Funeral of Gertrud Agnes Graue 12 October 2016

+ In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti + Amen.

Text: John 14:3
Theme: Not Forgetting To Come Back

Dear friends, loved ones, and family of Gert, her children, and especially you, Elmor,

“I will come back and take you to be with Me,”1 this is the promise of Him who has traversed death and opened heaven, even Jesus Christ, our Lord. This He has done for Gert Graue. She is in His presence. Freed from all sin, released from all struggle, the profundity of her peace is beyond our knowing. God has not forgotten her. The Scripture says, “He remembers his covenant forever, the word that He commanded, for a thousand generations.”2 Thanks be to God for His immeasurable love!

On more than one occasion the Scriptures credit God with remembering. God remembered Noah, his family and the animals on the ark. He resettled them in a world cleansed from unbelief. God remembered Abraham at the time Lot was spared while Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. God remembered Rachel when she was barren and she conceived and bore a son. He doesn't, of course, have amnesia. He doesn't suffer from poor recall. It's the Bible’s way to express that fact that when human hope is at its lowest, when people have all but forgotten what could have been, when the dream has been let go of, its then that God returns, if you will, to make good on His promise.

God's remembering is tied with rescue, restoration, and redemption. Gert may not have always remembered. In the end she may not have remembered the names, faces, and particular characteristics even of those dearest to her. But the integrity of her memory was not critical for her standing before God. To say that faith is destroyed by failing memory is to misunderstand the nature of the Holy Spirit's gift. God looks after His elect. The brain is not the only part of the body that has capacity for memory. The heart also stores it. God reads the heart.

Gathering to reflect on the death of a loved one is sobering business. It rightly draws our attention to critical truths. Human mortality is not an imaginary threat. Death reveals the ultimate vulnerability of the human condition. The Bible says when sin matures it leads to death. To ignore the consequences of sin is the greatest foolishness. Our false senses of security soon come to grief if the final implication of lacking the righteousness God requires is not resolved before we take our last breath. Then we are like children building sandcastles while ignorant of the rising tide. Children may pick up their gear and in turn be lifted by their parents to safety. The fun is over. The game is finished. No harm is done. But death allows no such childish indulgences. It is not make-believe. The quicksand of sin prevents our movement. We face the punishing surf unable to retreat. Mortality requires divine intervention. Christ rescues the believer from the horrifying prospect of eternal separation from God. Maturity demands sobriety. Sobriety is the only true foundation for joy.
And joy is the truth that prevails in our celebration today. Gert was God’s baptized child. To remember that Gert is baptized is to remember that God has made to her an irrevocable promise. The Bible says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”3

So what accompanies the believer across the threshold of death? What integral, essential part of us makes the transition? Not our accomplishments. Not our failures. Not our embarrassments or fears. Certainly not any material possessions we've accumulated. The only thing that does is the only thing that matters: Our identity in Christ. Baptism opens the door to heaven through which the believer passes at death and awaits the bodily resurrection. It all happens through His grace.

In the end every attempt to commend ourselves, to justify ourselves, to put forward even a lifetime of evidence; including our self-deprecations or false humilities is an offence to the irreproachable holiness of the Almighty. In the end it's all about Christ, or all of our efforts are an exercise in futility. It's not Christ in addition to us. It's Christ alone. We are saved by grace, through faith, by Jesus' sacrifice for our sins. There is no other Saviour. There is no other way. In Him death is defeated, Satan is silenced, the gates of hell are barred shut.

Gert was not enjoying life in the last days. It's not simply a vacuous platitude to say that God has His reasons for allowing the circumstances that attend each person when death draws near. In humility of faith we allow God to be God. Why did He allow Gert's health to fail? Why did she seem to have cruel burdens to bear in the end? We limit our speculation and we look to the cross. Jesus died and rose again that all who believe in Him might have life. We cling to the promise that says, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."4

Gert’s journey of faith has ended. The most important evidence of faith is not the rare act of exceptional service, but the daily commitment to live in one’s vocation in a faithful and godly manner. To be a faithful wife and mother. To strive at loving God and neighbour, knowing that we fail, but believing that Christ succeeded. Gert persevered at these things following the voice of the Good Shepherd. Gert and Elmor’s wedding text was from John chapter 10, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”5 Gert no longer has to strain out competing voices from that of the true Shepherd. She is safely in His hands.

Of course, we still grieve. The primary venue for the grieving Christian is not the cemetery, but the church. The cemetery may contain the material remains of the deceased, it is a place of remembrance; but the church is the assembly of the faithful transcending time and space. It is here that God ‘remembers’ us. Elmor, go to the cemetery to honour Gert. But come to the church to thank God for the blessing that she was. Here is where sorrow transitions to acceptance, then to hope, then to gratitude. Here is where we have the continuity of God’s love across the generations. Gert Graue may not have been able to express her memory in the last days, but God has not forgotten her. Her last day has come. She is in His presence, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and all the hosts of heaven. In this we rejoice. Amen.

+ In nomine Jesu +

Christian Burial of Gertrud Graue
12 October, 2016
Reverend Darrin L. Kohrt


1 John 14:3
2 Psalm 105:8
3 1 Peter 1:5
4 Revelation 21:4
5 John 11:27-28