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Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD. Therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD. (Genesis 10:8-9)
That verse came up once when Jim and I were visiting one Sunday morning. He had missed a Sunday in church, a very unusual thing – if you knew Jim at all you knew he was in church come hell or high water, as the saying goes. But it was deer hunting, so, you know ... neither hell nor high water, but deer hunting. The next Sunday he was in church again, with pictures, and this one was yours, Shay, although I know all the boys had their day at the trigger. Your dad could have taken the shot, but he gave it to you and there lay that buck and your dad was so proud of you – I could almost see him inflate when he showed me that picture and you should have seen his smile. So proud. I told him by bringing his family to church every week and taking his sons hunting he was walking in the footsteps of Nimrod. He was a mighty man because he protected his family from the assaults of the devil by bringing them to where Jesus is for them in Word and Sacrament, where His body and blood is given as the blessed meal of immortality to protect them from Satan’s fury. A mighty man does that for his family.
But don’t forget the mighty hunter part either. He liked his hunting, that’s for sure. So, Jordan and Shay and Peyton and Tyson, and Hanna you can chime in here too, I have two questions for you about your dad this morning. The first is this: Chiefs or Eagles? Now here’s the second: If opening deer hunting was on Super Bowl Sunday, where would your dad be?
I know this is hard for you all right now, but, Steph, you talked about Jim’s legacy the other day when we were visiting, and we’re going to talk about that a little more here in a bit ... and Lincoln, Olivia, and Cameron, bless them, they are just too small to understand what’s going on here, they just want to play and be children, and thank God for the innocence of little children! Would that we could all be like that! Just want to play in the presence of our Father in His house. Watch them closely and you will get just a little taste of what Jesus meant when He said unless we become like little children we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.
But I digress here, let me get back on topic. Shay, Jordan, Peyton, Hanna, and Tyson, I know its hard right now, but never lose your love for those things your father loved — go hunting and fishing. Watch football. Root for the Eagles. Cook those smoked ribs. Laugh a lot and play your music just a little bit too loud. Love your family. And most importantly, go to church to receive Jesus in Word and Sacrament because you need what your Father gives you in Jesus: you need the forgiveness of sins and life through His blood and righteousness preached into your ears, poured over you in Baptism and Confession and Absolution, put into your mouth in the holy Sacrament of His body and blood. Jim rejoiced in the gates of eternity and the halls of glory being opened to him in Jesus. You rejoice in that, too, because no matter how bad things get in this world and how deep your grief may be, when you are in Christ, swimming in your baptismal grace, things are going to get better. You know that because your heavenly Father has promised it and He never fails His promises.
So do those things that your Dad loved, honor his memory, and laugh and love life and rejoice in God’s blessings, and live in that legacy of your father in thanksgiving to God. Laugh today, all of you who love Jim. When you gather around the meal, when you are visiting, thank God for the memories, tell stories, talk of his goofiness and his big heart, and laugh. It’s ok. Don’t bury him in a memory hole afraid to even mention his name because it might be uncomfortable. Remember and laugh and continue to enjoy ad love your husband and father; and the laughs will get easier and more heart-warming, I promise you that ... they will ... with time, and with Jesus.
That Sunday when Jim and I were talking hunting, he mentioned how short the season was; if I recall correctly, Shay, you shot that deer on the first day of the season. Why not wait for a bigger one, a better opportunity? Jim said, “I’ve missed enough of those opportunities, Pastor. I’ve learned that when the shot is there you take it.”
As a pastor I tend to be a little cautious with my shots. Heavy on the mercy and maybe a bit slow sometimes to say the things that need saying, taking the shots that need shooting. So, Jim. I’m going to take your advice here today, because I need to take a shot. There is an elephant in this room this morning, and that boy needs to go down, man. He has no place in the gathering of the Saints at a time like this. So I’m going to take the shot.
Yes, my friends in Christ, Christians DO die by suicide.
And I know, I know all the questions that come up. I’ve even heard those questions leveled against family left behind after any kind of death. Probably they could be asked of any number of us here today. Why are you so sad? Don’t you trust Jesus? Where’s your faith? You know the questions and doubts. Many of you have them.
