+ In Memoriam – Jan Whittig – March 28th, 2026 +
Lamentations 3:22-23; Romans 8:31-39; Luke 24:1-7
Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church
Miton, WA
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“There’s no place like home,” Dorothy said, as she clicked the heels on her ruby red shoes.
“Home is where the rump rests, Piglet,” said Whinnie the Pooh with his paws deep in a pot of honey.
Home and hearth aren’t just the stuff of fairy tales and fictional adventures in the forest. These are holy gifts from our holy God. The humble yet holy gifts God invites us to pray for when we pray: give us this day, our daily bread.
Throughout all her journeys, and Jan loved to travel, she always loved coming home. Being with her family at home. Spending time with Jerry tending the home and garden. Building, always by God’s grace and blessing, a family and a home that has been blessed with the joy of children, grand-children, and a very special great-grand son too.
Whether Jan was traveling around the Northwest or following the Zags to Vegas, the East coast or West coast, or the coast of the Mediterranean in Israel, she looked forward to the joys of coming home to family, friends, and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Jan rejoiced in what we read in the psalms earlier:
Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
Perhaps this is also one of the reasons A Mighty Fortress was one of Jan’s favorite hymns. In that famous hymn of Martin Luther, we sing of Jesus as our trusty shield and weapon. Our shelter from and warrior against the old evil foe. Christ our deliverer, King, death-conquering victor. And, our home. Our dwelling place. A mighty fortress is our God.
Our dear sister in Christ, Jan, knew this well. Confessed this. Believed this. For this is what God’s word declares to us from Genesis to Revelation. The joyous, gracious good news that the dwelling place of God is with man. From Eden to the day of resurrection in the body in the new creation, our Lord loves to dwell with and for his people.
Sometimes he did this by walking in the cool of the garden. Sometimes in the burning bush or the pillar of smoke and fire. Other times in the tabernacle and temple. And our Lord saved his best dwelling place for last. In the fullness of time there was fulfillment of all God’s dwelling places of old.
God became man. God was born of a woman. In a humble, rural town of Bethlehem. God rested in the manger and in the arms of the Virgin Mary. God made his home with us, as one of us, and for us. For Jan. For you. For us all.
God walked and talked, traveled from house to house and town to town, eating and drinking in the homes of sinners, having no home of his own, so that finally he could make his way to the cross, lay down his head on that cruel beam. So he could make his home in the grave, even there, a borrowed tomb. So he could rise again on the third day and send the women who had seen the empty tomb running back home with good news: He is not here. He is risen just as he said! Christ is risen from the dead!
And all of this Jesus did for Jan and for you. God made his home with us that he could bring us home through the cross and the grave back home to our heavenly Father.
But a home is only as good as its foundation. And this – Jesus’ dying and rising was, and is, and ever shall be Jan’s foundation. And ours. The firm foundation of faith. Our lives, as it is for Jan, rest entirely on this foundation.
Our hope and faith and life, rest not on the sinking sand of our feelings, thoughts, words, deeds, or anything of our own. Jan knew and confessed this daily. Weekly. Every Sunday we join that confession of sin. That what our sinful hands and hearts have built is not a home, but an unholy mess of everything God declared good and holy. A shack of sin. A storage shed full of shame and grief and sorrow. The temples of our bodies, the frame of our bones infested by cancer, disease, and death.
Rather, as Jan believed and confessed, we rest, as Jan now rests from her labors, on the solid rock of Christ our Redeemer. On the sure foundation of his death and resurrection for us all. We are built on the bedrock of his saving love for us. There are many rooms in this mighty fortress built out of wood and nails and blood and an empty tomb.
This is the house that Jesus built by his cross and resurrection for Jan and for you. And what our Lord Jesus did on the cross and out of the grave is not only cosmic and universal. It’s personal and hits close to home. Jesus, the Good Physician of body and soul makes house-calls. Jesus, the author and perfector and architect of our faith and life, makes his home with us. Dwells with us and for us still.
Jan had many homes throughout her earthly life, especially her beloved home with Jerry for 60 years. And as good as that is, our Lord has given her, and gives to all who are baptized something even greater. An eternal home with him who came to dwell with us and for us. With water and word and the Holy Spirit, Christ made Jan his holy habitation. Through Holy Baptism, our Lord fashioned and built himself a dwelling for the Holy Spirit in Jan, and in all who believe and are baptized.
For Jan and for you, Christ Jesus made his home in the manger, on the cross, in the grave, and in his word and water and body and blood here in his holy house. All so that he could bring you, along with Jan and all the saints, home to him.
And not some kind of mythical or metaphorical heavenly home. But to a real physical new creation. In a real, physical, raised from the grave and glorified body. A creaturely and earthly, touchable, tangible new creation. Along with our sister in Christ, Jan, we await that day of Jesus’ return. To call us out of the grave. Into the resurrection of flesh and bone, of blood and guts. And there, to find our home in Christ. Where every tear is wiped away. Every cancer cell is banished. Where sorrow and sighing are not allowed. Our eternal home in Christ, our Merciful and Mighty Fortress.
Until that day…
The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
8 The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.
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