God Loves Farmers

A Funeral Homily for Leo

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

God loves farmers, doesn’t He? I mean, God loves us all, of course. But it seems pretty clear to me that He’s always had a special place in His heart for farmers. Maybe it’s because that was our first job, way back in Genesis. God plants the Garden of Eden and wants someone to help Him care for it, so He mixes together the earth itself with a bit of His own breath, and ends up with Adam—the “earth critter.” Made from earth to tend and steward the earth. Enlivened by God to love and delight in God. Sure sounds like a farmer to me. It’s hard to get a swelled head when dealing with the powers of nature. And it’s hard to deny the presence of the Creator when dealing every day with His Creation.

Farmers are the original human beings, strong and humble, selfless and grateful—what Jesus called the salt of the earth. That’s Leo for you, right there. He was a farmer through and through, the ideal farmer, in all the best and most loving of ways. Whenever I visited Leo, he was always a kind and gracious host, quiet but welcoming. You could immediately see how much he loved his wife, his family, his farm. He was as reserved as Guyla was boisterous. They made such a wonderful couple. When Guyla passed a few years back it was a shock to everyone, obviously, but to none moreso than Leo, who had been so convinced that he would go before her. His kids, the stepchildren and nieces, family and friends, took such good care of him, and I know that he took great comfort in all that they did—all that you did.

He came to worship every Sunday and always thanked me afterward, shaking my hand and asking God to bless me and bring me peace. We all needed that, believe me. And when I visited him in the hospital on what, much to my surprise, turned out to be his last day, it was very important to him that we share Communion together. And so we did. We confessed our sins, took comfort in forgiveness, and shared the Lord’s Supper. I figured that we’d probably do so again in a week or two. I’m going to miss him.

When a man like Leo reaches the end of his life, it’s a funny sort of mourning. It’s not tragic, per se, because he was such a good man who led such an honest, good, full life. But there’s a hole there now, an ache: a knowledge of how much he enriched our lives and how much we will miss him. We don’t mourn for Leo himself, because his faith is not in vain. His race is run, and run so very well indeed. We have every confidence that this gentle, loving, Christian soul resides now and evermore in the mercies of Almighty God. He is at peace.

No, we mourn because our lives are less without him. He brought so much to so many. The mayor tells me that he would always give her sage advice. His sister-in-law remembers how, fresh from Germany, she found comfort and support in him. And when family visited him recently in the hospital and asked if he were in pain, if it hurt anywhere, he replied simply: “only my pocketbook.” What are we going to do without him? We wish there were more like you, Leo. We wish we could live more like you, Leo.

But now, brothers and sisters, despite my standing up here and telling you largely what you already know, we do not gather this morning in order to look back on this man’s long, full life, nor to reminisce about what was once good but now lost. For you see, we are Christians here, and as such, we believe strange things, scandalous things.  First and foremost—we do not believe for a moment that Leo’s story has ended.

Yes, our brother has died.  Obviously, that’s why we’re gathered here this morning.  But Leo knew, as a faithful and lifelong Christian, that his real death happened decades ago, when he was drowned and resurrected in his baptismal Font in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. On that day, Christ gave to us a sure, inviolable promise: He promised that Leo had joined in and shared fully in Christ’s own death, already died for him, Christ’s own Resurrection, and Christ’s own eternal life, already begun. This is our Easter candle. We only burn it at Easter, baptisms and funerals. And this is to remind us that these three are all the same thing.

Yes, Leo was a good man, but that’s not what gives us comfort now. The real “kick” behind Jesus’ message is not that Christians are good people—indeed, ours is a religion for the sick, not the healthy, for the broken, not the whole. Yet we are gathered here today by the sheer, simple, scandalous promise that, despite all our worries, there is a God.  Ultimately, that God is in control. And, impossible as it may sound, that God actually cares about you, specifically. Cares about you so much that even as we were killing Him, He freely promised to us His undying love and forgiveness.

This is the God Who walks with us in all of our sufferings: Who does not cause us to mourn, but Who joins us in it.  Our God knows better than anyone what it means to hurt; He knows better than anyone what it is to die suddenly, undeservedly. And He will never abandon us to the same.  As today we commend Leo’s flesh back to the earth from which it came, and which he stewarded so faithfully and so well, so too do we celebrate his soul returning to the Lord Who gave him not just physical life but also spiritual life, to be fulfilled in the Resurrection.

Even now, Jesus Christ is at work, through two billion pairs of hands and feet, through Word and through Sacrament, healing and redeeming and resurrecting this world. There will come a day when sin’s every scar will be healed, when all brokenness will be made whole—when even death itself shall be defeated, the arrow of time rolled back, and every child of God raised up from their graves! On that day, there shall be reunion and joy and bliss such as we cannot possibly imagine now.  And until that day, Leo’s soul rejoices in his Lord, and his body awaits the fulfillment of all things.

Maybe some people think that’s hokey.  I don’t care.  That’s the promise.  It may be the most ridiculous, scandalous promise you’ve ever heard, but once you do hear it, it does something to you, changes you—kills you and makes you alive again! It doesn't affect everyone the same way, mind you, but the Word never returns empty.  In this way, the Word is its own authority; it works with a life all its own.

This Word of God came to Leo in his baptism, in his community, in his life of honor and hard work, his life of service and of faith.  And though we now bid farewell to the life he had—and such a beautiful life it was—we declare with defiance that Leo’s real life has only just begun. This separation now is but a brief parting, a mere eye-blink in terms of eternity.  That does not banish our hardship; we will surely miss him, and the mourning will not be easy; we are lessened by this parting.

But we will see Leo again, at the great banquet of life that follows death.  We shall all be reunited in our own good time. Surely he is even now tending a more beautiful land than any we have seen before; surely he is welcomed by Guyla and all those he touched, all those he helped in this life; surely he will watch, as he always has, over his family and those they love. For now Leo rests in the hands of Christ Jesus, and nothing, nothing—not sickness, not kidney failure, and certainly nothing so trifling as death—nothing can ever steal him from those loving and crucified hands.

This is the promise of God.  And God does not break promises.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord; let perpetual light shine upon him; may he rest in peace.  In Jesus’ Name.  AMEN.