Ubi Jesu, Ibi Vita

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the middle of winter, even a well-managed cemetery is a bleak place to visit. It is not designed to be this way: trees and shrubs and flowers are carefully planted to give color and beauty to the resting place of loved ones, to a site of mourning and grief. But winter comes with cold winds and freezing temperatures, with snow and ice. Life retreats: green disappears, the lawns turn brown, leaves fall, and branches look like dead sticks while the gravestones stand sentry and time goes on. For those weeks of winter, it is a place where all seems dead. This year, it seemed like the cemetery itself was buried under a cloak of white death.

But it is not so. Though sometimes it seems like it will never happen, the sun will rise higher with warmth and light, and the cemetery will be more a like a garden again. Those trees and shrubs and lawns are not dead forever; they are merely dormant, waiting for the sun to bring them back to life.

With that, the Lord teaches us an important lesson: what is true for the trees is also true for the people of God who rest from their labors. The Son of God comes to bring them back to life. Where Jesus, there life.

"The Resurrection and the Life"

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Death is unnatural. Contrary to what you may hear from many popular sources nowadays, death is not a part of life. Rather, death is the exact opposite of life, the enemy of life, even. Death is not a natural process, nor is it something to be embraced, celebrated, or taken lightly. Death is the result of sin, and the fruit of the devil's work upon Adam and Eve so long ago in the garden.

Martin Luther was no stranger to death. He saw the death of many of his friends and colleagues, and ministered to many of the faithful as they lay dying from the Plague. He delivered more than a few funeral sermons in his career. And one thing that is striking about Luther's preaching in those cases is that he encouraged Christians to mourn and grieve. At the death of Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, Luther said that those who stifled their grief were uncaring and deceitful. Rather, grief, in moderation, is entirely appropriate for the Christian, because in the process of death, we are bereft of something very precious. Death means a loss. Death causes a hole in our lives and our hearts where that person had been. Death is a reality, and it is difficult. And so we are right to grieve for what we have lost.