Bringing Good out of Bad
Message Given at Grandmother’s Funeral
November 13, 2007
Before I begin, I’d like to say thank you to everyone who is here today, was at the viewings yesterday, and has sent cards, called, or sent gifts or foods. Your love is comforting us at our time of need.
I’d like to read you three verses from the book of Acts today, about Saint Stephen, for whom Stephen, the patron saint of Hungary, is named.
“And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison. Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word.” –Acts 8:2-4
The verses I just read paint a very hard picture: a good man, Stephen, has just died, and a very bad man, Saul, is persecuting and imprisoning Christian believers. It appears that Satan has gotten his victory: Stephen has been silenced, and God’s people are rounded up like cattle. God, however, is bigger than any circumstances life can throw at us, as the next verse testifies. Even as Christ’s followers flee from Jerusalem, they take His words of hope to the ends of the earth with them.
The message I would like to give you is that God is bigger than this morning’s circumstances too. In the face of Grandma’s death, we have a God who is bigger, stronger, and more loving than any other force ever seen or imagined. A God who says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” A God who lets us “lie down in green pastures and restores our soul.” A God who loved us so much, He sent His Son who, by dying, shows us the way to life.
I remember when I was about five or six years old, Grandma would tell me, “You know Jason, I’m an old woman.” Being just a kid, I thought she was saying she was going to die. So when she said that, I would cry and cry, and say, “Grandma, don’t die!” I think that our society has the same problem I had when I begged Grandma not to die: not only can’t we accept the fact of death, we can’t even talk about it.
But if you can’t talk about death at a funeral, when can you talk about it?
Well, this morning I want to talk to you a little about death. Ever since the Garden of Eden, you and I and every other person we’ve ever known are born with the curse that someday we’ll die. When Adam and Eve sinned, they, and all their descendants, were doomed not just to physical but also spiritual death, and so wounded God’s heart that He did everything he could to reverse this process of spiritual death. He sent us the Jewish law, with its sacrifices, blessings and cursings, so that by that Law, we would know how to please him and how to have our sins forgiven—usually by the shedding of blood by a living sacrifice.
Now when God sent His Son Jesus to the earth, he made it clear that Jesus’ purpose was to: show us how to love God, live a sinless life, and then, in His most significant act, become that living sacrifice that will once and for all take away the sins of the world.
I know the name of Jesus might be unpopular nowadays, but if you can’t talk about Jesus in a church, where can you talk about him?
By Jesus dying on the cross, he made a way for all of us to never taste spiritual death. This does not reverse the process of physical death, but more importantly, it undoes our spiritual sickness. As 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
The catch is that accepting God’s forgiveness through Jesus means that God is your Lord—your master—and the rest of your life is His, to do whatever he wants with it. This doesn’t mean you’ll have to become a missionary to deepest Africa, but it does mean that He will take you where He wants you to go, whether that’s an office, a church, a factory, or a jungle. The upside is, wherever He takes you will be the safest, best and most worthwhile place you’ll ever be. As he says in Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
This is the same God that Grandma confessed as her Lord. She always let her children and grandchildren know that she was praying for us and our families, and that she loved us. She cried out to God, the God of Saint Stephen, worshiping and praising him through the Rosary. Grandma leaves this world as a loving mother, an adoring grandmother, a devoted sister, a caring aunt, and a faithful friend. Whether she knew it or not, she was living out one of Stephen’s life principles: “Be humble in this life, that God may raise you up in the next.”
If you want to know about the God that Grandma worshiped, we’re always available. We’d love to tell you how God has turned some terrible circumstances in our lives into beautiful miracles.