The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all + Let us pray: “Lord God, maker of heaven and earth and giver of life, we give thanks for all the mercies You granted our brother Souwane Joseph Mokopanele during his earthly life, especially for calling him to faith in Jesus Christ through Holy Baptism. Comfort all who mourn his death with the hope of the glorious resurrection of the body and a happy reunion in heaven. Remind us that we, too, are mortal, and prepare us to fall asleep in faith and on the Last Day receive the glory promised to all who trust in Your beloved Son, even Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers [and sisters], about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
Dear friends of Jesus Christ, especially you the Mokopanele family!
Pastors like all Christians believe and confess the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Moruit Mokopanele like all Christians was called to the living faith that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has brought life and immortality to light. Through his death He destroyed the power of death and by His resurrection He opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. Because He lives we shall live also. Because of him neither death nor life nor things present nor things to come are able to separate us from God’s love in Jesus Christ. He says: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die”. (Joh 11:25f) Because of Jesus it is now a fact of life: We die here to live there eternally! On the first Easter morning 2 men dressed in white proclaimed: He is not here. He is arisen. He is arisen indeed. Therefore go and tell his disciples! Since that very day this good news has travelled to the ends of the world. That was the gospel moruti Mokopanele proclaimed too as pastor of the LCSA. He like all of us was waiting for the day, when he would see, what he had always believed. Because our Lord is God and because he always does, what he promises, we can be sure that Mokopanele will not be disappointed. He was first born on the 3rd August 1933 to die on the 30th September 2010. On that 30th September he died to live forever with his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We here are witnesses today that death is not the end, but a new beginning because Jesus destroyed death and brought to light life and immortality.
This miraculous turn-about from death to life which occurred Easter once and for all starts for us Christians in Holy Baptism. There in holy baptism our brother Souwane Joseph Mokopanele too was clothed with the robe of Christ’s righteousness that covered all his sin just like it happens with all baptized Christians. St. Paul writes to the Romans: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (6:3-5) Yes, in Holy Baptism our death commences. There in Holy Baptism we start dying and that dying doesn’t stop until we are truly dead and buried – like our brother Mokopanele today. Since our holy Baptism we die bit by bit every day. As confirmands we already learnt that that is the real meaning of Holy Baptism, “that the old Adam and old Eve in us should be daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man/women should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity.” So brother Mokopanele was an old hand at dying. This was not a new thing for him – even though dying remains a challenge again and again. We don’t get used to it. The old Adam, the old Eve don’t like dying. They struggle against it. They would always rather remain alive and kicking and because the old Adam is part of me and my set up, I too remain adverse towards repentance. The Holy Spirit must call, pull and shove me towards it. In Christ’s name St. Paul reminds us: “Don’t you know that it is God’s goodness that leads you to repentance?” Finally when we are dead, the old Adam and the old Eve are laid to rest – never to bother us again. We however who are reborn in Jesus Christ through Holy Baptism, we who are new creatures in him our Lord and Savior since that Rebirth through Water and Holy Spirit, are then at last safe and sound in our heavenly Father’s good caring hands. Nobody and nothing can snatch us out of those compassionate hands ever again. No, even when at the sound of the last trumpet we all rise again from our graves with these our bodies miraculously restored, rejuvenated and perfected we will live with him forever and ever – and he will be all in all: Holy perfection and perfect bliss! That life started in Holy Baptism never to stop again. That is the faith of all Christians, who confess with the Nicene Creed: I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life + of the world to come.
Dying off to sin and being revitalized through the workings of the Holy Spirit, who is the Lord and giver of Life [Nicene Creed] is a daily process. The triune God uses his gracious forgiveness on a daily basis to get us used to the idea that we are justified by grace through faith. That’s how he calls us to faith and strengthens our trust in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We call it sanctification! Every day he calls us to deny Satan and all his evil conniving, reject all malice, envy and greed, eliminate all distrust and infidelity that impact so badly on life in general and particular. He invites us on the other hand to embrace his love, peace, grace and goodness – the stuff real life is made of. All this he richly and daily provides me with … “out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me” [ML on 1st Article SC]. Oh come and enjoy how truly meet, right and salutary his divine goodness and mercy is every morning!
Well, you see that process of a Christian life in dying and rising up again is put into daily practice. Every evening if you go to bed and you cross yourself + and commend yourself into God’s hands you are practicing going to die and being buried. So when in due course you do lie down to die, it will be like going to bed and to sleep. When on the other hand you get out of bed in the morning and your cross yourself in the name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit + you then practice to live the new life with Christ “… in righteousness and purity forever” . That’s a foretaste of rising from the dead and living with God eternally. No wonder we can rejoice every morning and pray: Ah, Thou Dayspring from on high, Grant that at Thy next appearing We who in the graves do lie May arise, Thy summons hearing, And rejoice in our new life, Far from strife [LSB 872,4]
That kind of rehearsal of the new life also occurs when you pray: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us!” [5th Petition of the Our Father] It’s what happens when you feel and know your sins in your heart and you go to the pastor to ask God for forgiveness. Then he as properly called and ordained minister of the Church absolves you in the stead and by the command of our Lord Jesus Christ: Your sins are forgiven! Depart in peace + See, that’s how the new life in Christ is put into practice here and now in this very life of ours and in this time and age. Yes, our entire life as Christians is one of repentance and conversion – of dying off to sin and living the new life with Jesus Christ just as Martin Luther proposes in the first of the 95 Theses: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” [Matt. 4:17],3 he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.[1] “
Even at the Lord’s Supper we are trained to die and are encouraged, empowered and enlivened to partake in the new life of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. There at the Lord’s table we hear: “This is the true body of Jesus Christ given for you into death. This is the true blood of Jesus Christ shed for the forgiveness of all your sins.” It is written: “As often as you eat this bread and drink of this cup you proclaim the death of Jesus Christ – until he comes.” Every time when we go to kneel at our Lord’s Altar, we are reminded of the suffering and death of Christ and that he did that for us and for our salvation. After partaking in the Lord’s Supper the Church praises the triune God with words of Simeon [Nunc dimittis]: “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel." (Luk 2:29-32) Therefore we don’t mourn like those without hope. Since earliest days our hope is in the Lord, who overcame death, devil and sin and brought life and immortality to light through the true gospel. He lives and we shall live too – and be with him always. Peace be with you now and forever + Amen.
Let us pray: “O God of grace and mercy, we give thanks for Your loving kindness shown to our brother Souwane Joseph Mokopanele and to all Your servants who, having finished their course in faith, now rest from their labours. Grant that we also may be faithful unto death and receive the crown of eternal life; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”
3 The Latin form, poenitentiam agite, and the German, tut Busse, may be rendered in two ways, “repent,” and “do penance.”
[1]Luther, M. (1999, c1957). Vol. 31: Luther's works, vol. 31 : Career of the Reformer I (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.). Luther's Works (31:25). Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
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