Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Video of Service

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 24C)

October 19, 2025

Text: Luke 18:1-8

            “And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1; ESV).

            Our Lord knows us so well, doesn’t He?  He knows exactly what we need.  He knows that we are prone to despair.  He knows that as we behold the fallenness of the world, the brokenness, the corruption of all things, including the things and people we love… and our very selves, our bodies, our hearts, our souls… even the disciple of Jesus Christ can lose heart. 

            It is worth noting that Jesus speaks this parable immediately after prophesying the distress that will come upon the earth, and particularly upon the Church, in the Last Days.  The days will be evil, He says, essentially.  That is, being a Christian, being faithful… Jesus promises it won’t be easy.  If anything, being a Christian will make life harder, because it places you in opposition to the whole world, the devil and the hordes of hell, and even your own sad sack of sinful flesh.  Fightings and fears within, without.  You know how it is.  Suffering.  It hurts.  And when you’re in it, it can seem like there is no end to it.  And when you do get a respite, you’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop.  So, yeah, it’s easy to lose heart.

            Jesus here gives us the key to bearing the precious and holy cross without losing heart.  Always pray.  Now, that advice has the potential to sound more than a little trite.  Here is what Jesus is not saying: “When the going gets tough, just say a little prayer, and everything will turn out okay!”  No.  That may be the theology of pop-American Christianity, but it isn’t the theology of Jesus.  Jesus knows things are not okay.  So this is not mindless optimism, this admonition always to pray and never to lose heart.  The theology of it is not well expressed by a t-shirt or a bumper sticker. 

            But, you know what it is?  It is an invitation to demand with the widow, “Give me justice against my adversary,” O God (v. 3).  To cry out with the psalmist, “How long, O LORD?  Will you hide yourself forever?” (Ps. 89:46).  To lament with Job, and beg for relief.  To weep with Jeremiah, wondering if God has deceived you, because it seems like everybody’s against you (Jer. 20:7).  To complain with the Prophet Habakkuk, “O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear?  Or cry to you, ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?” (1:2).  See, what this does, this kind of prayer… which is right here in the Bible… Sometimes we Christians think we shouldn’t say such things to God, but in these Scriptures, the Spirit places these words on our lips… what this does, is it takes the burden and responsibility for all that is wicked and wrong and broken in the world off of our shoulders, and places it on God, where it belongs.  So He can shoulder it all the way to Golgotha.

            This is pictured so well for us in our Old Testament reading (Gen. 32:22-30), isn’t it?  Jacob wrestles all night with this mysterious man.  We know it is it the LORD.  And the LORD lets Himself be vanquished by Jacob.  He gives Himself to Jacob in weakness, in humiliation.  And Jacob won’t let go.  “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (v. 26).  Well, that’s how the Christian prays.  Especially in times of distress.  When Jesus bids you always to pray and not lose heart, He is inviting you to wrestle with Him.  To cling to Him as he gives Himself in the weakness of our flesh, in suffering and cross, to be prevailed upon.  Hold Him fast, and do not let Him go until He blesses you. 

            You undoubtedly know this kind of prayer.  Who of us has not lain awake at night, wrestling with God over some problem, some person, some place where the brokenness and fallenness of things has brought us to the brink?  It’s taken me a while, but I’ve come to realize over the years that insomnia, whatever else may be its cause, is actually God’s gift to me, calling me to prayer.  To wrestle.  To cling.  Until He blesses.  And He does.  And He always will.

            Though, not without pulling the proverbial hip out of the socket, perhaps.  That is to say, in praying, as Jesus here invites you… in giving it all over to your Lord, and demanding His blessing in exchange… you will not be relieved of every pain.  That is not the Promise.  In fact, the Lord may touch you and lay additional suffering upon you.  Look, that just the reality of life this side of the veil.  He may relieve you of some particular sorrow in this life.  He often does that, and you can pray for that (in fact, you should).  Even Job was given temporal relief once his afflictions had run their course.  But then, you can bet there will be new crosses to bear right around the corner.  They will find you.  But the Lord will carry you through the suffering.  He will bless you in it.  He will turn it for your good, and for the good of others.  He will use it for your salvation.  And in the End… in the End… perhaps when you least expect it, He will deliver justice to you, and that, speedily (Luke 18:8).  Here, for you Tolkien fans, that is the eucatastrophe, which is true.  That is Jesus’ Promise in our text.

