Jowin Lau's Funeral Homily
December 15, 2012
Jowin Lau's Funeral Homily
Earlier this month I received an email from my friend Sarah Tsang, who has known Jowin and Joeis since they were young children. My friend Sarah has clear memories of Jowin, and his twin sister Joeis, as five year-olds attending Sunday school and the Awana clubs at their church, dressed by their mom in matching outfits. Sarah, like many of us here, was devastated by Jowin's tragic death on the Lion's Gate bridge. There is nothing quite as painful as losing a loved one, especially when they are so young - Jowin was just 21 years old.
For a time, Jowin, like many of us in our teenage years - and I went down this path myself, in my adolescence – hung out with the wrong crowd, experimented with things he thought would lift him up, but ended up just bringing him down. But over the last year or two, he had begun to experience an amazing turn-around. Largely motivated by the turmoil, the struggles, the anger, and the depression that he had felt in some of his teenage years, Jowin wanted to study psychology, and become a counsellor who could help other teenagers through that often dark, difficult passage of their lives.
Just at a time when Jowin had discovered his life purpose, and was starting to hit stride as a young man, his life seemed prematurely snuffed out. And we grieve the loss of this thoughtful, generous, sacrificial, smart son, brother, friend, and I know that for some of us - especially those of us of Asian ancestry - it is difficult to really grieve and mourn and wail. There is something in our cultural heritage that causes us to hold in our feelings, and to hold back our displays of emotion.
But at times like this, we need to grieve, mourn, and wail. And some of us here carry a particularly heavy burden. We feel regret, at not having spent more time with Jowin, for not having done more for him. Some of us experience not only grief, but also regret, shame, and guilt. Those are the last things that Jowin would want you to experience. Jowin wants you to live without that burden - to become free. If he had lived to become a psychologist he would help you to acknowledge those feelings, but he would want to lead you to a place of freedom.
Jowin and Joeis' parents, Raymond and Peo, asked me as their minister to bring a word from scripture - from God – for this time as this. And while the pages of scripture contain much wisdom, they don't tell us why someone like Jowin, who was poised to enter the prime of his life, had his life tragically taken at such a young age.
But the scriptures do tell us that Jowin's death, on the Lion's Gate bridge, was not his end - that Jowin is alive, and in fact more alive than he has ever been before and in a better place.
In the gospel of John, chapter 14, Jesus is with some of His closest students on the night that He is betrayed by Judas, and the night before He ends up being nailed to a Roman cross. They realize that there is an assassination plot on Jesus' life, and that as those closely associated with Him, that their lives are also in grave danger. And so as Jesus gathers in an upper room with His students, sharing a meal, He notices that there is fear in the eyes of His friends. And so He offers these words:
"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. 2 My Father’s house has plenty of room; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going." 5 Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" 6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:1-6)
And the scriptures teach that the Father’s house or heaven is a real place, a better place, and that Heaven is precisely where Jowin is right now.
And based on what people have experienced, who have been clinically dead, and have gone to Heaven, and then have been seemingly resuscitated, people prefer to be there than here. And so as much as we would do anything to bring Jowin back, as much as we grieve his loss, he would want us to know that he is in a better place.
Earlier this year I read the experience of a man named Don Piper. Don was driving on his way home from a conference and was crossing a small two-way bridge and an oncoming semi-truck suddenly swerved into his lane and drove right over his Ford Escort, crushing him and his little car. The medical personnel arrived, ran a series tests on him and confirmed that he had died instantly. Because he was clearly already dead the emergency workers did not make any attempt to move his body out of his crushed car.
90 minutes after the car accident a pastor named Richard who was driving along the road, stopped and asked the medical person personnel and police, “What had happened.” They explained how Don had his car run over by this semi truck and was instantly declared dead. Richard felt compelled by the Holy Spirit to pray for the man who had died. With the permission of the police and medical personnel, he walked over to the crushed car, lifted up the tarp, he began to pray for him. For some reason he felt led to sing the old hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” As he began to sing, to his utter shock Don, the man in the car, began singing with him. His life, ninety minutes after being clinically declared dead, returned to life.
In this book called 90 Minutes in Heaven, Don describes what it was like to actually go to heaven and to meet his friend Mike from high school who had led him to Jesus Christ…a popular athlete who had died at 19. He also describes movingly the beautiful music of heaven, the thousands of voices and countless different kinds of music, yet somehow all coalescing into a mesmerizingly beautiful, coherent, and sublime melody. He talked about the beautiful colours of heaven and how he felt more alive and more joy and happiness than he had never known on earth.
If heaven is real and Jowin is there, while his death has hurt us, death hasn’t hurt him It’s simply become a passageway to greater place.
There was a pastor named Don Barnhouse who served in Pennsylvania.
He was married with young children.
His wife died when they were young.
One day not long after his wife when Don was driving down a freeway in Pennsylvania with his young son and daughter. The sun was descending.
There was a huge semi-truck coming toward them in the oncoming lane. As the truck passed them the shadow of the truck swept over their little car.
Donald turned to his kids and said, “What would you rather have hit you, the truck or the shadow of the truck?” His kids said, “Well, of course, the shadow, because the shadow can’t hurt us!”
