John W. Theilen

 John W. Theilen 

October 16, 2023 

I Corinthians 6:20 (KJV)

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

To Mom, Jessica & Jason, Rebekah, Cindy, Glenn, to all the grandchildren, family and friends gathered here today; grace, mercy, and peace be with you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The text that is given for your comfort today is Dad’s confirmation verse. I Corinthians 6:20, “For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.”

“Ye are bought with a price.” John Theilen belongs to Jesus Christ. He was purchased 2000 years ago, not with gold or silver, but with the precious blood of God. The death of Jesus is the payment made for the redemption, the purchase, of the whole human race. The most precious substance in all the world, the blood of Jesus, was spilled to make claim on what God wanted most of all: a people to call His own.

And to make it all the more certain, the Lord marked Dad as His own on the day he was baptized. Baptism is not a mere ritual. It is adoption into the family of God. At baptism God marked Dad as bought-and-paid-for with the blood of Jesus. We should all know, without a shadow of a doubt, to whom Dad belonged.

He certainly knew it. Dad was reared and raised in the Lutheran Confession of the Christian faith. He was confirmed in that faith, and he could still tell you many of the things Pastor Jording taught him 55 years ago. He learned the Christian faith well, and clung to its Truth throughout his whole life. 

I remember him watching some show on the History Channel that was supposed to be about the Bible and the history recorded in it. The show, of course, ended up being nothing that any person who has ever read the Bible could recognize. Dad turned off the TV and said, “Well, that’s not what I was taught in Confirmation,” as if that settled the matter for him. And it did. He had that grounded child-like faith that Jesus admonishes us all to have. The Word of God settled the matter. And no pastor or scholar or TV personality was going to contradict it. Dad knew to whom he belonged.

“Ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” And this knowledge of who he belonged to drove Dad into many acts of service. He glorified God by serving as a trustee at St John’s in New Berlin, where he grew up. He served here at Our Savior’s on the board of Properties. He took up the mantle of mowing the grass here–every Saturday for years. He said it took 13 hours from start to finish to do it all right. Mowing became a sort of theme. He mowed the grass for his own grandfather, Grandpa Kochman. He even mowed grass at Camp CILCA for 2 summers. I don’t know who talked him into that. 

But there were plenty of other things that he did. One time he came into school over Christmas break to help the custodian wax the floors. He picked up the aluminum cans for Lutheran High School on a monthly basis for several years so that they could be recycled and the money used for the school. That was a gross job. He was a regular volunteer at the Live Nativity, and pretty much any workday around the church, LuHi, or Camp CILCA. He knew that he would not be able to give vast amounts of wealth to the church, so he gave work. Dad glorified God in his body.

Even more so with his family. He was a faithful husband, and worked hard around the home. He was a good father, and even a bit of a sucker for anything that his kids asked for help with. (Much of his volunteering at Camp CILCA came about because the Director, who he knew personally, needed the help.) But he was an excellent Papa. Something clicked in his brain when that first grandchild was born, and he spent more hours on the floor playing with newborns and toddlers than probably anyone in this room. He loved being a Papa, and eagerly spent as much time with the grandkids as possible. He glorified God with his body by loving his family.

He wasn’t perfect. He was, as are all of us, a sinner. Dad would be the first to tell you that. Sin leads to death. And that is why we are here.  

Dad told Mom a few weeks ago, “I’m not afraid to die. I’m just not ready.” He knew to whom he belonged and where he was going. But if he had the choice, he would have stayed here as long as the Lord had work for him to do. He wanted a little more time.

Throughout all this, I don’t think our family has any regrets about the past. Rather, it is the future that is daunting. The memories we have make us smile. It is the ones he will be missing from that make us sad. I kept praying as we got more and more bad news, for just a little more time. I’m not afraid. I’m just not ready. 

Ecclesiastes has something to say about time.  “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die.”  Now has come the time to weep and mourn. Now is the time to bury. It is the time to comfort with the promise of heaven. Martin Luther said, “Everything that I have held in my own hands, those things I have lost. Anything that I have placed into God’s hands, those things I still possess.” That is where Dad is now, in the hands of God. And there he has peace and joy in the presence of his Savior.

But I would be remiss to leave it there. For there is another time coming. We will leave here in a few minutes and take Dad’s body to the cemetery, and there we will plant it in the ground. Dad’s body will be buried in hope, in confidence.

You see, Christian hope is not like how we use the word today, to mean “wishful thinking.” Hope is an expectation of fulfillment. It is the confidence that what God has promised will come to pass. And so it shall.

There is a time to bury. And there is a time to raise up. “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.” 

The day will come when Jesus will return, when every grave shall be emptied, when John Theilen will live and breathe and walk again. In a great reversal, the Lord will glorify Dad’s body. And in that day there will be time, time without end. Amen.