Elmer’s family and friends, including in particular Becky and Gail Britt and Becky’s sisters, celebrated Elmer’s life in Seattle where his remains were laid to rest next to his beloved wife at the Washelli cemetery. However, not all of Elmer’s friends could be there in Seattle and so we wanted to remember Elmer in his home congregation and in the community where he lived the last several years of his life.

Today, Becky will have pictures of Elmer playing on the screen in the fellowship hall during coffee hour. And as you see the pictures, those who knew him will no doubt hear in their minds and hearts his big laugh and perhaps remember his big voice breaking into song. He was a good man who lived his life well.

The texts today are not what we read for his memorial, but the theme of the lectionary today is about God’s promises for everlasting life and what that is like. Elmer was 98 years old when he died. His goal was 100, but he got darn close. He had told me he was not afraid to die. He was confident in the promise of eternal life and that whatever was to come, it was going to be good. His life of faith assured him that all was well and he could relax in that faith for his remaining days.

Eternal life, ongoing life with God after this life, is one of the central promises of God for us. We are told again and again that this life is not the end, but continues somehow. We may not know exactly how, but as people of faith, we trust this promise.

So even though the details are fuzzy, we trust that promise. It is sufficient.

Or at least it’s sufficient for me currently. Maybe it’s easier to not worry about the details when you think you have decades left to not worry about it for real, like the couple Pastor Alan told us about last week. Do you remember the story of the adorable couple, fresh in the flush of new love and connection in their 80s? They had both been widowed and were now remarried. AND now that they found themselves newlywed and yet near the last chapters of their lives …. well, they wondered about marriage after death. Who was the “real” spouse supposed to be after death? Our adorable couple indeed got a little worried about the details.

The question made sense for them to ask and wonder about, even though it is ultimately an impenetrable question. How could we really know for sure? It’s so impenetrable, the Sadducees thought it would make Jesus stumble about his assurance of God’s promise of resurrection. During this time, whether or not resurrection is a reality was an active question in the community. The Sadducees did not believe in resurrection and they thought this would force Jesus to concede that his position was impossible.  

Do you remember Alan’s response to this new couple? What I remember, which I know isn’t the full answer, is basically that they didn’t have anything to worry about and neither do we. God is good, heaven is good, love is good, and we won’t suffer jealousy and broken hearts in heaven. We won’t suffer confusion. We may not even experience differences in love, but simply be flooded with one vast ocean of love that we experience for all of life and all of Creation. Who knows, really. In the end, God’s got it all handled. The details of this question are above our security clearance, but like Job, we know that our Redeemer lives and we know that we, in our flesh, will see God.

We can know this and trust this without knowing the details. God’s got it.

However, this would not be a welcome word for the folks who are convinced that the most important thing we can do is map out exact plans for the end times. There are plenty of folks who want to know and seemingly need to know when the end is going to come, what is going to happen, who will be in God’s good graces, who will be rejected, or other details like who the “real” spouse will be in heaven.

In fact, I don’t think there’s a message that is less welcome to folks who want absolute clarity about these issues than telling them that there’s no need for that clarity. Just like the fastest way to help your spouse to not calm down is to tell them to calm down, right?

How many times have people tried to predict the end times through the years? Countless! Just this fall, there was a phenomenon mostly on TikTok with whole new scads of people talking about the Rapture and when it was supposed to happen this year on September 23^rd or 24^th. Folks were wrong again, unsurprisingly.

Like a lot of Lutherans, I am mostly uninterested in the question about when this or that thing is going to happen. After all, we were told that we shouldn’t even try to know. No one will know the hour or the day, Jesus says in Matthew 14. We’re just to be awake and ready, with our lamps lit for the kingdom that is to come and the kingdom that is already present for us now. We’re to be living our lives with the reality that Christ is here, in our world, in each other, and in those of us who are poor, scared, or brutalized. While we’re waiting for whatever it is that’s going to happen at some point, we are to feed his flock. We are to love, pray, and faithfully work for a just world for all people and all creation.

That’s it. The rest is beyond our security clearance.

And yet there’s a paradox at work here, I believe. Paul tells us in his letter to the Thessalonians to “stand firm and hold fast” to the gospel, to Christ. The people to whom the letter was written were being shaken and made fearful by others talking about fearful end time scenarios.

For some of us, in order to “stand firm and hold fast”, we feel like we need to know the plan. We need to know the time and the date of when God’s kingdom will come into its full expression. We may need to feel certainty about our own life and death. We may need to know that love that comes late in life doesn’t negate the love of our beginnings. We may feel we need to plan every detail of every day to feel secure.  We may feel we need to know a lot of things so that we can stand firm and hold fast.

Our readings today may in fact point towards holding fast to simple things and to let the rest go. We can hold fast to the promise of life after death and that it is good. Beyond that, who knows. We can hold fast to the promise that God’s justice for all people and all of Creation will indeed know its full expression. We don’t know when, but we keep living out that promise as we go. We can hold fast to the Spirit, to the power of prayer, to the reality of a God that holds us all, including all the saints who have passed before us and all the saints who have yet to come into the world. We can hold fast to the ultimate goodness of life, that life itself is the expression of a loving God for us and with us.

We have so much goodness we can hold on to! The paradox is that in that trust, in that steady way we are invited to stand firm in our faith in Christ, we are also called to not worry too much about the rest. We are to both stand firm and hang loose.

This ability to be both sturdy and loose at the same time I believe was one of the spiritual gifts of Elmer. He was a loving man who reveled in the present moment of life’s adventures such as being a father, teacher, husband, musician, grandfather, and motorcycle explorer. He indeed knew how to be both firm in his faith and care-free in his trust.

At Elmer’s memorial, the attendees were all given fused glass hearts made by Elmer’s son-in-law. I’m obsessed with mine. I don’t think I’ve gone a day without it in my pocket since then. My glass heart reminds me of Elmer, but also of this paradox we’re talking about here because these hearts are both firm and sturdy enough to hold on to and yet are soft to the touch. We are indeed called to be both firm and also find freedom in that firmness to not be rigid, but soft, vulnerable, loving, and full of trust.

When we live into this paradox, we can rest in our God-given faith that is sturdy without needing to control the world. Indeed, we can then participate in loving the world, loving the people around us into the fullness of their lives through God without the rigidity of requiring control and knowing all the outcomes.

We can trust and stand firm in our minds, our hearts, and our whole bodies that God is good, that we are all wonderfully loved, and that we are called into action to participate in God’s love for the sake of us all. The rest is in God’s good hands and that is indeed a holy and good thing.

AMEN.