It's been an exciting adventure this summer, moving to a new house and watching a house of God being built.  Carol and I entertained some old and new friends this week.  We are so pleased with our new home, because it has felt like home almost from the start.  I once conducted a memorial service and afterwards overheard a mother telling one of her children, "Grandma hasn't really left us, she's just gone home, and she got there before we did."  It's one of the joys of being a pastor to tell families at a Christian funeral that their loved one is at home with the Lord.

          Funerals are not a popular topic among most people today.  We live with so much insurance and assurance and immediacy that it's tempting to think funerals don't apply to us.  They're for other people, but not for us!  In fact, Pastor Bob, let's talk about something else, something to make us feel good.  You and I would far rather speak of the present, and certainly not about funerals.

          So let me tell you a true story - about football!  John Long was a second-string senior linebacker for the University of Illinois football team of 30 years ago.  It was the last and most important game of the season for the Fighting Illini.  A win would put them into the Rose Bowl against the Trojans of USC.  Early Saturday morning on game day, John Long was up at dawn, pounding on the door of his coach's motel room.  "Coach, coach," he said, "I gotta start in today's game -- I just gotta."

          The bleary-eyed coach gave him a few words of encouragement, but told him not to bank on it.  This was, after all, their most important game of the year and they needed their best players all the time.  But John Long persisted with his request all morning.  Finally, the coach told him, "John, if we win the toss, we'll elect to kick off and you can go on the special team for the first play.  That way you'll start."  The young man was satisfied.  John Long was a man on a mission.

          St. Paul was also a man on a mission.  He knew all about reality in life.  If he were alive today, he may have enjoyed football or driving a new car, but he'd never made them the sole purpose for living like some of us do.  He may have found pleasure in an easy chair, but he'd not have sat in it for long.  He had work to do, God's work, the work of the Gospel.  There were people lost in their sins, people who needed to know Jesus.  His was the work of spreading the Gospel, that wonderful and glorious Good News of Jesus, who died for the sins of the world and rose again, the One will one day come back to take us home with the Lord.

          Do you ever wonder what heaven is like?  Ever wanted to be at home with the Lord?  The Bible says our body is like a tent, frail and thin, barely able to hold out the wind, and offering us little protection from the storms and cold.  St. Paul says that in life we groan a lot, aching and hurting, stumbling and falling.  The unbeliever is like a naked person with no clothes.  You and I need something to cover us or we'll die of exposure.  But God gives us all a covering, His love and mercy and it's ours in Jesus, free, costing us nothing, but costing Jesus everything - His life.

          Have you ever had one of those dreams where you're in school or at work or in the mall and you have no clothes on?  Sometimes in that dream you have a thin little something wrapped around you, but at other times, nothing at all.  Psychologists say everyone has those dreams, and it usually means we're insecure about something.  And it's always so good to wake up and know it was only a dream, right?  Life may have its insecurities, but the Lord clothes us with His love and mercy.  We need the Lord to cover us with His robe of righteousness.

          Because of sin, you and I are basically needy and naked in life.  We don't just do wrong things, we have wrongness inside us.  It's called Original Sin, the sin we're born with.  This kind of sin rears its ugly head in the things we do.  A baby can't sin when it's little, but it learns soon enough.  Parents don't teach their babies to sin.  They learn without our help.  Any child I've ever known didn't need a coach to sin.  He or she just needed some time.

          Back to our story.  The Fighting Illini won the toss, the coach kept his word and John Long went onto the field with the kickoff team.  The moment the ball was kicked, he raced down field like a man possessed.  He singled out the ball carrier and put a ferocious hit on him, stunning everyone, including his coach.  "With a hit like that," the coach said, "you can stay in for the next play."  The first play called by the opposing team was a trick play, a sideways pass to a wide receiver who would stay behind the line of scrimmage, and wait for the quarterback to go down field as a receiver.

          Somehow, John Long read the play perfectly.  He tore straight through the line and picked off that sideways pass, running it into the end zone for 6 points.  And John Long continued his impressive play.  He displayed such power and fierceness that the coach left him in the whole game until late in the fourth quarter.  The game ended at 6-0 and John Long was the game hero.  The team carried both him and the coach off the field on their shoulders.

