Judi Christophersen, R.I.P.

Kjell and Judi began attending Christ Church during the early years, back when we were still meeting in the body and paint shop, and I believe that this really does make them OG Kirkers. They represent the kind of faithfulness and friendship that has extended over the course of decades. It is consequently a true privilege to be asked to speak these words to you today.

Different sorts of words are spoken or sung at funerals, and this variety can be appropriate and good. There are words of humorous remembrance, there are words that honor the departed, and there are words that comfort the grieving. But underneath all such words are the words of the gospel, the only words that can provide the sufficient support and rationale for anything else that we might say. That is the purpose of this homily, the words that I am speaking to you now.

Judi loved to hear the gospel preached. And I really need to emphasize the word loved here, wanting you to imagine the italics. She loved to hear the Word proclaimed, and so I intend to declare it to you.

We are confronted here with the raw reality of death. But why do we die? What is this strange phenomenon? Philosophers might want to puzzle over the question of why we are here in the first place. But once we have arrived in this world, why it is necessary for us to leave it? It is not just a question of why we show up, but also a question of why we need to leave. Is it really the case, as we read in Macbeth, that our brief life here is just a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? Or is there a point? Is there any purpose at all?

If Scripture is to be believed, and it is, death does not mean that everything is wrong. Many aspects of our lives here are good and wonderful. But the reality of death is rather a strong indicator that something serious did in fact go wrong. Throughout Scripture, death is described as an enemy, our adversary.

Our Creator God, our Heavenly Father, placed our first parents in a world of innocence, free of every form of corruption. They disobeyed the one negative command that was given to them, the command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and that disobedience plunged our world into darkness, hubris and despair. Because we were rebels, we were broken into countless pieces, shattered beyond hope, and because we were very proud rebels, we denied that this brokenness was now our settled condition.

Once we had done this to ourselves, God in His mercy barred the way back to the tree of life in the Garden, lest we eat from it in that lost condition, thus making our despair permanent. God clothed them, made fruitfulness more difficult for them, and exiled them from the Garden. His intention was to carve out a path back to the tree of life, the tree we had forfeited through our sin. The height from which we fell can be measured by how much history we had to go through in order to get us back. So this was not a minor failing, or a trivial matter, and it meant that the path back had to wind its way through centuries.

God stationed many prophets alongside that path, down through those centuries, and they would tell us where the path was leading. They said that a Messiah was coming, that a Christ would appear, and He would put everything to rights, starting with our own hearts. These prophets gave us various indicators and signs, so that we would know Him when He arrived. They told us the town where He was to be born. They told us that His mother was to be a virgin. They said that He would be God-in-the-flesh. They said that He would be a prophet, and a priest, and a king. And they said He would bind up the broken-hearted . . . and here we are.

The fact of all these predictions was well-known, but we did not piece them together correctly. We thought that God would appear and display for us a kind of right-handed power, smashing His enemies, and establishing His kingdom. But as we discovered through the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, He was not to be a king who established His rule through conquest and killing. Rather this was to be a king who established His authority and rule through dying.

Jesus conquered death by taking death into Himself, sinking down into death, and then after three days and three nights in the tomb, coming back from that grave, leaving that death behind. Jesus is no longer in the grave . . . but death still is.

Because Jesus left death behind as the second Adam, all His heirs and assigns are privileged to do the same. Those heirs are all the believers who have placed their faith in Him. As the poet Donne put it in Holy Sonnet X,

The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is described in the Bible as the first fruits of the great harvest to come. That harvest will happen when the angelic trumpet blows, and the sea gives up her dead, the graves are opened, and the trees on both sides of the river are laden with fruit.

We are at a funeral here, dealing with the aching reality of death. We are not asked to pretend that the sorrow and grief are not real. They are genuine, they are real. But what we are dealing with is the grief of extended separation—not the grief of annihilation. We are not as those who are without God, and without hope in the world. In this life, none of us here will speak with Judi again. But we nevertheless know, simply because of who Jesus is and what He did, that we will in fact speak with her again.

Believers and unbelievers both shed tears. But the unbeliever spirals downward into everlasting sorrow, the gnashing of teeth, and the weeping that is the soundtrack of the outer darkness—the darkness that envelops every isolated and spiteful self. But in the sharpest contrast possible, the reality of the gospel is this. For believers, our tears will be dried by the hand of God Himself.  

So here is the gospel, yet again. Christ was born of a woman, born under the law. He lived a perfect, sinless life, was railroaded by corrupt authorities, and executed in the excruciating death of a cross. Because Scripture says that everyone who is hanged on a tree is under the curse of God, this means that He was taking the curse for our sins upon Himself.

So for those of you who have looked to Him in evangelical faith, even though His outstretched hands were nailed fast and fixed, He still gathered up all your sins to His chest, and sank down into our great enemy, death. He was swallowed by the great dragon of death—swallowed but not digested. And after three days and three nights he burst out of that dragon, killing him. The dragon is dead. Death is dead. Your sins are dead. Christ is alive.

And because Christ is alive, Judi has been received into life, just as we will be received into life—life that cannot be undone.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.