In Memory of Neil Friesen - Husband, Father, Brother, Friend

Preached on 3 December, 2008

It has been about 7 months since that day when the Doctor told Neil that he had acute leukemia, and only 3 weeks to 3 months to live. During that time Neil let me walk with him, and that is a gift and a privilege that I treasure and have been deeply blessed and humbled by. “So, Neil, what does it feel like to know you are dying?” “Well,” he’d often say, “I don’t know. I don’t know how to describe it, I’ve never been here before” and we would sit there and wonder together what it would be like to see Jesus and be at rest. And we wondered, what will it be like to be raised from the dead with new, resurrection bodies on that great Day, and to live in the new heavens and the new earth in which there would no longer be any mourning or crying or pain, in which God himself will dwell among us. And we’d read Scripture about these things and wonder some more, and we’d turn these wonderings and also the worries into prayer. It’s been an incredible privilege to know Neil. It is clear to all those who knew him that he was a good friend, father, and husband.

Neil’s race is finished. He has been fully promoted into the living presence of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and he is at rest. Neil is finally, fully home. Towards the end one time I asked him what it was like to know he would be going home soon, and he said “Well, I feel torn – I have a family here, and I worry about them, and I don’t want to leave them alone, but at the same time I want to go home and I want to see Jesus.” I think he felt that way from the very day of his diagnosis. I remember him saying how he felt almost guilty sometimes about how excited he was to go home. Neil loved you, his family, but he was also… homesick.

I remember when I was 14 or so I went to a summer camp for a week. A little over half way through the week I talked with mom and dad on the phone. I found out that they weren't going to come out to visit the next day as planned because they were going to start harvesting – the crops were ripe and they had to start taking it off. That broke me. I, though of the advanced age of 14, ran from that phone to hide anywhere away so that others wouldn't see me bawl. Somewhere in the depths of my soul I can still feel that awful sharp edged pain of homesickness. How can I describe it? But maybe I don’t need to. Perhaps you too have felt it.

Homesickness is what Neil felt; homesick is a bit of what we feel this afternoon, knowing that Neil is gone. When someone we love dies, our vague hunch that this world is not home for us sharpens; it becomes an emotion, something tangible. With the passing of your husband, your father, your friend, this world feels even less like home to you than it did before. We yearn for our home. We are homesick.

This sense of homesickness is mirrored throughout the Scriptures. It is assumed that those who follow god are not at home here in this world, in this life. God’s people are often described as sojourners, refugees, exiles. There were some words that Jesus spoke to his followers at the last supper: the last meal that he was to eat before he would be killed. He is a young man, full of life and wonder, just a few years older than I am. Together with his loved ones in a small, dark room, he is saying good-bye to life itself and everything he had lived for and was prepared to die for. I picture him looking around at his friends, and saying something entirely unexpected: "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. 2 In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

Those words were said to Neil as much as they were said to Jesus’ original disciples. He is now together with his Lord and is truly at home, waiting for the resurrection and the new life in the New Creation. He is no longer homesick. If Neil is finally, truly at home, that means several things. It means that he is not, as the popular phrase goes, a “lost loved one.” If anyone is in Christ they are now and perpetually and vitally alive. Neil’s not lost, we know right where to find him—in the very presence of the Lord in heaven. Since Neil is finally home, that also means that he is not gone, in the sense of ceasing to exist. He has simply gone on, like a ship goes over the horizon to a far destination. The fact that I can’t see him anymore here on this earth says something about my limitations, not about his at this point in time. We also know that Neil has not gone from a greater form of existence to a lesser; in fact, it’s the other way around. He has left the realm of suffering, sin and sorrow, disease decay and death, which is this world, and he has gone to a realm where every tear is wiped from every eye, and all is well. And someday, there comes the resurrection. “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed - in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”

So this afternoon, even in the very depths of our own sorrow, we are truly happy for Neil. He is with the Lord who ransomed him from the power of sin and death with his own blood. Neil’s ship suddenly took off and he’s out of sight, over the horizon, and he has gone to what he always knew was his home; he is no longer homesick.

But we are. Helen, Calvin and June, Jen, Keagan; Neil is gone and he has left such a hole in your lives. You are now doubly homesick, and even though you are glad for him, it sure hurts. We wonder with you, “Why? Why now?” As far as we were concerned, his time was not done yet. Those are questions that we have to wrestle with, but to which we probably won’t ever get clear answers for. We cannot necessarily expect answers from God in the midst of our grief, but I want to direct our attention to what we can expect from God as we go from here.

We can expect God to work for good in all things. This is the promise of Romans 8:28. Not everything that happens to us is necessarily good in and of itself, but under the direction of the Father all things blend together for a symphony of ultimate, eternal good.

We can expect God to finish that which he has begun in our lives. That is the promise of Philippians 1:6. In times like these our faith may seem small and weak, but God promises to nourish it until what he has begun in us is perfected.

We can also expect the Spirit to intercede for us. In Romans 8 Paul writes that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.”

There are many things we do not know or understand about why Neil had to leave us so soon. That’s ok. But know that the Father will see you through. If God is for us, who can be against us? Nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.