The Funeral of Michael David Goddard
- 58 minutes ago
- 8 min read
Readings:
Old Testament: Isaiah 40:27-31
Epistle: 2 Corinthians 12:7-10
Holy Gospel: Matthew 11:27-30
Obituary: link
Sermon:
Sermon based on 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 *
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Dear family and friends of Michael:
Michael was a man of plain words. Practical words. Words that meant what they said.
Sufficient.
In his line of work, the system either held or it didn’t; maintenance either kept the plant running or it failed. Sufficient was not a matter of opinion; it was a matter of fact. And you knew which one you were dealing with soon enough.
Sufficient.
That seems a strange word for today, for this moment, for why we are here. Sufficient would have meant fewer surgeries, lasting recoveries, the disease turned back. Sufficient would have been healing. Sufficient would have been more time. Sufficient would have been a different answer to years of prayer. We prayed. And prayed. And prayed. And yet, the illness advanced anyway. The time came. And now we are here. And the word “sufficient” seems hardly the word for today. It wasn’t enough; it wasn’t sufficient.
The Apostle Paul knew what it was to pray and not receive what was asked. He writes here of a thorn in the flesh: he doesn’t name what the thorn is, and we don’t need to know what it was, because the point is not the thorn; it’s the pleading. He cried out to the Lord three times to remove it. Three times. And the Lord did not. What Paul received instead was the word: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Not removal. Not relief. Not the outcome that had, no doubt, with tears, been prayed for three times. No, the word “sufficient.” “My grace is sufficient.”
We want to define “sufficient” by outcomes. It’s the most natural thing in the world to do, and in most of life, it’s the right thing to do. Michael knew this well; his career depended on it. Did the plant run? Did the system hold? Did the people on the mountainside come home? There was sufficiency: outcomes that could be measured and known. He was good at it. More than that, he was faithful at it. Decades at the plant as engineer, operational supervisor, maintenance superintendent: he was the man who oversaw the outages and made sure the work was done right. Decades in this congregation as elder and trustee: he was the man who showed up and kept things running when no one else was looking. Years with Search and Rescue: he was the man going out into the dark and the cold toward those who hadn’t come home, carrying people out who couldn’t carry themselves. By any measure—by every measure we know how to use—his was a sufficient life. And still, the thorn was not removed. And still, we are here.
This is where the math breaks down. Not because Michael’s faithfulness wasn’t real; it was, profoundly. Rather, because such a reckoning was never going to be sufficient. Not his, not ours, not anyone’s. The problem is not insufficient effort or insufficient devotion. What no reckoning can account for is sin, and sin’s result: death. 1 No faithfulness of vocation, no years of showing up, no courage under suffering touches it, let alone balances the equation. Sin nullifies our sufficiency; death is the proof. And here before us today is the evidence, once again.
And so we grieve. Some, perhaps, in shame: Ashamed that all the weeks and months and years of watching did not harden us against this day. Ashamed that the end of Michael’s suffering does not end our sorrow at his loss. Ashamed that our prayers were not answered the way we wanted. Such shame is false. There is no sufficient preparation for the loss of a loved one. The end of Michael’s pain is not the end of ours. And grief arrives on its own terms, not ours. Even so, grief itself is not sufficient either: it does not address what sin exposes, it does not balance the equation, and it cannot bring him back. We are left with what we have always had: not enough. Not sufficient.
Into that insufficiency, God did what no reckoning could: He came. Not to observe, not to advise, not to offer a solution from the outside. He came: Almighty God took on flesh, our flesh, the flesh that faints and grows weary and cannot outrun death; He came to take upon Himself the full demand of the Law that we could not meet. He met it in our place, perfectly, completely. He bore our sin to the Cross, and with it, our condemnation. There, upon the Cross, suspended between heaven and earth, pierced for our transgressions, 2 He did not remove the thorn. He bore it, and our sins, unto death. And when all the work was finished, He was laid to rest. Yet death could not hold Him. On the Third Day—the morning that began the season in which Michael was placed on hospice—the stone was rolled away. 3 Week after week, through those bedridden days, the Church proclaimed Christ’s resurrection. Until, at last, the risen and ascended Christ received Michael into His nearer presence.
What is sufficient? Not removal. Not relief. Not any outcome within our power. Christ is sufficient: His life; His death; His resurrection. And grace is the name for everything that means: the thorns and nails and stripes He bore for us, our sins carried to the Cross and left for dead in the grave, the atoning death by which He paid the debt of sin that we could not, the resurrection promised to all who are His. This is what Paul received when the thorn was not removed. Not a better outcome. Not an explanation. Rather, Christ, and the grace that comes with Him. Not, “Your faithfulness.” Not, “Your service.” Not even, “Your perseverance in suffering.” No, “My grace.” God’s grace. Given. Not earned or accumulated or achieved; given. Given through specific, concrete, present-tense forms of His choosing: water and a Name, a Word spoken into your ears, bread and wine that are His Body and Blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.
