Video of the service is here. The sermon begins around the 21:50 mark.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Family and friends of Dorothy, God grant you His comfort and peace, and the hope of Christ’s resurrection today and in the days to come.

When we or the people we love are in the prime of life—when we think of how our parents were when we were young, for example—it is hard to take seriously these words of St. Paul in 2 Corinthians. He says that our outer self is wasting away, and that the “tent” that is our earthly home—our body—is slowly being destroyed. But then we all start to get older, and however much we wish it weren’t so, Paul is correct: our outer self, our body, with its bones and blood and muscles and hair, is wasting away.

The last couple times I saw Dorothy, and the times in-between when I talked to Mark, she reiterated that she was tired. Tired of dealing with aging, with pain, with an inability to move around freely. She was ready to be free of a body subject to sin and death, and she was ready for her soul to be with Jesus, and with Jim and others whom she loved who had gone before her in the faith. She knew the truth of what Paul says here, and we know it too. While we are still in this tent, this dwelling, we groan, being burdened.

These are the sorts of things we see and experience. And whether we want to admit it or not, we know that Paul is correct when he says that the things we see are transient—that is, they are only for a time. It may be a longer time or a shorter time, but it is only for a time. Everything we see goes away. That’s not always how we think about it. We tend to think that the things we can see, touch, hold in our hands are the things that will be around forever. We are very scientific: if we can see it and touch it, it’s real, and it’s lasting.

But Paul says exactly the opposite: he says that what we can see is going away; it’s only here for a time. It is, in fact, the things that we cannot see that are eternal. But not just any invisible things. The unseen things that are eternal are Jesus, who was raised from the dead; and the resurrection life that He gives us. The things we build fall apart, wear out, break. That includes our life, which we received from our parents. But there is something that we did not build, something we didn’t make, something that is not subject to our sin or the sin of other people; something that is not subject to time or death. That is the “house” not made by human hands, but made by God in the body, bones, and blood of Jesus. When God raised Jesus from the dead, He made a dwelling place for us in eternal life that cannot die, or break, or be taken away. That dwelling is eternal, bound to the promise that God makes in Jesus. It’s a promise He established at the cross, and by the empty grave of Jesus, but it’s a promise He gave to Dorothy and to each of His children in baptism. There, by that water and the Word of Jesus, God assured Dorothy that she belonged to Him, that she was His dear child, and that she had the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of that word.

And however many years after her baptism, when she knew that her outer self was coming to its end in this creation, I asked her if she knew that she belonged to Jesus, that He was her Good Shepherd, and that He knows His own, she said ‘yes.’ He knows His own, and His own know Him. Through her entire life, good and bad, ups and downs, even while her outer self was wasting away, her inner self, her faithful and believing self, was being renewed each day. She knew not only that Paul was right about our outer self wasting away, but that he was speaking Jesus’ own words about what is coming: this light and insignificant affliction, this living in this body subject to sin and sickness and death, this affliction that is only for a time, just as the things we see are only for a time—this was preparing for her an eternal weight of glory beyond any description or comparison.

Of course, the trouble, the affliction, the pain we go through here doesn’t always feel like it’s light, or momentary, or insignificant. But when it is compared to what’s coming—the heavy, the eternal, the full human existence without sin or death—that’s when everything in this world, in this age, in these bodies will seem like a fleeting dream in comparison with the real and full life in the resurrection and the new creation.

When we groan in these bodies, when we are burdened by the weight of life, of what we’ve done and left undone, when we’re tired, it is not so that we would be unclothed, that we would only get rid of these bodies and be spirits floating around in the clouds. Paul says we groan so that we would be further clothed, that this life and these bodies that come to their end would be swallowed up by the eternal life of Christ. This is what God has made us for. This is what Jesus has built. And just as that life was kept safe with God for Dorothy, it’s being kept safe for all God’s baptized believers. It’s eternal in the heavens, but we keep praying that it would be on earth as it is in heaven. And one day, it will be, when Dorothy and Jim and all God’s holy ones are clothed in resurrection bodies like Jesus’ glorious body. On that day, all that is temporary will be gone, and we will see the eternal life that God has prepared for us, beyond all comparison to anything we’ve yet seen.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). Amen.

– Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 11/9/23