The Pathway to Life
The 4th of July and Memorial Day will often bring back memories of times in a cemetery. There are others times, too. February 18, 1958, was the day my wife and I laid our infant daughter Kristine to rest in the Old Westbrook Cemetery in southern Minnesota. Certainly many of you have memories of times in a cemetery that will never leave you.
In 1964 while I was training at a state hospital, the Protestant chaplain there asked me to attend a burial with him. I still remember slowly walking behind the truck from the state farm. On the truck bed was a damaged casket in which an inmate from the hospital lay. He would be buried in the little cemetery on a hill overlooking the hospital. It was just the two of us, the chaplain and me. There were no friends, no relatives, or neighbors present, because he didn’t have any.
The chaplain had been an army captain who was a part of the first wave of soldiers that landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day. Helplessly he lay wounded. He faintly remembers someone lifting him up on their shoulder. It had been a medic whocarried him to the medical center of the infantry division.
The chaplain had one artificial leg and the other was thin and laiden with the scars of shrapnel. He is a witness to the truth that though we seek peace among nations and peoples, there will be no lasting peace.
My experience standing next to the damaged casket of the inmate is witness to the truth that though we may be surrounded by others, we can be so utterly lost and isolated from each other for untold reasons.
Hazelden Treatment Center, now a foundation, began as a humble center in the 1940’s. I knew one of the early founders whose father also died all alone. The story of his father is a lesson in how God will never give up on any one of us. His father, an alcoholic, left their family when my friend was very young.
After long years harboring hate and disgust, he learned of his father’s death. He went to pick up the few things his father had left in the dismal apartment in which he lived. There by his father’s bed, my friend found a Bible, worn, marked and stained by his father’s fingers. As he sat down on the bed in which his father had slept for years, he began to page through his Bible. This man, whom he knew only through his anger and resentment, had wrestled with God. My friend told me of the comfort this brought him, knowing that God had never given up on his father.
Our culture has so convinced us of our own significance that we have become gods unto ourselves. Even the young are being told that God is obsolete. Within places of worship there is a tendency to emphasize what we can do for one another rather than to be confronted with the truth of what God is continually doing for us. This truth Steven P. Mueller makes clear for us in his Reformation Heritage Bible Commentary Hebrews. Mueller writes, in effect, that any efforts we exert to please and influence God are like “filthy rags.” Each time we return to a cemetery to visit the grave of a loved one, we are to recall this truth. “Jesus’ perfect work has already saved us.”
This famous painting by Antonio Ciseri of Jesus before Pontius Pilate is a true story about a King. The story begins in Genesis 2:7 Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. The story takes a horrible turn for the worst. Through disobedience to God, man ended his relationship with God. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Genesis 3:19
But the story does not end there. His Son, this King dies to pay the debt of our disobedience and has perfected HIS work in us. Thus the life we now live is a gift being prepared for us through Christ Jesus. It is through that life that God works in us to do His will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. Philippians 2:13b
God’s Son will return again to the living and to the dead. 2 Timothy 4:1 He will receive into His eternal kingdom those who have accepted the work of His Son. Those who have not accepted the work of His Son will be rejected.
How then do we approach our dying when we do not know when, where, or in what state of mind we will be? Our culture has so radicalized the importance of our own significance that we are led to believe there is something we must do. In truth, our dying is God’s finest hour. Satan will have been defeated and by faith and grace alone, all of God’s glories shall be revealed to us. “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9
Paul assures as that “We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— Romans 6:2b-6
While we are still living here, Martin Luther encourages us to live with confidence because of the faith God works in us. It changes us and gives new birth from God. It kills the Old Adam and makes us completely different people. It changes our hearts, our spirits, our thoughts and all our powers. It brings the Holy Spirit with it. Yes, it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn’t stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever. He stumbles around and looks for faith and good works, even though he does not know what faith or good works are. Yet he gossips and chatters about faith and good works with many words.
Soli Deo Gloria to God be the Glory!