            When you are in it, of course, the deliverance doesn’t seem very speedy.  What is God doing by that?  Whatever else He is doing, He is driving you all the more into prayer… to surrender all things into His almighty and all-loving hands… to surrender yourself into His almighty and all-loving hands.  Like the persistent widow.  Don’t give Him a break.  Keep coming to Him.  Keep badgering Him.  Don’t let Him go until He blesses you.  Because that is faith.  God is exercising your faith. 

            And here is the point of comparison between God and the unrighteous judge (no, Jesus is not saying that His Father is an unrighteous Judge!):  If even an unrighteous human judge, who neither fears God above, nor man below, eventually gives justice to this no-account widow who keeps bothering him, lest she beat him down… literally, give him a black eye… destroy his reputation, his prestige… if even he gives justice, then you can bet that our righteous and holy God will give justice to those who cry to Him day and night, and that speedily.  It would be absurd to think otherwise!

            The way He gives it, though… that is the astounding mystery.  He gives it by piling all the injustice, all the fallenness and brokenness and corruption of this world, and our lives, our bodies, our hearts, our souls… all our sin… upon His Son.  Who bears it for us.  Who shoulders it up the hill, to the place of a skull.  To put it all to death.  In His body.  In Himself.  That is the price of justice.  He gives Himself to be vanquished.  He gives Himself in weakness, in humiliation.  That we may be blessed.  And so we are.  The answer to all our demands for justice, our cries, “How long,” our lament, our complaint… the answer is Christ on the cross.

            And then the justice… the justification delivered to us… is Christ risen from the dead.  You know, one Day soon, before you know it, the risen Christ will raise you from the dead.  That isn’t just a fantasy.  That is real.  As real as the flesh and bone now sitting in the pew.  And when He does, you’ll realize what He means when He promises to give you justice speedily.  “How long, O LORD?”  Soon.  Very soon.  The Lord is coming.  So keep clinging to Him, knowing He will bless.  Always pray, and do not lose heart.  Things are hard right now, God knows.  But the old order of things is passing away (2 Cor. 5:17).  In the blink of an eye, you will see, the Lord is making all things new (Rev. 21:5).  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

 Video of Service

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 23C)

October 12, 2025

Text: Luke 17:11-19

            If you want some edge-of-your-seat, page-turning, electrifying reading, turn to Leviticus 13 and 14, and read about skin diseases in ancient Israel.  Is it leprosy, or is it not?  How should the priest make the examination?  Who has to be excluded from the community, and for how long?  Who is unclean, and how do they become clean?  Can they become clean?  Now, admittedly, this is the part of the Bible where many Christians give up on their Bible-in-a-Year reading plan.  It’s tedious.  It’s gross (well, if you think that’s gross, wait until bodily discharges in Chapter 15).  It’s more than a little daunting.  We can laugh about it, especially we beneficiaries of modern medicine.  But note at least two things about this: First, there is nothing in the Bible that God, in His infinite wisdom, didn’t put there very deliberately, for our good.  And second, these were very real afflictions, borne by very real, flesh and blood people.  Their lives were devastated.  Their bodies were devastated.  And because of their uncleanness, they had to suffer these afflictions as outcasts from their community, outcasts from their homes and their families, outcasts from the Communion of God’s Old Testament Church, the children of Israel.

            Jesus comes across ten such people in our Holy Gospel.  Lepers.  Now, their disease may or may not have been Hansen’s disease, what we, today, call leprosy.   As a term in the Bible, leprosy covers a broad spectrum of skin disorders.  But whatever it is, specifically, the living bodies of these men were already decaying, piece by piece.  They were slowly degenerating into walking, breathing corpses.  That is what made them unclean, in the Old Testament sense.  This is the key to understanding biblical uncleanness.  Life is from God, and therefore holy.  Death is from sin, and therefore anti-holy.  And so, where the things of death and life mix (and they don’t really mix… this is the problem), there you have uncleanness.  A living person touches a dead body?  Unclean.  The things in men and women that make for new life (ask you mother about those)?  Unclean.  Flesh rotting on your body?  Unclean.  So, anybody who touches you, or touches the things you touch… Unclean.  That is why you have to stand apart, and when anyone gets too close, you have to shout, “Unclean!  Unclean!”

