We are gathered together this day to celebrate the life of Marcia Young. In order to do this properly, we have to celebrate her whole life, not only the last five years of it. We have to celebrate the youthful energy she had as a girl, the academic life she had at Tennessee Tech, the encouragement she offered a young man to graduate. That young man would go on to become her husband, Ron, and they would spend almost 44 years together, raising two daughters, Sarah and Laurie, and seeing the arrival of grandchildren, from Elizabeth and Lydia to the birth of Amelia a little more than a year ago.
Marcia was a fiercely independent woman, a woman who viewed life without limits and sought to pass those traits along. She loved to volunteer for Sunday School and Vacation Bible School, preferring to help with the crafts if she could. She drove for as long as she could, figuring out how to take herself to the grocery store even when a wheelchair was required to walk the aisles. She was not going to let a disease get in the way of living her life for as long as she had control over it. She refused to be a specimen, refused to complain about the lot that she had been dealt. Most Friedrich's patients die in their 30s—today we celebrate a woman who made it well into her 6th decade of life.
How did she make it that long? That independence and determination certainly played a key role. She refused to give up and simply let life slip away. She was determined to stay active in the lives of Ron and her children, and they returned her devotion, often asking 'How can Momma come?' when an opportunity arose, making sure that their destination was wheelchair accessible.
As far as her independence could carry her, though, she needed some help. Luckily, she had chosen for a husband a man who would faithfully stay by her side, day and night, every step of the journey, from Tennessee Tech to Chattanooga, walking with her when they could, carrying her when that was needed, attending to her every need with faithful devotion. Marcia was blessed to have Ron in her life, to have someone to depend on when her own strength was failing her.
Dependence can be a scary thing, especially for people who cling to independence. Each of us, no matter how determined we are to be independent, will find ourselves dependent on someone else at some point in our lives. We can only go so far on our own. At times, our bodies fail us, our minds fail us, the world fails us—and we find ourselves in need of assistance, in need of a shoulder to lean upon, in need of someone to help us carry the burdens we have accumulated along the way.
Fortunately, though there are plenty of people in this world who can help us along the way, we worship a God who promises to never let us down, to always abide with us, to walk with us along the journey of life and carry us when our own strength fails us. Our God promises to never let us fail—and he offers his shoulder, promising that when we are weak and weary, he will offer us rest.
God invites us into his rest during this life, and while we get glimpses of it here and there, it is only after passing through the shadow of death where we fully enter into his rest, where we dwell in God's unapproachable light, where we are made whole. Revelation 21 tells us that God himself will be with us, wiping the tears away from our eyes, and that death will have been defeated—not by anything we have done, but rather by what Christ has done on the cross. In the cross we see the fullness of God's love, a love that reaches out to us, that beckons us to come, to worship, to rest.
It is this rest that Marcia has entered into. It is this rest that we are all invited into. It is a rest that lasts forever, that never changes, that awaits those who believe. In 1 Corinthians Paul tells us that at the sound of that trumpet, the dead will be raised, and that we will all be changed. Our perishable bodies, each and every one of them, will put on imperishability, immortality. Marcia's body has been transformed just as your body and my body will be—our earthly bodies will be swallowed up in the resurrection and we will have resurrection bodies, bodies made for eternity, bodies made to worship, to dwell in the holy and awesome light and love of God. In the resurrection accounts of the Gospels, when the disciples encounter the risen Lord, they often struggle to identify him at first—he has a body, but something about it has changed, has been transformed. It's no longer the same—in resurrection, we are changed.
Friends, Marcia has entered into this rest. She has lived well, loved freely. She has been loved on this earth and has been supported by her family and friends. Her Savior walked with her every step of the way, and when her body gave up the fight, her Savior transformed her perishable body into an imperishable one.
This is the invitation given to each and every one of us—to let Christ transform us, in this life and the one to come. We're invited to lay our burdens upon him, to gather around the cross, and marvel at the God who creates life out of a place of death. God has defeated death, and he welcomes each and every believer into his eternal and imperishable kingdom.
Let us pray
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