Ellen Patterson funeral
Rom
8:31-39
2/8/20
When I arrived at Good Shepherd in
the summer of 2006, I did what many pastors do when they begin serving a new
parish. I started the process of
visiting all of the members of the congregation in order to get to know
them. I don’t remember when I visited
Ellen, but I certainly remember my first impression, because initially I wasn’t
quite sure what to make of her.
Ellen was very direct – at times
almost brusque. She had no hesitation telling you what was on her mind. If she thought something, she was going to say
it. I was, at first, somewhat caught off
guard by this. However, as I got to know
Ellen a little better I realized that she was very loving and caring person. She had herself experienced very serious
health problems. After being married to
her husband John for over forty years, she had already lived as a widow for
nearly sixteen years when I first met her. I learned that having experienced
these things she was empathetic towards others. The genuine concern she showed
when my wife had to have a brain tumor removed was touching, and right up to
all but the very end she always asked about how Amy was doing.
I learned that Ellen deeply loved
her family. When I began visiting Ellen
as a homebound member I regularly heard about the members of her family. And of
course, I heard the same stories several times. It was easy to tell that they
were the joy of her life. That appreciation of family extended to others as well.
She got to know my family and part of each visit was showing her the latest
pictures of my children and telling her what they were doing as she enjoyed
watching them grow up.
And it soon became apparent that Ellen
loved the Lord. Almost every time I
visited she expressed how much she missed being able to go to church. As the years went by and her mind began to
fail her more, I discovered that hearing and speaking the words of the liturgy,
and receiving the Sacrament of the Altar had a remarkable calming effect on
her. She knew it too, and always mentioned how much it meant to her.
In our text from the end of Romans
chapter eight, the apostle begins by saying, “What then shall we say to these
things?” “These things” include a number of statements describing the
difficulty of life. Paul has said, “For I consider that the sufferings of
this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be
revealed to us.” He has said, “Likewise
the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for
as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too
deep for words.” Or as Paul just wrote: “And we know that for those who love
God all things work together for good, for those who are called
according to his purpose.”
Paul has been talking about
suffering and weakness. And in our text
he goes on to ask, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger,
or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed
all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’”
Sitting here today, it would be easy
to think that Ellen has been separated from the love of Christ. After all, she has died. And even before she died, she was being lost
to herself and to others as her mind deteriorated and her condition advanced.
In this same letter, the apostle
Paul tells us exactly why this has happened.
He says that “the wages of sin is death.” Ellen has died because she was a sinner. We can say lots of nice things about her, but
none of that changes the fact that before God she was a sinner in thought, word
and deed. Like the rest of us, she was a
fallen person living in a fallen world.
The illness that stole her mind from her and ultimately caused her death
was a result of this condition. It is
the same condition that afflicts all of us, and it will produce the same result
for every person here: death.
That is how things look - that sin
and death have separated Ellen from the love of Christ, just as they have
separated her from us. But appearance is
not the reality. And so the apostle vigorously replies: “No, in all these
things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For
I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things
present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything
else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in
Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Why can Paul be so sure? He has just laid out the reasons a little
earlier in our text. He began by saying,
“If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his
own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him
graciously give us all things?”
Sin cannot separate Ellen from God,
because God gave his own Son, Jesus Christ to die on the cross for her sin. As
Paul told the Corinthians, “For
our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might
become the righteousness of God.”
Ellen was baptized into Jesus’ saving death and in the water of baptism
her sins were washed away.
And so Paul
can ask:
“Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies.” Baptized into Christ and living by faith in
him, Ellen was ready for the Last Day. As Paul said earlier in this letter, “for all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his
grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
In
Christ, we already know the verdict of the Last Day for Ellen. She is innocent, not guilty because of Jesus
Christ’s sacrifice for her. Paul told the Romans, “There
is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Finally, in our text Paul asks, “Who
is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died--more than that, who was
raised--who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” Not even death can separate Ellen from God
and the love of Christ, because the Lord Jesus has risen from the dead. In fact, death now means being with risen and
ascended Lord. As Paul contemplated the
possibility of his own death, he told the Philipians, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that
is far better.”
Ellen is now
with Christ, and for this we give thanks. She no longer faces the struggle
against sin. She no longer suffers from
the condition that afflicted the end of her life. She is with the Lord, and
that is far better.
However,
in her baptism Ellen received the promise that God is not yet done. Instead, something even better awaits her. Paul wrote about baptism in chapter six, “Do
you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by
baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead
by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of
life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a
resurrection like his.”
In baptism, Ellen received the
washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit who created and sustained faith in
Ellen during her life, is the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. And so Paul says earlier in this chapter, “If the Spirit of him who raised
Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead
will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in
you.” In fact just before our text he
went on to add, “And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who
have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait
eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”
Because Jesus has risen bodily from
the dead, Ellen will too. Through his
Spirit our Lord will raise her from the dead with a body transformed to be like
his – a body that can never die again.
As Paul told the Philippians, “we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will
transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the
power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”
So
on this day, we give thanks to God for the blessing that Ellen was in the lives
of her family, friends and congregation.
We rejoice in the knowledge that nothing has been able to separate Ellen
from God’s love in Christ Jesus.
Instead, justified by faith on account of Christ, she is a saint who is
with the Lord. And we look with eager
expectation for our Lord to return in glory, for on that day he will raise
Ellen’s body from the dead so that she can live in the new creation with Christ
forever.
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