            Being unclean wasn’t necessarily a sin, understand.  Everybody has bodily functions.  Somebody has to carry the corpse out of the room.  Procreation is a blessing.  It’s not like anyone wants to get leprosy.  But theologically, it’s helpful to understand that bodily uncleanness signifies the spiritual condition of every one of us, every single son or daughter of Adam and Eve.  It signifies the brokenness caused by our sin.  Death snuffing out life.  Unholiness.  Separation from God.  Separation from one another. 

            And that’s why Jesus came.  There they are, these lepers, standing apart, as they must do according to the Law of Moses.  But they are crying out something different, something other than “Unclean!  Unclean!”  They are praying the Kyrie (we just prayed that, moments ago, in our liturgy… “Lord, have mercy,” we sang).  “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us,” they cry (Luke 17:13; ESV).  Well, they’d heard about Him.  This Man gives sight to the blind.  This Man makes the lame to walk.  Even, this Man raises the dead!  So, of course they cry to Him.  He can help us!

            Now, it’s interesting what Jesus does.  We know He often heals people with a touch.  That would have been scandalous in this case.  But then, Jesus is not One to shy away from scandal.  We know He often heals people with a Word.  This one, though, is different.  This one calls to mind leprous Naaman from the Old Testament.  That passage really is exciting.  2 Kings 5, if you want to read about it, maybe this evening.  Remember?  Naamann comes to Elisha’s house, and the prophet doesn’t even come out of the house to say hello.  He doesn’t wave his hands over the infection, or speak some incantation, or hand over some magic elixir.  He just sends his servant out to say, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and you will be clean.”  Naaman scoffs!  That dirty old river?  He resolves not to do it, but his servants convince him to give it a try.  So he does.  And it works.  Why?  Because Elisha speaks God’s Word.  And that dirty old Jordan River water has God’s Word and Promise attached to it.  So it does what God’s Word says.  Had Naaman washed in a different river, he wouldn’t have been healed.  God said the Jordan.  Had Naaman washed six times, or nine times, he wouldn’t have been healed.  God said seven times.  Naaman does according to the Word of the Lord.  And Naaman is healed.  Naaman is clean. 

            Well, likewise Jesus in our Gospel.  He says, “Go and show yourselves to the priests” (Luke 17:14).  They aren’t healed yet, understand.  I have to imagine they hear Jesus say that, and then look at their still-rotting flesh, and think, “What gives?  Shouldn’t You wave Your hands or something?  Shouldn’t you have spoken some incantation, or given us some magic elixir?  Instead, You tell us to go show ourselves to the priests?”  But that is what you do when you think you might be healed, according to the skin disease discourse in Leviticus 13 and 14.  And, in spite of the fact that they had not yet been healed, as they go… as they do according to the Word of Jesus Christ, that to which His Word and Promise are attached… behold, they are healed!  They are cleansed! 

            By the way, you can bet they are all grateful.  They are all praising God.  Lord, have mercy on us for making this Gospel into a morality tale about how we should remember to say “Thank you,” whenever God, or somebody, does something nice for us.  We should remember to say “Thank you,” and maybe that is a tangential point we can glean from this text, but it kind of misses the main gift our Lord here gives us.  We’re getting to that. 

            The Samaritan… talk about somebody who is excluded!  Not only is he unclean because of his disease, he’s the wrong ethnicity to be presenting himself before the priests in the Jerusalem Temple.  But he catches on to something that the rest do not.  “Wait a second.  Jesus healed me.  I’m whole again.  No high priest in Jerusalem could do that, heal a man of leprosy.  If I’m supposed to go and show myself to the Priest, I should actually go to Jesus.  He is the true High Priest!”  But more!  “Here I am, thanking and praising God for my cleansing, the miraculous healing of my body, my release from suffering.  But I don’t have to stand afar off, anymore, to thank Him.  Now that He’s made me clean, I can draw near.  Restored to Communion with Him, and with His people.  And I know just where to find Him.  I don’t have to go to Jerusalem.  He’s standing right there.”  Did you catch the language regarding the Samaritan’s actions in our Gospel?  “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks” (vv. 15-16).  In praising God, he fell at Jesus’ feet.  And that is exactly right.  God is the only One who can cleanse the uncleanness of body and soul.  God is the only One who can make a broken and dying man whole.  This Man is God.  And that is what He does.

