11 November 2006

Funeral Homily for Lenora Niemietz

[Texts: Isaiah 35:8-10; Hebrews 11:8-10; John 14:1-6]

Robert, William, Ruthanne, family and friends of Leonra Niemietz, it is a terrible thing to be robbed of your memories, and yet it is a grace of God when not all memories are erased. I would come to bring Lenora the Holy Sacrament and she would say: “Now, I know I should know you, sir. Tell me your name?” And I’d tell her: “I’m pastor. From Gehlenbeck.” And she’d smile that smile of hers and off we’d go to celebrate the Supper.

Not a word of the liturgy had she forgotten. “O almighty God, merciful Father, I, a poor, miserable sinner…” she confessed. And gave a hearty “amen” to the words of absolution. She prayed the “Our Father…” And always, she would thank me at the end for bringing her her Savior’s body and blood. And then, almost invariably, she’d say: “Pastor, before you go there’s something I want to ask you.”

And I knew what was coming. You guys know too. She’d ask: “My mother and my father. Have you seen them lately?” And no matter how many times I told her that her mother and father were with Jesus, that they’d been taken home to the Lord, she’d sigh and her face would drop a little. Your mother wanted to go home. But the home she was remembering had long since vanished. That didn’t stop the ache and pain, though. She wanted to go home so badly. I think if you gave her a pair of ruby slippers she’d be clicking them together and saying: “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”

Today’s readings remind us that there IS no place like home, and that no place in this world really is worthy of the name. Because home is the place where you’re together forever with those you love. Where the welcome is never tinged with the sadness of having to say goodbye. And so in the first reading, we heard about the Church’s journey through this life – about how we are walking together toward home. And how at last, “the ransomed of the Lord will return and come to Zion with singing and everlasting joy shall crown their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

Such was Lenora’s experience, my friends, when she closed her eyes in death and entered into the life that never ends. There she found that place we heard of in our second reading – the City with foundations, whose designer and builder is God! She was looking for that place all the days of her pilgrimage! There she found the words of her Savior true: “Let not your hearts be troubled…in my Father’s house are many rooms… I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again to take you to myself, that you may be where I am.”

She rejoiced always in how the Savior prepared that place for her – how He went to the cross to forgive her sins, how He entered death to bring death to an end, how He rose from the grave and ascended to heaven to get her home ready!

The joy of that home Lenora’s soul knows already. Already she is with her loved ones whom she missed so much. Already she is home. But the joy of the Lord does not stop there.

He has more. For He will not be through with Lenora or you and me until He has returned in glory to raise this body and the bodies of all His people from the dead and make them immortal like his own – incorruptible, full of light and alive with a life that never ends. How your mom looked forward to that day! I wonder if that’s why she picked the hymn Charles sang today: “When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart!”

She was a sinner who knew that she lived only from the forgiveness of her Savior. Forgiveness won for her and for all upon the cross. Forgiveness given her in the waters of Baptism. Forgiveness sealed to her every time she partook of the Eucharist. Forgiveness that told her in her heart of hearts that she HAD a home – a home that could never, ever be taken away from her.

Today amidt your tears, lift your eyes to home and remember that though we do not have any home in this world that lasts, all the baptized may look forward with joy to the home your mother now lives in. Amen.

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