Note: I spoke a shortened version of this gospel message on January 6, 2024, in Lexington, Kentucky, at the memorial service for Willard David Sapp, known by all of us as Bill Sapp. He was my brother-in-law, married to my sister Debbie Moody. He died at age 78 after a long and distinguished career as an administrator, counselor, and therapist.
“Three things will last forever”—the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians, as translated in one modern English version—”faith, hope, and love.” These three gifts converge among us today as we gather to worship God, honor Bill Sapp, comfort the family, and now, declare our hope in the resurrection and the life everlasting.
Another first century apostle urged us to be ready always to give an explanation for the hope we have: our hope in God, our hope for justice, our hope in resurrection. Yet there is precious little in the sacred writings about the afterlife, the age to come, and heaven itself.
It may be a temptation to turn to that late, great American theologian John Prine. He wrote and sang an entire song, entitled “When I Get to Heaven.” Not all of it is inspired by the Bible. But he sings “I’m gonna shake God’s hand and thank him for more blessings than one man can stand.” And that sounds reasonable, spiritual, even biblical.
Then he takes a turn toward his own this-worldly habits, “I’m gonna get a cocktail,” he sings, “vodka and ginger ale and smoke a cigarette nine miles long.” I’m not sure of the biblical reference there. Can anybody help me out?
But the next verse takes us very close to Jesus himself. “I’m gonna open up a nightclub called ‘The Tree of Forgiveness’ and forgive everybody ever done me any harm.”
Yes, very close to Jesus, don’t you think? Heaven as a place of forgiveness and the age to come as a time to forgive anybody ever done us any harm.
Jesus taught us that in the prayer we say every Sunday at church.
Jesus practiced this virtue in that series of simple words that people heard as they stood around the cross waiting for him to die. They were, in the words of another old folk song, the last thing on his mind.
“Father, forgive them,” he said, not waiting to get to heaven and giving us the hard virtue for life on this side of the river. “Them” in need of his forgiveness are the disciples who forsook him, the priests who repudiated him, the authorities who condemned him, the soldiers who crucified him, and the people, the crowd that simply didn’t want to get involved.
But through it all, Jesus forgave them, and us.
Our hope is in the forgiveness of God and also in the forgiveness of those we wrong. “Forgive us the wrong we do as we forgive those who do us wrong.”
Another “last thing on his mind” was this: “It is finished,” Jesus said. That is the sixth saying in the traditional order of the Seven Last Sayings of Jesus.
It is a good thing to feel our work on earth is done. It is a blessed thing to have understood what God put us here for: to embrace it, find joy in it, and, when the end comes, say with gratitude “It is finished.”
Bill Sapp is a wonderful example of a person who found his calling and pursued it with diligence, integrity, and warmth.
Perhaps there awaits him, and us, yet another calling, another purpose, another work that we are suited for. Perhaps on the other side, there is not an end but a beginning, a fresh calling, a new vocation to which we will say, “It is beginning of something good.”
The last of the seven things Jesus said as he prepared to leave this world and enter the next is the one crammed with hope. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
This is the way Jesus expressed his own hope in the resurrection and the life everlasting. Not everybody has such a hope. Many people do not believe in an afterlife, or a heaven, or a coming kingdom of God. Once again, John Prine gave voice to this skepticism when he sang, “I always will remember these words my daddy said, ‘Buddy, when you’re dead, you’re a dead pecker-head.’ I hope to prove him wrong.”
Against this doubt, this denial, this hopelessness, Jesus lived, spoke, and died with hope.
Jesus was hopeful when he launched his ministry, that Israel might turn toward the kingdom and become the blessing to the world God promised. Jesus responded in hope when the sick came for help and the curious came for understanding. Always hopeful, Jesus set aside some as apostles and prophets, and later pastors and teachers, evangelists and yes, therapists.
With hope, Jesus called to Zaccheus in the tree, “Come on down. Let’s go home for food and fellowship.” In hope, Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey and hearing the adulation of the people. You know this, it was hope that drove Jesus to his knees in the Garden of Gethsemane and prayed to be spared the suffering he feared was coming.
When they hammered those nails into his hands and raised that cross high above the earth, what did Jesus have? Hope! Hope in God, that God would hear his prayer, understand his spirit, vindicate his life and work, and honor his word not to abandon those who fear God and walk in God’s ways. As Jesus felt the life force draining from his soul, he cried out to God, “Into your hands, I commit my self, my spirit, my soul, my life, my death, my future, my all.”
Jesus died as he lived, in hope. And on the third day, God raised Jesus from the dead!
You and I face the transition from this life to the life to come, from this earth to heaven itself, from this age into the age which is opening before us. We do so with hope.
Hope in God, the psalmist said repeatedly.
O Lord, we today also commit our spirits to you, trusting you. Keep our hope alive even in the darkest times. And today, in hope we commit to you our dear friend, your faithful servant, Willard David Sapp. Receive him into your kingdom and your care.
Amen.