And they may be good questions, but the questions and doubts display a lack of knowledge of the true human condition. If we lived in a perfect world and all had perfect faith and could laugh at adversity and pain and grief with abandon, then maybe those questions might have a place. But this world isn’t perfect, is it? And no one can know the pain another person is going through – even if we have gone through the same thing ourselves, even if you have lost a loved one to death like Steph and Jim’s family have, you cannot rightly say to them that you know what they are going through. You have your pain, they have theirs, and none of us can say we knew what Jim was going through before he died. In this world, fallen and broken as it is by sin and death, we struggle with our faith, it is never perfect, it is always broken somewhere, our trust is shaken like Peter’s walking on the water, the afflictions and pains of life can often take our eyes off Jesus and we begin to sink.
Even the great prophet Job, renown for his patience and faith, struggled? We know him as the guy who could face afflictions in life the likes of which we can barely imagine and respond by saying, “well ... The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” all while whistling a happy tune as he scrapes his boils. Nope. That’s not Job. He had faith, he believed in his God and Father, yes, but it was out of these same believing lips that these words cried out, and hear the despair and horrible doubts and remember, this is Job! Patient Job! “God has .. closed his net about me. Behold, I cry out, ‘Violence!' but I am not answered; I call for help, but there is no justice. He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths... He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope has he pulled up like a tree...”
Do you know what Job was going through? Can you say you know how he felt? No, yet at the same time, Job’s words are your words, aren’t they? My hope is pulled up like a tree ... This was a Christian who said that! And it’s in the Bible! Do you think these could have been Jim’s words last Friday?
So even Christians find themselves doing things they do not want to do. “I do not understand my own actions.” Paul said. Paul, my friends. The apostle. If anyone should have had his act together, it is Paul. But he followed in the train of Job in his struggle with the weakness of this flesh in the face of the difficulties of life in this world. “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate... I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” Paul said that. The apostle. If anyone should have had his act together it was Paul. But he fell in despair of his own ability to save himself. He was always doing those things he didn’t want to do. Do you think Paul wanted to sin? Do you think Steph and all of Jim’s family want to mourn? Do you think Jim wanted to die? I do not do those things I want to do.
“Oh wretched man that I am. Who will save me from this body of death?” Who will save me? Because I cannot save myself. I am too tangled in the webs of sin and sorrow and death and my hope is pulled up like a tree. I am sinking down like Peter and will soon be drown. Who will save me?
But Job rejoiced in the midst of his despair: “For I know that my Redeemer lives!” And Paul’s answer is, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
And so the broken father throws himself in the dirt at Jesus’ feet. His little boy is oppressed by the demons, they are trying to kill him. He can do nothing to save him, it is out of his power. So he begs Jesus: “If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’? All things are possible for one who believes.”
We don’t know this father’s name, but he is my hero of faith in the Bible. I love this man because he is me, tossed as I often am between belief and unbelief. He is every one of us, He is Jim on Friday as he was torn between life and death, he is you as you struggle with your grief and fear and questions, he is Everyman, who put into words exactly our predicament as we walk the path of sin and death. His words are your words: “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!”
Job, Paul, the nameless father, every one of us in this sin-torn world where the grave yawns before each of us. How we are torn and tossed between the Promises and the doubts! At the same time believer and unbeliever. At the same time saint and sinner. At the same time confident in the Lord's presence and afraid He has forgotten us. At the same time in despair yet filled with joy. Torn always between the mortal and immortal, sin and righteousness, faith and unbelief, trust and doubt, fear and courage. “I do not understand what I am doing!”
“Lord, my faith is little, I’m afraid it’s not up to the task before me. I struggle and doubt and cry and question and feel so terribly alone and afraid. Be my light in the day of darkness. Be my life in the day of my death. Be my courage in the blackness of my fear. Be my confidence in my terrible uncertainty, my strength in my pathetic weakness, the warm glow of eternal love in the cold darkness of my despair. Lord, save me, for my way is swallowed up so I cannot pass, darkness is upon my path, and my hope is pulled up like a tree. “Lord, I believe, Help my unbelief!”
Who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God in Christ Jesus our Lord! As you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, the valley of your doubts and weakness, the valley of sorrow and bitterness, look down, friends, and see in whose footprints you walk; there is the holy blood of God marking them. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me!
