+ In Memoriam: (Moki) Naomi Mokihana Kaahui – April 29th, 2023 +
Psalm 84; Isaiah 65:17-25; Revelation 21:1-7; Luke 23:39-43
Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church
Milton, WA
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
When God exiled Adam and Eve from Eden what do you think they talked about as they fled Garden? As got used to wearing those newly made garments of animal skins that God had sacrificed to cover them? As they walked past the cherubim with flaming sword in hand? Now, this may be a complete guess on my part, but I don’t think a day went by where they didn’t talk about the joys of paradise lost, of the promise that God gave them that he would send a son born of a woman to restore and rescue what was lost in death. I think they spent a part of every day longing for paradise.
Many years later, as God’s people inched closer and closer to their own exile in Assyria and Babylon, God sent his prophet Isaiah to preach warning and promise. Isaiah preached repentance for Israel’s idolatry, but also restoration, a new creation – vineyards, houses, a holy mountain, and the presence of God himself with his people. Isaiah and Israel were longing for paradise.
As the anonymous thief hanged on his cross, guilty of his crime as the day is long, as he hanged there, this thief saw the utter scandal of the moment. To his fellow criminal he cried out, “we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” The innocent for the guilty. For Moki. For me. For you. For all. As the thief hanged on his cross next to Jesus on his cross, he was longing for paradise. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
When John the evangelist and apostle was exiled on the island of Patmos for teaching, preaching, and confessing Christ crucified and risen, he found himself in a vision the Lord gave him to give comfort to God’s people, the Church, the bride of Christ who faced and are still facing persecution and suffering for the name of Jesus. For people who, like John was, yearned for days when tears, pain, mourning, and death will be no more. For people like John and you and me and Moki….God’s people longing for paradise. Longing to be where Christ is present with us and for us.
That was certainly how our sister in Christ, Moki, lived her life as well. Longing for paradise with her crucified and risen Lord Jesus.
I think just about every conversation I had with Moki included two things: her love of Hawaii, her earthly home and paradise, and her faith in Christ and the everlasting paradise he has purchased and won for her by his dying and rising.
This is no surprise for those of you who knew Moki well. No matter where she lived, Olowalu was in her blood. She was a true princess of Hawaii. Not the Disney princess kind, but the real deal. She wore her royal family crest around her neck. Proud of her heritage, her home, her island. She longed to return to her earthly paradise, where, now her body rests as she awaits with all the saints an everlasting paradise that is promised to her and to all who believe. Together we long for paradise in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.
This paradise is the real deal too. A sure and certain promise for Moki. And for you. A new heaven and a new earth. The kind Isaiah foretold and John got a glimpse of and the Psalms sing about. Scripture is full of our longing for paradise.
How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
2 My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
“For behold, I create new heavens
and a new earth,
and the former things shall not be remembered
or come into mind.
These are the words that gave hope to us, as they did to Moki, in our days of longing and pain, of anxiety and trouble, of illness, sin, and death.
For as much as Moki longed to return to Hawaii, she longed even more for the paradise Christ prepared for her, and for you, and for all the saints, from before the foundation of the world. The promised eternal rest and the resurrection of the body given and purchased and won for you by Christ. Jesus’ death has conquered death for Moki and for you. Jesus’ glorious resurrection has opened the way to paradise for her and for you.
And so we confess, and cry out, and pray with the thief on the cross. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
And what’s his reply? Not rejection. Not dismissal. Not judgment. He has endured all of that already for you. Jesus says to you as he said to the thief on the cross. “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
This is what our Lord for all who are baptized. Today, in the water and word and by the Holy Spirit, you are with me in paradise. This is the promise that Moki lived in as she, the girl from the island of volcanoes, was brought into communion fellowship here at Beautiful Savior on May 18th, 1980, as Mt. St. Helens was erupting.
And so it was that throughout her life, our Lord answered Moki’s longing for paradise with his own eternal, ever-present, never-failing promise: Today you will be with me in paradise.
Jesus answers our longing, with a sure and certain word: “Behold, I am making all things new.” “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.
Did you hear that? Jesus calls us sons. You know what that means, don’t you? That you’re royalty too. Maybe not Hawaiian royalty. But a royal family…Ohaha. The royal family crest of Jesus rests on Moki and all the baptized marking and you as ones redeemed by Christ crucified. We rejoice to be called sons and daughters of the crucified and risen King, brothers and sisters in Christ crucified and risen. Heirs of heaven, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of God’s own possession called out of darkness into his marvelous light and life, and yes, paradise.
Until that day when our Lord Jesus returns to raise all the faithful departed from their graves; until that great day of the resurrection of the body; until we reach paradise restored, and body and soul are reunited in a bodily, glorious resurrection, we live as Moki did. Longing for paradise, and rejoicing in Christ’s promises:
“Behold, the dwelling place[a] of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people,[b] and God himself will be with them as their God.[c] 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
“Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
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