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Marilyn Huelsman - Funeral Romans 8.38-39

8.5.2010 “True Confidence”

In the name of the Father and the + Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Romans 8.38-39 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.

Jesus lives! The vict’ry’s won!

Death no longer can appall me;
Jesus lives! Death’s reign is done!
From the grave will Christ recall me.
Brighter scenes will then commence;
This shall be my confidence.

Jesus lives! And now is death

But the gate to life immortal;
This shall calm my trembling breath
When I pass its gloomy portal.
Faith shall cry, as fails each sense:
Jesus is my confidence! (LSB #490, vs. 1, 5)

These words from this ever-comforting hymn describe Marilyn to a ‘T’, don’t they?

Jesus truly is Marilyn’s confidence. Marilyn knew that she was going to soon fail at living; and

nothing she could do was going to change that. Her body was quickly giving up on her. Though

still relatively sharp, her mind was becoming foggy and confused. The last thing my

grandmother said to me (other than “I love you”), was “I don’t think I can go on like this for too

much longer.” /

Well, just imagine it: confusion, frustration, anxiety, helplessness. Stuck inside a body

that wouldn’t work, that wouldn’t do what she told it to. I remember my grandmother so active,

so lively, so passionate about her children and the work she did. But then, in the past few

months, her body became quite inactive and unlively, and hardly able to do any work, except to

pray. Sure, she was comfortable, she was and still is loved and cared for, but her body was

simply giving up. “I don’t think I can go on like this for too much longer,” she said. No, she

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couldn’t, and she wouldn’t have to. And that was OK for her; she knew what lay ahead: / Jesus,

face-to-face, her true confidence.

But this confidence wasn’t a faith that was always so / comfortable. Faith like this shows

a long process, having been refined many times in the “furnace of affliction.” While making her

earthly pilgrimage, she was affected by both death and life, by angels and rulers. She was

burdened by things present and anxious about things to come. She was made to be in submission

to powers, both worldly and spiritual. Her faith and life, not unlike your faith and life, was given

to certain periods of heights and depths. This bout of sickness was simply, for her, the last of

these faith and life depths, of these afflictions. But as she recognized, the moments of suffering

that she faced were in fact gifts from God. They were allowed by God; to weaken her. Yes, they

were “gracious gifts of weakness”. Trials bless us by stripping away, one by one, our earthly

false gods / so that we may fully and truly rely upon Christ for all things. And so it was with

Marilyn.

God knew what she needed, and when she needed it, and how much. And so in the end,

Marilyn’s confidence would be, not in herself – not in her hard and good works, not in her

passion for her children and grandchildren, not even in her own faithfulness – no, her confidence

would be solely / in her Savior. Suffering teaches us, as it taught Marilyn, in a powerful way, /

that nothing in this world can give the confidence that is needed. The confidence / to live, / and

the confidence / to die.

In the very late hours of Saturday night, her confidence (given to her in her Baptism) was

eternally rewarded. For, while Marilyn failed at living, Jesus gave her the final victory.

Now, it looks to the human eye, perhaps / to you, that sickness has conquered this body.

Repent. For her Savior, her Good Shepherd, who came to her in Holy Baptism, who continued

to come to her in Holy Communion, He had come for her finally / to take her home. “I don’t
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think I can go on like this for too much longer,” she said. And she hasn’t. Her race is over; she

has won. She will never feel the affects of sin anymore. She was sure of this future state of

peace, by faith, and now that hope has fully become, for her, reality. //

But what about you? You who are left here in the pangs of grief; you who are left with an

empty void which used to be occupied by your relationship with Marilyn. What about you, who

remain in these frail, unreliable bodies.

If there’s one thing that Marilyn prayed fervently for, it was that Jesus would be your

confidence as well. That the hope and faith she had, would be yours. In the end, Marilyn knew

what it is we all really need. When our bodies and minds fail (as hers did), when our faith is

weak, when memories of sins past and present plague us, when the devil torments us, and

suffering or grief overwhelms us, / when we have nothing else in this world that can give us hope

– Repent, for there is yet Jesus; the Beginning and the End, the Mediator between God and man,

the One who Himself suffered much and who is in fact with you in your suffering, who is with

you in your grief.

Jesus, who loved you and gave Himself for you on the altar of the cross, and who now

lives for you to give life to you. Life / in the forgiveness of all of your sin. The life that you

cannot do; but that He can, and does. Remember your Baptism: in those holy waters, making

you His own. Remember Holy Communion: under the bread and the wine, preserving your frail

body as a temple of His Holy Spirit. In the hearing of preaching, in the reading of Scripture,

preserving you in the one true confidence, till life everlasting with / Him, with Marilyn and with

all the saints. //

So rest well, Grandma, until by grace through faith in Christ, we meet again. Or as the

beautiful words of the hymn put it:

O Christ, do Thou [our] soul[s] prepare

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For that bright home of love

That [we] may see Thee and adore
With all Thy saints above. (LSB #673 v. 6)

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.