Funeral Sermon for Dorothy McClendon

It was an honor to deliver this sermon at Dorothy McClendon's funeral. She was 89 years old. She was preceded in death by her daughter Cherrie, and survived by Jack, her husband of 67 years, daughter Michele Kilpatrick, son-in-law Jim Kilpatrick, and grandchildren Adrianne and Jason Kilpatrick.

Funeral Sermon for Dorothy McClendon

Reflections on 1 Corinthians 15

“I remind you of the gospel.” This is how Paul begins an expansive discussion about the topic of resurrection—the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but also the resurrection of those who belong to Jesus Christ.

“I hand over to you as of first importance what I also received…[Christ] was buried…[and] he was raised on the third day” (1 Cor 15.1, 3-4).

This is the ground on which the message of the gospel stands: if there is no resurrection from the dead, then death wins (death, which Paul reminds us elsewhere [Romans 5] came into the world through sin, our rejection of God’s gift of life). Death reigns; death is the last word to each of us, or we might say, our rejection of and rebellion against God is the last word to each of us, if there is no resurrection.  And if there is no resurrection from the dead, then Jesus was a fraud, a false Messiah; he misunderstood who he was and was wrong about what he thought he was accomplishing. If there is no resurrection, there is no forgiveness of sins; and our faith is in vain. Not only that, we have been misrepresenting God, because we proclaim that God raised Christ from the dead. If God did not raise Jesus Christ from the dead, then we are still in our sins, still alienated from the life of God; and our faith is futile, vapor; we are still chasing after the wind. If we only have hope in this life, we are most to be pitied.

For Paul, this is why the resurrection is so central to the gospel. If you take the resurrection out of the gospel you have no defeat of death and no forgiveness of sins because you have no Messiah who offered his life on our behalf.  For this reason, the resurrection has been the hope of Christians for nearly two thousand years. It is our one hope as well. As we say in the Nicene Creed, “we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen”

When Paul and the other apostles proclaimed that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, this was not their strange way of saying that when he died, Jesus went to heaven to be with God (though that is certainly what happened after his resurrection). When they proclaimed that Jesus, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, was raised from the dead, what they did not mean was that he went to be with God in some kind of spiritual, disembodied state. Instead, what they meant was that Jesus was killed, he died, He was placed in a tomb, where he began the decaying process—and then he came to life again, an embodied life; a renewed physical existence. It is for this reason that Paul mentions five times, as part of his gospel message, that Jesus appeared to others after his death, in bodily form. 

The Gospels go make sure to highlight this re-embodiment of Jesus Christ: after his entombment he walked, talked, traveled from Jerusalem to Galilee, and even ate fish. This is the good news of the gospel, this is our one hope. This is what Dorothy lived for. And it was her hope as her body failed her.  Her faith, her longing to see Jesus face to face was not in vain because “in fact Christ has been raised from the dead” (1 Cor 15.20).

Paul describes Jesus’ resurrection as the “firstfruits” of “those who have fallen asleep”, Paul’s euphemistic way of talking about those who have died already. Jesus, the firstborn among the dead, is the forerunner of all those “who belong to Christ”. What happened to Jesus will happen to those who belong to Christ—to those who have entrusted their lives to Jesus, to those who have pledged their ultimate allegiance to this vindicated King.

When Jesus, at the Last Supper, gathered his disciples together just before he did battle with the last enemy, death,  when he said to them “my body is broken for you” and “my blood is poured out for you”, how do we know what he said was true? How do we know he wasn’t deeply misinformed or perhaps even crazy? The resurrection! The resurrection is the Father’s “Yes! Amen!” to everything that Jesus said and did. The resurrection is the Father saying to us and to Jesus, “I agree with everything my Son has said”. The resurrection is the Father vindicating all that Jesus said and did. As the Apostle Peter said, “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses…God has made him both Lord and Christ” (Acts 3.32, 36).

This means that when Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live,” (John 11.25) the Father, in raising Jesus from the dead, said “Amen!”. This means that when Jesus said, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6.36-40)—the resurrection was the Father’s “amen!” to these words.

And so as we gather this morning to remember Dorothy, we honor her by remembering this gospel in which she hoped; we allow her to once again bear witness to her one hope: that death is not the last word; that the last enemy, that which seems to be the insurmountable obstacle for us all has been defeated by Jesus Christ, who was raised from the dead. This is what she has born witness to for her life. She longed to see Jesus’ face. And she will—with renewed eyes, and a restored memory, and with lungs that will no longer fail her.

The author of Hebrews tells us to fix our eyes on the resurrected and vindicated Jesus, who now is seated, bodily, re-embodied, at the right hand of the Father (Hebrews 12.2). It is this picture of Jesus that enables us to run the race with endurance; it enables us to lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely to us. It is the picture that enabled Dorothy to faithfully run her race to the end. If we endure, if we remain faithful, if we build our house on the rock of Jesus’ words, if we are not ashamed of Jesus and the way He has made for us, if we follow in his footsteps, we too will be vindicated, and we will see Jesus face to face; we will share in the fellowship He enjoys with the Father. We too will enjoy the words, “This is my beloved son, my beloved daughter, in whom I am well pleased.”

We’ve been given a foretaste of this life because of the Spirit’s witness to us. As Paul says in Romans 5,  “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit”. By the Spirit we are brought into communion with the Father and his resurrected and vindicated Son. And as we share in that fellowship of life in the Spirit, we know that our labor, our love, our hope, our obedience, our faithfulness, our struggles as our bodies fail us are not in vain. Decay, corruption, memory loss, lung failure are not the last words spoken to us; for the enemy has been defeated; we who follow Jesus in this life and who suffer in this life are not to be pitied. For He will raise us up on the last day, to begin the first chapter of a new life that has no end, that has no pain, that has no bodily failure—the life we were always intended to have, the life we have all been longing for—together once again. Remembered.