          It's always great to be a success in life.  All of us dream of being a hero.  But being a hero has its price.  Heroic living means taking risks, and stepping out in faith.  When Jesus stepped out onto the road to Jerusalem, He was taking more than a risk.  He knew He would die.  In order for Him to be a success, to do what the Father had sent Him to do, He had to lay His life on the line.

          Thanks be to God that Jesus took the risk.  Without His perfect life, we'd have no one to be our substitute, to take the punishment for our sins.  God demands perfection, and that's not possible for us.  So He accepted the perfect life of Christ in our place.  Because Christ lived life perfectly, we have a Savior.  Because He died for us, our sin is covered.  Because He rose again, we, too, shall rise and one day be at home with the Lord.

          So what happened to John Long?  After the game, the coach found him in the corner of the locker room crying like a baby.  "What's wrong, son?  You played your heart out.  I never saw you play better.  You won the game for us.  Why the tears?"  "Well, coach," he said, "you know how my Dad is blind, and how we often brought him to our games, but he could never see me play, but I then was never really that good anyway.  Well, coach, I never told you my Dad died last week.  And this being my last college game, I just had to start, because I know Dad's in heaven and I really believe he finally got to see me play."  John Long is a legend, a hero little known outside the history of Fighting Illini.

          You see, John Long lived by faith, not by sight.  He could not prove to anyone that his father saw him play.  He could not prove there was a heaven.  He could not even prove there was a God, much less a heavenly home where believers go when they die.  But that didn't keep him from believing.  And it certainly didn't keep him from playing the best game of his life.

          You and I have a heavenly Father who's watching us all the time.  He sees us work and He sees us play.  He's out there cheering us on, encouraging us through good words and good deeds we give each other.  This frail life we live, this flimsy tent we live in, will not last forever, but God will.  And His love for us will never end.  The shelter of God's love covers us all forever.  The eternal home in the heavens will be perfect and never need repair, because in the presence of God there are no storms or leaky roofs or squeaky floors or rude neighbors.  At home with the Lord there's only joy and happiness that'll go on and on.

          Around the turn of the century, a missionary couple was returning from 25 years in Africa on a ship.  Their ship also held a famous passenger, Theodore Roosevelt, who was returning from an African safari.  Since Roosevelt was a candidate for president, there were bands and crowds and much cheering as he stepped off the boat.  The missionary said, "Isn't it amazing that he returns home after hunting a few weeks to bands and cheering crowds and all that adulation.  But we return home from 25 years of trying to make disciples for the Lord, and there's no one here even to greet us.  His wife tugged at his arm, smiled and said, "But dear, we're not home yet."

          Dear friends, no matter what house we live in we're not home yet.  This earth was not our final resting place, it's only a temporary home that's not going to last forever.  The farmhouse I was born in back in Minnesota is falling apart today, no longer fit to live in.  No house, no matter how well made, can withstand the ravages of time.  No business, no matter how well managed, can withstand the fickle winds of change.  No marriage, no matter how well planned, is free of strife.  And no man or woman or child, no matter what science comes up with, can keep from getting old.

          On this earth, everything and everyone will face the wrecking ball.  We just need to be ready for it.  The way to readiness is to know Jesus as your Savior.  To be at home with the Lord means having real trust and unswerving faith in the only One who can take us there.  Our faith can't be conditional;  it can't be a "half faith."  With Christ it's all or it's nothing.  You and I can't go halfway with the Lord and we can't take anything with us to heaven except our faith.  But with faith in Him we can truly be at home with the Lord.

          A young father and his two sons stood at the grave of his wife.  It had been a windy and cloudy day but finally the sun broke through.  After a brief service in a chapel, they carried her casket to the grave site.  After the committal service they all stood there holding each other and crying.  Then one of the boys took his father's hand and said, "C'mon Daddy, let's go home."  For a moment the father didn't know where to go.  His home was far away on Sixth street, but hers would always be in that cemetery.  His childhood home was in Minnesota, but they were heading back to Aunt Sharon's in Indiana.  The father said, "I'm not sure where home is."  And one of the boys said, "It's with you, Dad."

          That's how it will be in our final hour.  Wherever heaven is and whatever it is like, it will be okay because it will be with Dad, our Heavenly Father.  Where's your real home?  I hope it's not here, because this one won't last.  May we have joy and peace in knowing that because God loves us, we'll all be at home with the Lord.  Amen.

Copyright © 2001 by Pastor Bob Tasler.  All rights reserved.