Funeral Sermon For Vietnam Veteran

When The Soldier Comes Home To Rest

God Is Our Refuge And Strength

A Funeral Sermon From Psalm 46:1-11 And Isaiah 40:28-31 (Csb)

We gather today carrying weight. Some of you carry the weight of grief that is still fresh, still sharp, the kind that catches you off guard in quiet moments. Some of you carry memories that stretch back decades, memories of a young man in uniform, of letters sent and received, of a homecoming that was perhaps harder than anyone expected. Some of you are here because you served alongside men like him, and you understand things about that experience that words have never quite been able to hold. We honor all of that today. We do not rush past it.

We have come to bury a veteran of the Vietnam War, a man who answered his country's call during one of the most difficult and divisive seasons in American history. Whatever the politics of that era, whatever the arguments that raged at home while men were dying in the jungle, this much is true: he went. He carried a rifle and a rucksack and something heavier than either of those, and he came home changed. Many who served in that war came home to silence, or worse, to hostility. The weight of that service, and of that homecoming, is not a small thing. We acknowledge it here, in this place, without flinching.

And now we open the Scripture, because it is the Scripture that has something to say to weight like this.

God Is Our Refuge

Psalm 46 begins with one of the most direct and unadorned declarations in all of the Bible. "God is our refuge and strength, a helper who is always found in times of trouble." That is the whole sermon in a single sentence, if you need it to be. The psalmist does not begin with an argument or a long theological introduction. He begins with a confession born out of hard experience. God is our refuge. God is our strength. God is a helper who is found, not a helper who has to be tracked down or persuaded, but one who is already present in the trouble.

The psalm was written for people who knew what it meant to be shaken. Verses two and three describe the earth trembling, mountains collapsing into the sea, waters roaring and foaming. These are images of total destabilization, of a world coming apart at its foundations. The ancient reader would have understood this as the worst thing imaginable. And the psalmist says: even then. Even in that, God is present. "Therefore we will not be afraid."

Notice the psalm does not say we will not feel the shaking. It says we will not be afraid. There is a difference. Fear that paralyzes and fear that destroys is not the same as grief that is honest, or sorrow that is real. The psalmist is not pretending the mountains are not falling. He is saying that the one who holds the mountains is holding us.

For a man who served in combat, who may have seen things that left marks no one else could see, who may have carried burdens long after the war was over, this psalm speaks directly. The earth shook for him in ways most of us will never know. And the promise of Scripture is not that God was absent from those moments, but that God was the refuge even there.

The River That Gladdens

In the middle of the psalm, in verses four and five, there is a sudden and beautiful image. "There is a river whose streams gladden the city of God, the holy dwelling place of the Most High. God is within her; she will not be toppled." In the middle of a psalm about chaos and shaking, there is a river. There is gladness. There is a city that cannot be moved.

This is not escapism. This is the psalmist pointing to something that is more real than the chaos, something that outlasts the shaking. The city of God is not threatened by the things that threaten everything else. And the reason it stands is not its own strength. It stands because God is within her.

This is the hope we carry into this room today. Not that grief is not real. Not that the losses of a lifetime are small. But that there is a city that cannot be toppled, a dwelling place that cannot be shaken, and that the God who promises it is the same God who was present in every hard year of this man's life.

Those Who Wait On The Lord

Turn now to Isaiah 40. The prophet is writing to a people who are exhausted. They have been through captivity and displacement and the long grinding work of waiting for God to act. And in verse 28, Isaiah asks a question that sounds almost like a gentle rebuke: "Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the whole earth. He never becomes faint or weary; there is no limit to his understanding."

The God who never grows weary. That is the contrast Isaiah is drawing. The young men grow faint. The warriors stumble. But those who wait on the Lord, those who trust in him, those who look to him, they will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.

There is something in that word walk that deserves attention. Running and soaring are dramatic. Walking is ordinary. Walking is the long middle of a life, the years after the war, the quiet decades, the ordinary Tuesdays. Isaiah includes walking. He says even the long ordinary walk of a life, even the years that no one writes about, even those years are sustained by God.

A veteran of Vietnam often carried his service quietly. The war did not end when he came home. For many men of that generation, the war continued in ways invisible to the people around them. If that was true for the man we remember today, then Isaiah's promise is for exactly that kind of life. The God who sustains the long walk. The God who renews strength not only in the dramatic moments but in the quiet ones.

The Gospel That Holds

None of this is possible apart from Jesus Christ. The refuge the psalmist describes, the renewal Isaiah promises, these are not general spiritual encouragements. They are grounded in the person and work of the Son of God, who entered the shaking world himself, who went into the darkness of death, and who came out the other side in resurrection. The hope we have at a graveside is not wishful thinking. It is anchored in an empty tomb.

The gospel is simple and it is for everyone in this room. Jesus Christ died for sinners. He rose from the dead. He offers forgiveness, life, and the promise of resurrection to everyone who trusts in him. If you have never placed your faith in him, this moment is as good as any. Not out of fear, not out of pressure, but because what he offers is real and it is available to you right now.

A Word To Those Who Grieve

To those who loved this man, who sat across the table from him, who watched him age, who perhaps never fully understood what he carried: your grief is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of love. And the God described in these texts is not distant from that grief. He is a refuge. He is a strength. He is a helper who is found in times of trouble.

Bring what you carry today to the one who never grows weary. He can hold it.

Closing

Psalm 46 ends with a command that is also an invitation. "Stop your fighting, and know that I am God." In the original Hebrew, the word translated stop carries the sense of letting go, of releasing the grip on something you have been holding. For a soldier, for a family, for anyone who has been fighting a long time, that is a profound word. Let go. Know that I am God.

He is the God who was there in the jungle. He is the God who was there in the long years after. He is the God who is here today. And he is the God who holds whatever comes next.

We commit this man to his keeping.

Sources Consulted

Goldingay, John. Psalms, Volume 2: Psalms 42-89. Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms. Baker Academic, 2007.

Motyer, J. Alec. The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary. InterVarsity Press, 1993.

Kidner, Derek. Psalms 1-72 and Psalms 73-150. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries. InterVarsity Press, 1973 and 1975.

Oswalt, John N. The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40-66. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Eerdmans, 1998.

Spurgeon, Charles H. The Treasury of David. Multiple volumes. Originally published 1869-1885. Public domain; widely available in reprint.