Walking By Faith and Not By Sight

The Rev. Kathi Johnson

Memorial Service for David Dolezal – 13 August 2017

Text: John 11:17-27, 38-44

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas

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A few months ago, I was digging around, looking for a small notebook to throw into my bag – something I could scribble notes in at a conference that I was attending. I found this old notebook. I opened it to see what was inside, and there, on the first page, was written “David Dolezal” and a phone number.

I realized that I had written that note way back in 2011, when David was the chair of the call committee here at Our Redeemer. The committee had received my paperwork in their search for a new pastor, and it was David’s job to call me and begin the process of interviews.

And so it was that David was the first person at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in Grand Prairie, Texas, with whom I ever spoke. And when my husband, Steve, and I arrived here for the first interview with the call committee, it was David who greeted us at the door.

And that was David.

As more than one person has said, both in person and in comments on Facebook, David was interested in everyone he met. Here at Our Redeeemer, he would greet everyone alike – both friend and stranger – always with a big smile that made you feel welcome.

That was David.

There were many times when I was able to have good conversations with David related to faith. Once, during worship, we sang a hymn that’s called “We Walk By Faith and Not By Sight.” After worship that day, David and I were chatting, and I confessed my discomfort to him about singing that song. I felt as though I had been insensitive in choosing it.

He looked at me, with a deep and piercing look, and said, “Let me ask you something. Is that hymn about actual walking?”

It was a good reminder to me that walking by faith, and not by sight, has less to do with the physical act of walking, and more to do with our spiritual condition.

For we do walk by faith, and not by sight.

It’s inexplicable, really. Yet this is what I saw in David and Cindy in the last week of David’s life – remarkable faith, not based upon the difficult reality that was in front of them, but based upon their faith in God’s abiding love. In the last visits I made to David, there was a calm over him – what some might even call the peace that passes all understanding.

It is difficult to watch someone you love die. In that grief, we are similar to the sisters, Mary and Martha in the story from John that I just read. Their brother, Lazarus, has fallen ill – very ill – and so, from afar, they call out to Jesus, asking for him to help them.

At first, it doesn’t seem like Jesus is interested in helping, for Lazarus dies anyway. By the time Jesus gets there, Lazarus has been dead for four whole days. The grief is palpable, hanging in the air like a thick haze. In her grief, Martha says to Jesus, “If you have been here, my brother wouldn’t have died!” In other words, if only you had been here, Jesus – we wouldn’t be doubled over with our pain and our loss.

But Jesus knows that death won’t get the final word, and he – for whatever reason – decides to show the sisters and the rest of the mourners right then and there that he is the resurrection and the life. He walks to the grave, tells them to roll away the stone placed at the doorway of the grave, says a prayer, and then shouts, “Lazarus, come out!” Just like that – as if he’s calling Lazarus home for supper.

And the dead man comes out of the grave - his hands, feet, and face still bound with the strips of cloth they used at his burial. Jesus looks him up and down and tells the others, “Unbind him, and let him go.” So it is that Lazarus is set free from his body of death, and emerges from his grave wearing life once again.

I said a few minutes ago that, in our grief, we are similar to the sisters, Mary and Martha. But we are similar to them, too, in that we call out to Jesus, asking him to help us. I don’t expect Jesus to stride down the aisle of this church and shout David’s name. But, by faith, I  trust that Jesus has rescued David and all of us from our bodies of death, and Jesus has clothed us with new life in him, for Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

It's inexplicable, really. But we do walk by faith, and not by sight, which was a lesson that David taught us.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

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