The one who goes before you has already walked this way. His nail-pierced hands and feet testify to the price He paid for your sin and guilt. He bore your fear and Satan’s attacks as He sweat great drops of blood in Gethsemane the night He was betrayed. He bore your grievous despair and horrible questions as He cried out His desperate cry to His Father, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” He took upon Himself the bloody payment required of for your sin and guilt as His blood was poured out upon the earth and His body turned pale and cold in death: “Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit.”
This is your Savior who laid dead in your grave and made holy the earth in which you will lay the mortal remains of Jim today and one day join him there as we all must. This is Your living Advocate and Redeemer, Whom death and the grave could not hold, who burst forth from the tomb alive again for you, for all. He is your victory, He is your eternal life, He is the answer to all your questions. He never leaves His blood-washed Saints to walk alone through the valley of death.
And we must walk through that valley, just like Jim. We have no choice, the way is closed behind and we must take the next step forward to the end as, in many and various ways, death will take us all. But when Jim took his last steps down that path on Friday he did not walk alone. He struggled under the assaults of the devil and the weakness of his flesh, “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!” You do the same. But thanks be to God we are not saved because we have a perfect faith; we are saved because we have a perfect Savior. Our hope may be pulled up like a tree and we may struggle with unbelief, but the believing part of us still sings with Job: “I know that my Redeemer lives! What comfort this sweet sentence gives! He lives and grants me daily breath; He lives, and I shall conquer death; He lives my mansion to prepare; He lives to bring me safely there.”
So on that Friday, as the end of Jim’s walk through the valley of the shadow of death drew near, as he cried out to his Savior, “Help my unbelief!” as, like the little boy in our Gospel, the demons cast him to the ground and he became like a corpse and everyone who saw him said, “He is dead,” well, don’t be deceived by what you see with your eyes, my friends, on that Friday, Jesus took Jim by the hand and lifted him up and he arose ... and the storm was over and there was peace like he had never known and he smiled at the face of his Savior and rested in His embrace. The devil did not win, Jim had already been claimed by Someone stronger than all the hoard of hell; he had already been washed in holy blood that covered all his sins, marked as a child of glory with the water of Baptism, preserved in that eternal hope as God gave Him more and more Jesus as he came to church with his family. It was not the strength of his faith that saved him, it was the strong hands of his living Savior, who still bore the scars of the price He paid for that soul.
And that brings us back to Jim’s legacy. One of my favorite memories of Jim is always going to be last Christmas Eve when the children were doing their Sunday School Christmas parts and Tyson got a little shy about speaking in front of the crowd, so this big guy with the big heart and the big hands, this Dad who wanted his boys to know Jesus, walked up and kneeled down by his son and gave him courage in his fears, because who isn’t stronger when they know their Dad is on their side and is not ashamed to kneel down with them when they are scared? Jim was the strength of his little boy and they said together: “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying” ... and we all know what they said ... “Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth, good will toward men!” Peace like a river, in Jesus. Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, Let this blest assurance control, That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate And hath shed His own blood for my soul.
My hope is pulled up like a tree. Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief! Who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because, my dear friends in Christ, we know one thing that the devil also knows and it makes him tremble in the blackness. The Victory Cry of the Church, and let’s see if we can outdo the crowd last night – let’s spit in the devil’s eye, who think he has won, and speak out loud as those who believe it: “CHRIST IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN INDEED! ALLELUIA!”
Ok, Jim. I took the shot, just like you would want. That elephant is lying dead at the door — and we’re all going to kick it when we leave here. This is not goodbye, my friend, this is “see you later.” And say hi to my dad when you see him there, tell him I’ll see him again in just a little while.
And in just a little while, friends, as we continue to confess and lean on Jesus here, we will see our loved-ones again. So, banish those questions from your mind. Jim’s death was no different than anyone’s – we all must die for we have all sinned and our faith cannot save us, it’s just not strong enough. But Jesus saves us. He has suffered for us and risen alive again from the grave for us, He is our strength in our weakness and our certainty when the hellish doubts and questions assail us. He is our life in the day of our death, our hope in the time of our despair. He is the resurrection and eternal life for all who believe in Him.
Lord, I believe, help my unbelief! Three is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Thanks be to God. Amen.
