Funeral sermon for Michael B.

Job 38:1-11, 16-18

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
² ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
³ Gird up your loins like a man,
   I will question you, and you shall declare to me. 

⁴ ‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
   Tell me, if you have understanding.
⁵ Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
   Or who stretched the line upon it?
⁶ On what were its bases sunk,
   or who laid its cornerstone
⁷ when the morning stars sang together
   and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? 

⁸ ‘Or who shut in the sea with doors
   when it burst out from the womb?—
⁹ when I made the clouds its garment,
   and thick darkness its swaddling band,
¹⁰ and prescribed bounds for it,
   and set bars and doors,
¹¹ and said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
   and here shall your proud waves be stopped”? 

¹⁶ ‘Have you entered into the springs of the sea,
   or walked in the recesses of the deep?
¹⁷ Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
   or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
¹⁸ Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?
   Declare, if you know all this. 

Psalm 23

I Corinthians 1:18-25

18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹For it is written,
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
   and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’
²⁰Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²²For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

John 3:14-18

¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

17 ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 

Sermon

We shouldn’t be here today.  Its two days after Christmas.  We should be home with our families recovering from the holiday.  You should be home with Mike, out in the woods hunting, getting excited for the Alumni game and the Winter Classic next week, enjoying the gifts you received for Christmas.  But we’re here.  Which means that the woods that Mike is out hunting in are the woods in heaven…and the alumni hockey game he’s getting excited to watch will be played by Red Wings from generations past.

And as much as we are here to celebrate a life well lived, we also come to mourn.  Mourn the loss of a dear son, husband, brother, dad, grandfather, nephew, friend.  Because no matter when it is or what the circumstances are, death is never easy.  Losing a child, a spouse, a dad, is never easy, especially at this time of year, especially when we were planning on spending Christmas with that person, even with the news of the leukemia diagnosis that had just arrived. 

Life is often full of unexpected events, pleasant or otherwise.  And at this time of the year, when Mike’s unexpected death leaves us stunned, we can look to a manger to find the good news of an unexpected king.  No one expected a king to be born in a stable and his crib to be filled with straw instead of sating.  No one expected a king to be homeless and to preach peace and love while other kings were preaching war and violence.  And no one expected a king to gain victory by dying.  And yet this is what our King did for us.  Born to peasants, living a simple life, teaching us ways of living better with each other, and dying so that we could have life. 

When Jesus came into the world, he came so that we may know love, peace, joy, and light.  His light is a light that shines into the dark places of our lives and dispels it so that we may know that joy and peace that comes from being loved by God.  And though we sit in a dark place of mourning, we know that that light is there…it has not and never will be extinguished.  Mike’s light will never go out completely either.  It will be there when you sit out on the pontoon boat fishing, as you walk out to hunt marsh ducks or go sit during deer season, as you reach for the phone to call Mike about an amazing Red Wings game…he will be there with you.  As a called and claimed child of God, God’s light filled him when he was washed in water and marked with the cross of Christ.  And we can have every confidence that when God sent his son into the world, it was so that Michael Wayne Burgess, child of God, would have everlasting life.  It was so that we, children of God, could have everlasting life, filled with the peace of knowing that God is always by our side as our Good Shepherd.  Now God is leading Mike to still waters filled with fish, to rest in tree stands, and preparing tables for him with the best venison there ever was.  And though he walk through the valley of the shadow of the Colorado Avalanche, God will be with him, his hockey stick and goalie mask comforting him.  And when we are one day reunited, God will do the same for us.  It will be a party that will we can’t even imagine, and it will have no end. 

So as we say goodbye to Mike today, we do so knowing that he is in the arms of his creator, and that one day we will all be reunited on a glorious day in which death, and pain and mourning will be no more.  For God so loves us, that he sent Christ to live and do die so that we could have life abundant.

Amen.