            Not only for lepers.  For you.  In fact, He is doing it for you, right now, in your hearing of these words.  The Word of God is such that it never simply tells us about something.  This is not just a nice story about how some lucky lepers were cleansed and healed, any more than it’s a lesson in manners, remembering to say “Thank you.”  The Word of God does things.  It does what He says.  Otherwise, what’s the point of coming to Church?  Learn some fun facts about history, and find out how to be a nice person?  Spare me.  That isn’t Christianity, and I have better things to do.  When Jesus Christ tells you how He cleanses lepers, He is, in that very moment, healing and cleansing you. 

            You’re not a leper, thank God, but sin renders you unclean.  Broken.  Death snuffing out life (you’re reminded of that every time you get sick, and every time you go to a funeral and stare your own mortality in the face).  Unholy.  Separated from God.  Separated from one another.  Broken relationships.  Broken Communion.  What does Jesus do?  Tell you to stand over there, far apart, where you belong?  Tell you to cry out, warning everybody to stay away from your uncleanness?  No, that’s not what He does.  Go and show yourself to the priest.  You know why you would do that?  Not only so that he could verify the healing.  So that he could offer the blood sacrifice that renders you clean.  So, again, what does Jesus do?  He bids you come to Him.  Come right up into His space, with all your uncleanness.  Let Him take it into Himself.  That as your High Priest, He may make the blood sacrifice that renders you clean.  Not a lamb, or a bird, as in Leviticus.  Himself.  His body on the cross.  His blood shed for you.  His death for your life.  His atonement for the forgiveness of your sins.  And then, the Third Day.  The reversal of all that sin has wrought.  His life snuffing out death.  What was broken, made whole.  What was unholy, now holy.  You, who were separated from God, and from one another, now restored and brought near.  So near, you don’t have to give thanks to God from afar, as though He is somewhere up there, far removed from the sinner.  He’s right here, for you, in His Word, and on the altar with His true body and blood.  You can come right into His presence, praising Him with a loud voice, and fall at His feet, and receive Him.  Because you are clean.  He is your cleanness.  He is your healing.  He is your life.      

            By the way, when the Old Testament priest made the sacrifice for cleansing, he’d mix the blood of the sacrifice with water, and sprinkle it with hyssop on the one to be cleansed.  Interesting.  The sacrificial blood in the water, attached to God’s Word and Promise, applied to the unclean person, rendering him clean.  That is Holy Baptism.  You see what Leviticus does for us?  The Priest has done His work again.  You, beloved, are baptized into Christ.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.                                

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Video of Service

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 22C)

October 5, 2025

Luke 17:1-10

            “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him” (Luke 17:3-4; ESV). 

            A hard saying from our Lord this afternoon.  But let’s do a little exercise of our imagination: Think about a person who has sinned grievously against you; a person you have struggled, for some time, to forgive.  Honestly, you’ve tried.  You’ve prayed for the ability, the strength.  You’ve prayed for the person (you should always do that).  But the sin is so serious, and the pain of it haunts you so deeply.  And there is always, in the back of your mind, that nagging cry for justice.  The sinner must pay.  Because, perhaps, that would make things right. 

            But here, your Lord says to you, “you must forgive.”  It’s hard, isn’t it?  With the disciples, you pray to Jesus: “Increase our faith!” (v. 5).  Because this is going to take something more than we have, something from outside of us.  Jesus says, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed… small, but containing within it all that is necessary for growth into a large plant… “you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you” (v. 6).  Of course, don’t try that at home.  Don’t tempt the Lord your God.  The point is not that your faith can do magic tricks.  The point is that faith of any size or strength… because it receives the Lord Jesus Himself… can, and will, receive from the Lord whatever else is necessary for God’s Kingdom to come and His will to be done.  But, mulberry trees aside, forgiving this one who has sinned against you?  The one you are imaging right now?  See, that’s even harder than moving trees.  Lord, help us.

