha or Mohammed. Job is completely confident that his Savior is
alive and, at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been
thus destroyed, “yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and
my eyes shall behold, and not another.”
Job’s Redeemer was and is
Helen’s Redeemer, too. The Lord made Helen His own child through the water and
Word when her parents brought her to be baptized at St. Matthew’s Lutheran
Church in Worthington, Minnesota on July 15, 1923. She publicly confessed her faith
in her Redeemer, Jesus Christ, in the Rite of Confirmation in that same place
on June 5, 1938.
Though Helen didn’t
quite reach her goal of living to the age of 100, God blessed her with over 98
years of life, nearly sixty years of marriage to Paul, with three children, seven
grandchildren, seventeen great-grandchildren, and three great-great-grandchildren.
Along with the joys and blessings, Helen experienced the losses and sorrows
that come with a long life in this fallen world, including the death of her
husband, Paul, the loss of her sight, her hearing, and mobility.
Through it all, Helen kept
her eyes focused on the Word of promise and her Redeemer. Like Job, she looked
forward to the Day of Resurrection and believed that one day she would see her
risen Savior with her own 20/20 vision eyes and clearly hear her Shepherd’s voice
with her own ears.
God granted her so many
blessings in this life, but she knew the best was yet to come. Her Redeemer purchased
and won her from sin, death, and the devil, not with silver or gold but with
His own holy and precious blood, His innocent suffering and death. He clothed
her in His robe of righteousness, fed her with His own body and blood for the
forgiveness of her sin and the strengthening of her faith. And she passed that
faith on to others.
Christ Jesus is your Redeemer,
too! He came to live for you, to die for you, to rise again for you—all that
you might hear that you are forgiven in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit. With your mouth you sing “I know that my Redeemer lives”
and with your tongue you confess “Christ is crucified; and in your souls you
believe that Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
Helen’s Redeemer lives.
And because He is risen and lives you have the sure and certain hope that one
day He will return to raise the bodies of all the dead, and give unto Helen,
and you and me and all believers in Christ eternal life. This is most certainly
true.
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are
from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway
Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All
rights reserved.
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