This is what Michael believed: that Christ Jesus was eternally begotten of the Father and born of the Virgin Mary. That He, our Saviour, overcame Satan, death, and hell when He died on the Cross and rose victoriously on Easter morning. That Christ paid for all sins on the Cross, including his own. That Jesus died for him, and that he would be counted blameless and holy, not because of anything he did or even who he was, rather because Christ has done all the work and given it to him freely. That just as death could not hold Jesus, neither, then, will death hold him. And this is the Faith into which Michael was baptized on May 1, 1956, in which he lived all his days, and in which he died.
Michael spent years going out into the dark toward the lost, carrying out those who couldn’t carry themselves; he knew what it took to find someone and bring them home. Yet Michael himself had been found, not on a mountainside; rather, in the waters of Holy Baptism, where Christ named him, claimed him, and carried him out of the domain of sin and death and into life. There, at the Font, his sins were forgiven, declared gone by the voice of God. That forgiveness, that spoken Absolution, was renewed again and again throughout his life, spoken to him in this place by Christ through His called ministers. And at this rail, Christ testified to him week after week, month after month, year after year of that same forgiveness, strengthening his faith through His own Body and Blood, given and shed for the forgiveness of sins. Then, when the illness advanced and prevented him from coming here, it was to these he clung: to the Name placed on him in Baptism, to the forgiveness spoken into his ears, to the sign of the cross traced over and over again on his forehead during those last visits, the same cross inscribed on his forehead and heart at the Font on May 1, 1956. The promises did not depend on his strength to remain in force. The rescuer had himself been rescued. The one who bore others out was himself borne Home on May 12th. He was carried, from the Font to the last breathed Absolution: “My grace is sufficient for you.” It is. It was.
At long last, the hard-press is ended. Michael is with his Lord, who bought him on the Cross with His suffering and death, named and claimed him in Holy Baptism, spoke to him in His Word, fed him with His Body and Blood, and upheld him with His promises when nothing else remained. Now he knows, perfectly, what he was baptized into: the life of Christ crucified and raised to make him His own forever. Now: Michael is at rest, his comfort is full, his peace is without end.
And this same Christ speaks to you now. Not, “Your grief will be removed.” Not, “The absence will be filled.” Rather, “My grace is sufficient for you.” “Come unto Me, you who labor and are heavy laden. 4 My grace,” He says, “is sufficient for you.” He says this here, now, to the thorn that is still in our flesh: the grief and hollowness that Michael’s absence leaves. Through Isaiah, He promises, “{They} who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” 5 Not by your own sufficiency. By receiving what He gives, where He gives: in Word and Sacrament. [His] power made perfect in weakness; [His] grace, sufficient. Sufficient for you.
We grieve, to be sure. Yet knowing what Michael knew, believing and trusting in the One Michael believed and trusted in all his days, our separation from him is only for a little while. For Michael’s Saviour, our Saviour, Christ Jesus has ransomed us from sin, death, and the power of the devil with His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death. 6 He has opened heaven. Michael lives in the nearer presence of the Lord, into whose Name he was baptized. He who spent his life showing up for others has been received by the One who came for him first, last, and always. We shall see Michael again. For: “Neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 7 The Day is coming when the dead shall rise, and death shall be swallowed up in victory. 8 And the same grace that was sufficient for Michael throughout his life, through the illness and the surgeries, the last weeks, indeed, his very last breath: that grace is sufficient to raise him. That same grace is sufficient for you. By grace, we shall live forever with Christ Jesus, with Michael, and with “all the saints who from their labors rest, who Thee by faith before the world confessed.” 9
Alleluia! Christ is risen! [Congregation:] He is risen indeed! [All:] Alleluia!
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
✠ Soli Deo Gloria ✠
Footnotes:
See Romans 6:23a.
Isaiah 53:5a ESV
See Mark 16:4.
Matthew 11:28a-b
Isaiah 40:31 {ESV}
See “The Creed: The Second Article.” Lutheran Service Book: The Small Catechism. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2006. pp. 322-323.
Romans 8:38-39
See 1 Thessalonians 4:16d and 1 Corinthians 15:54d.
“For All the Saints.” Lutheran Service Book. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2006. #677:1.
* Unless otherwise indicated, other Scripture contained within this sermon is from the New King James Version.