            What is Jesus’ answer to the prayer?  It’s actually not that you need more faith.  A little faith… any faith… if it is the faith given by the Holy Spirit, receives the whole Jesus.  That is comforting.  It means your faith is never inadequate.  It can’t be, because it is God’s gift to you, by His Spirit, in His Word.  It is rather that you need to recognize, once again, what that faith receives.  The cross.  Christ crucified for sins.  Christ crucified for sinners.  The blood and death of God that washes away all sin.

            See, that takes the sin seriously.  Jesus is not asking you to simply excuse the sin perpetrated against you.  In no sense is He telling you to sweep it under the rug, or pretend it didn’t happen.  The sin is real, and it demands a real solution.  But you can’t solve it by your own power or strength.  Not by holding your neighbor responsible and pinning him to the wall, nor by your own self-generated efforts at forgiveness.  What to do, then?  Okay, back to our exercise of imagination.  Imagine that person, and imagine the sin they committed against you.  Imagine that burden that you’ve been carrying on your shoulders, maybe even for years.  Hang it, now, on the broken and bleeding body of Jesus.  His arms are open wide to take it into Himself.  Where He… and now, this part is not imaginary, understand… where He puts it to death.  Where He takes all the pain of it, all that pain you’ve suffered over it, upon Himself.  Where justice is meted out… on Him!

            Do you see what you have in the faith that receives the crucified Jesus?  How can you possibly forgive that one who has sinned against you?  Recognize that the guilt of that sin has been paid in full.  Jesus took the debt away from the sinner.  Jesus paid the debt with His own blood.  That makes things right.  That is why, when you pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” you are, in fact… whether you know it or not… whether you feel it or not… forgiving your neighbor’s sin.  That sin of that sinner… the one you are imagining during this exercise.  Because those words have all the power of Jesus’ blood behind them.  So, it is done.  And it is done again and again, every time you speak those words.  Even if you have to say them seven times in a day, because your neighbor sins against you and repents seven times in a day.  Frankly, even if they don’t repent.  Even if the hurt of your neighbor’s sin against you keeps pressing on you.  Say the words.  Pray the words.  They are a Holy Absolution for your neighbor.  Not an excusing of your neighbor.  An application of the blood and death of God’s Son upon your neighbor.

            What about the hurt?  It still hurts.  Yes, it does.  No question.  But that doesn’t change the objective reality.  Now it’s just a matter of your feelings catching up with that new reality.  And how are we supposed to do that?  Seems like that’s impossible.  Lord, increase our faith!  Well, the answer once again is the cross.  Christ crucified.  Pour your pain out there, upon Him.  He knows it.  He feels it even more deeply than you do.  But what happens as His blood covers it over (this pain you feel so deeply), is that He transforms it.  He turns it to your good, and the good of your neighbor.  He redeems it.  He heals the wound, such that it becomes a scar.  That is to say, the pain may never entirely go away.  But it can, and will, get better.  There is comfort for you in Jesus, even as you hurt.  And that scar is a mark that testifies to the healing.  It is a testimony of the healing power of the living crucified Christ.  “You must forgive him,” Jesus says.  There is only one way to do that.  Christ.

            Okay, another exercise: Think about a grievous sin you have committed… against God… against a loved one… someone in your family, someone in the Church, someone who was a friend…  Maybe you’ve asked for forgiveness, and that request has been denied.  Or, perhaps, it’s been granted, but you struggle to receive that forgiveness, or believe it, trust it.  Or, perhaps it’s been granted, but the relationship has never been the same.  Honestly, you’ve tried.  But the sin is so serious, and the pain… your own, and the pain you caused to another… it haunts you so deeply.  And there is always, in the back of your mind, that nagging cry for justice.  The sinner must pay.  I must pay.  Because, perhaps, that would make things right.

