Funeral sermon for Eunice Boerner, October 16, 2026
O Lord, we are gathered in sorrow, yet not as those who have no hope. We thank You for all the blessings bestowed on our sister in faith now fallen asleep and for all the blessings given through her. But most of all, we thank You for making her Your dear child by faith in Jesus Christ. Give us to have that same trust in Jesus always. We ask this all in His holy name. Amen.
Dear friends in Christ: Curtis, Jill, Derek and Amy, Daniel and Michelle, relatives and friends: grace to you and abiding peace from the living God and His only-begotten Son who lived, died, and rose again for you and for all. Amen.
For our words of comfort, we read of God’s love and plan to rescue His people:
Isaiah 25:6-9 6On this mountain the Lord of Armies will prepare for all peoples a banquet of rich food, a banquet of aged wines, with the best cuts of meat, and with the finest wines. 7On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that covers all peoples, the burial cloth stretched over all nations. 8He has swallowed up death forever! The Lord God will wipe away the tears from every face. He will take away the shame of his people throughout the earth. For the Lord has spoken. 9On that day it will be said, “Look, here is our God! We waited for him, and he saved us! This is the Lord! We waited for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation!” (EHV)
No one likes to be accused of sin, and especially on days like today, none of us like to have a loved one accused of sin, but here we are, staring death in the face, being reminded again that “the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23) The curse of sin on the world forces each of us to face the reality that we deserve to die for our sins against God and against His righteousness. Every death is a reminder of our own guilt.
My friends, I am not telling you this to shame your mother or grandmother. Not at all, for she rightly, willingly, and often confessed her sins before God, right here in this church for many decades, and these last years whenever I met with her with the Word of our God and His body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. Eunice regularly confessed her sin. To the outside world, I am sure those faults seemed minor, hardly worth mentioning, but she knew the holiness of God and that she didn’t measure up. Yet, the point of our text today, and Eunice’s confession, likewise, is that our God has taken away her guilt, my guilt, and all of your guilt as well.
At the death of a faithful Christian, there is sorrow and pain among those left behind. We mourn our loss just as anyone else might. At the same time, we gather this afternoon to rejoice and to celebrate the life Eunice is now enjoying. Our text gives us a picture of the glory of heaven she now enjoys, because She waited for the Lord, and He saved her.
A message came to the prophet Isaiah to declare to a people mourning the life and freedom they had lost on account of their rebellion against God, in other words, because of their sin. He announced to the people, “On this mountain the Lord of Armies will prepare for all peoples a banquet of rich food, a banquet of aged wines, with the best cuts of meat, and with the finest wines.” In our Gospel lesson a few moments ago, we heard Jesus tell His disciples that He was going to prepare a place for them in His Father’s mansions. Jesus was going to the cross to suffer death for the sins of the world on that mountain on which Jerusalem was built, just as Isaiah had prophesied.
Several times in the Gospels of our Lord, heaven is pictured as a wedding feast. Isaiah described it as the most magnificent banquet a great king could provide. Through the life and death of Jesus Christ, the banquet of heaven is now prepared for all who will believe. It is prepared for all people, for you and me, and for Eunice. Have no doubt that she is enjoying that new life right now in the presence of her King, her God and Savior. Now, Isaiah was painting a picture of the richest foods they knew. I can’t help but imagine there were great, big tubs of ice cream just waiting for Eunice to enjoy.
Of course, I can’t say exactly what heaven will be like, but the pictures Scripture gives tell us that it will be marvelous and it will be forever. Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) In this world, we have many troubles and eventually our bodies break down. We have an unending list of sorrows and pains because of the curse of sin on the world. However, for those who believe in Jesus as their Savior, those troubles are taken away forever as He welcomes us into heaven, where we will never again experience any suffering, sorrow, trouble, or pain.
Therefore, I envision Eunice now walking, maybe dancing, enjoying the Paradise she now lives in, always singing praise to her Lord and Savior. These are things she loved here. In heaven, she is already enjoying the life that never ends, where the Lord promised, “God himself will be with them, and he will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain, because the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4)
In our text, we have the work of Christ Jesus explicitly foretold: “On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that covers all peoples, the burial cloth stretched over all nations. He has swallowed up death forever! … He will take away the shame of his people throughout the earth. For the Lord has spoken.” This is God’s sworn testimony: On that mountain called Calvary, or Golgotha-the place of the skull, Jesus gave His holy, innocent in life in the place of all sinners ever. The Son of God, who lived perfect obedience to His Father in heaven and to every law down to the very last dot and tittle, carried the sins of the whole world and suffered the death we all deserved. Even the pains of hell, which is complete separation from God were laid on Jesus, God’s Son, as He testified by His exclamation, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)
On that hill, Jesus took away “the shame of his people throughout the earth.” There, “God made him, who did not know sin, to become sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21) Because of the life Jesus lived, and the death His suffered on our behalf, God has counted Eunice as perfectly holy and innocent of any accusation that could be lobbed against her, and in her baptism almost ninety-five years ago, God adopted her as His own beloved daughter, and through the portal of physical death, just like Jesus suffered, He has welcomed her into the everlasting home Jesus prepared for her. Throughout her life here on earth, She waited for the Lord, and He saved her.
Remember the rest of the prophecy: “He will destroy the shroud that covers all peoples, the burial cloth stretched over all nations. He has swallowed up death forever! The Lord God will wipe away the tears from every face.” Whenever we have to place a loved one’s remains in the ground, the reality of Christ’s victory over sin and death reminds us that this is not the end, because Jesus didn’t stay dead and buried in that tomb. As we celebrate every Easter Sunday, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, conquering death forever. The wicked foe that thought he was killing God’s Son, was now crushed when the Son took up His life again. On top of that, even, Jesus promises that we too will be raised.
In our Gospel reading, Jesus promised to return and take us to be with Him in the mansions of heaven. In the epistle lesson, we are promised that nothing can separate God’s people from His love, and in the reading from Job, we are assured that we will see Jesus with our own eyes in the resurrection from the dead. The Holy Spirit moved St. Paul to write, “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him by this baptism into his death, so that just as he was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too would also walk in a new life. For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be united with him in the likeness of his resurrection.” (Romans 6:3-5)
Dear friends, today, as you mourn Eunice’s passing from this life, be comforted by these truths: she trusted in Jesus as her Savior and Redeemer, and for her faith in Jesus, God has counted her as His own dear child, has forgiven all her sins, dressed her in the perfect righteousness of Christ Jesus, and has taken her soul to dwell with the Lord in the glory and peace of heaven forevermore. Then, on the day Jesus returns to judge the world, her body also will be raised from the dead, glorified in the perfection of her Savior, as the Scriptures promise. Therefore, we will be able to see her again and to rejoice along with her for all eternity to come, for She waited for the Lord, and He saved her. Amen.
The one who testifies about these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with all the saints. Amen.