            I bet you’ve been there.  I certainly have.  There are still things that creep into my mind at the most inopportune moments… guilt, sorrow, grief.  I remember one particular episode when I was seven years old, when I had so deeply disappointed my parents.  I’ll spare you the details, but it lives vividly in my mind to this day, and it still breaks me to pieces when I think about it.  You have similar memories.  

            What is Jesus’ answer?  The cross.  Christ crucified.  Back to the exercise.  Imagine that sin that still haunts you.  Imagine the burden you’ve been carrying on your shoulders, maybe even for years.  Hang it, now, on the bloody corpus of your crucified God.  Again, His arms outstretched to receive it into Himself.  Where He puts it to death.  Yes, that sin.  That one.   And all the others.  Where He takes all the pain of it, all the pain you have suffered over it… all the pain others have suffered over it… all of it… upon Himself.  Where justice is meted out… on Him!

            Do you see what you have in the faith… whatever amount, whatever strength… the faith that receives the crucified Jesus?  In no way is He excusing you, or your sin.  He is not sweeping it under the rug.  He is forgiving you, and that means taking it to His death.  He makes atonement for you on the cross.  Recognize that the guilt of that sin has been paid in full.  Jesus took the debt away from you, the sinner.  Jesus paid the debt with His own blood.  That makes things right.  The Holy Absolution stands as God’s announcement that it is finished.  The sin has been atoned.  So you can release it, too.  It need haunt you no more.  “I forgive you all your sins,” He says, by the mouth of His called and ordained servant.  “I forgive you, in My thrice-Holy Name.”  And the sin is done.  Done to death.

            And then, a mystery.  He says to you, “Dear child, come and recline at My Table, and let Me wait on you.”  And He feeds you.  Himself.  His body.  His blood.  Amazing.  Because, in Christ, our duty has been done.  Done perfectly, because He has done it, and atoned for our not doing it, or doing it poorly.  And we unworthy servants, he declares “Friends,” and invites us into His joy.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.      

 

A Devotion for Aunt Evelyn

In Memoriam +Evelyn Krenz+

October 4, 2025 - White Salmon, Washington 

“Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints” (Psalm 116:15; ESV).  So we pray with the Psalmist in Psalm 116. 

What a strange thing to say.  Death is precious?  What could that possibly mean?

Well, it doesn’t mean God thinks death is irresistibly cute, as in, “Oh, how precious!”

It doesn’t mean that He really likes it when people die.

It doesn’t even mean that death is a good thing in His sight.  It isn’t.  Death is always tragic.  Even when it is expected.  Even when the person has lived a good, long life.  God designed us for life, not death.  Death is the wages of sin.  Death is the reality in a world that is fallen.  Death is never how it was supposed to be.  Death, Paul says, is the last enemy to be defeated (1 Cor. 15:26). 

So, it doesn’t mean those things.  Rather, it means this: When a Christian dies… and that is what the word “saint” means here… a Christian… not a sinless one (we are all sinners), but one whose righteousness comes from Jesus Christ alone, given as a gift, received by faith… When a Christian dies, God holds the death of that Christian, and the Christian herself, sacred.  Worthy of His full attention.  He attends to that death.  He does not abandon His beloved one.  The Christian is not alone.  Not even then.  So that, even as the Christian… like Aunt Evelyn… breathes her last, and closes her eyes to this world, she opens them in heaven to behold the Lord God, and breathe in His life-giving Spirit.  She opens them to behold the One who held her death so precious, He suffered it for her, on the cross.  To reverse it.  To undo it.  The One who died, but who is now risen from the dead, and lives, and reigns.  She beholds Jesus.  Face to face. 

And He will raise her, on a Day known only to God, but a Day that is coming soon.  And He will do the same for you.  And think about what that means.  Because the death of Aunt Evelyn is precious in the LORD’s sight, she is not gone.  She lives.  In Jesus.  And we can live, in Jesus.  And we can be with her, whenever we’re in Jesus.  And we’ll see her again.  And we’ll embrace her again.  And we’ll laugh with her again.  And talk with her again.  Because of Jesus.  Let us comfort ourselves, then, with these words.  

“Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.”  What a strange, and wonderful thing to say.  Aunt Evelyn lives.  Because Jesus lives.  And she is precious to Him.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.