And Donald explained to them that 2000 years on the cross Jesus allowed the “truck of death” to run over him so that only its shadow would run over us. He explained how on the cross Jesus bore our sins on the cross so we could be forgiven and experience the life of God, but also in a life to come in heaven. He explained he bore the brunt of death on the cross so that only its shadow would run over us.
This past week, someone in our community that I know well, shared with me that her 25 year-old niece was killed in a tragic car accident. She was driving her car on windy road on a rainy, foggy night at high speed and she swerved off the road. She wasn't wearing her seatbelt. She went right through her front windshield, and died. And my friend was telling me that, a few days after her tragic death, she was grieving, mourning the loss of her beloved niece, and out of the blue she had this clear vision of her niece flying through the windshield and landing right into the arms of Jesus.
And on the night of November 28, when Jowin's car was in a terrible accident, he flew right into the arms of Jesus. And if Jowin could speak to us today, I know that he would say: "I'm in a better place."
His parents, Raymond and Peo, also told me that Jowin would not want his death to be in vain - that he would want something good to come out of it. I've been meditating on Psalm 90, where it says in verses 9-10 (and I'm just going to excerpt part of it): All our days pass quickly, then we fly away. We are like the new grass of the morning. In the morning it springs up new, but by evening it is dry and withered. And the Psalmist says, in verse 12: Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Our endless days are numbered. And whether they pass away at 21, or 81, they are just a mist - it is here for a moment, and then gone. And in light of the brevity of our life, the Psalmist urges us to number our days, and to gain the wisdom that comes from the perspective that our lives on Earth will be over soon. And Jowin would challenge us to prayerfully reflect on the purpose, the meaning, and the potential legacy of our own lives. Why are we here? Who are we becoming? What difference are we making?
And the second thing that Jowin would want to say to us, if he were here, would be to prepare for our death. According to Jowin's psychologist, who was meeting with him one-on-one, the day before Jowin died, Jowin recommitted his life to God. As a young boy, Jowin believed. During his teenage years, he fell away from conscious relationship with God, but on the day before he died, in the presence of his counsellor - who happened to be a Christian - Jowin reoffered his life to God.
And if you offer your life into God's hands, you'll find that He carries you throughout this lifetime, giving you a greater peace, joy, sense of meaning and purpose than you would otherwise have. And on the day that you die, you'll find yourself cast from this life to the next, with God's everlasting arms beneath you.
Let's pray.
4
Jowin Lau's Funeral Homily
Earlier this month I received an email from my friend Sarah Tsang, who has known Jowin and Joeis since they were young children. My friend Sarah has clear memories of Jowin, and his twin sister Joeis, as five year-olds attending Sunday school and the Awana clubs at their church, dressed by their mom in matching outfits. Sarah, like many of us here, was devastated by Jowin's tragic death on the Lion's Gate bridge. There is nothing quite as painful as losing a loved one, especially when they are so young - Jowin was just 21 years old.
For a time, Jowin, like many of us in our teenage years - and I went down this path myself, in my adolescence – hung out with the wrong crowd, experimented with things he thought would lift him up, but ended up just bringing him down. But over the last year or two, he had begun to experience an amazing turn-around. Largely motivated by the turmoil, the struggles, the anger, and the depression that he had felt in some of his teenage years, Jowin wanted to study psychology, and become a counsellor who could help other teenagers through that often dark, difficult passage of their lives.
Just at a time when Jowin had discovered his life purpose, and was starting to hit stride as a young man, his life seemed prematurely snuffed out. And we grieve the loss of this thoughtful, generous, sacrificial, smart son, brother, friend, and I know that for some of us - especially those of us of Asian ancestry - it is difficult to really grieve and mourn and wail. There is something in our cultural heritage that causes us to hold in our feelings, and to hold back our displays of emotion.
But at times like this, we need to grieve, mourn, and wail. And some of us here carry a particularly heavy burden. We feel regret, at not having spent more time with Jowin, for not having done more for him. Some of us experience not only grief, but also regret, shame, and guilt. Those are the last things that Jowin would want you to experience. Jowin wants you to live without that burden - to become free. If he had lived to become a psychologist he would help you to acknowledge those feelings, but he would want to lead you to a place of freedom.
Jowin and Joeis' parents, Raymond and Peo, asked me as their minister to bring a word from scripture - from God – for this time as this. And while the pages of scripture contain much wisdom, they don't tell us why someone like Jowin, who was poised to enter the prime of his life, had his life tragically taken at such a young age.
But the scriptures do tell us that Jowin's death, on the Lion's Gate bridge, was not his end - that Jowin is alive, and in fact more alive than he has ever been before and in a better place.
In the gospel of John, chapter 14, Jesus is with some of His closest students on the night that He is betrayed by Judas, and the night before He ends up being nailed to a Roman cross. They realize that there is an assassination plot on Jesus' life, and that as those closely associated with Him, that their lives are also in grave danger. And so as Jesus gathers in an upper room with His students, sharing a meal, He notices that there is fear in the eyes of His friends. And so He offers these words:
"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. 2 My Father’s house has plenty of room; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going." 5 Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" 6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:1-6)
And the scriptures teach that the Father’s house or heaven is a real place, a better place, and that Heaven is precisely where Jowin is right now.
And based on what people have experienced, who have been clinically dead, and have gone to Heaven, and then have been seemingly resuscitated, people prefer to be there than here. And so as much as we would do anything to bring Jowin back, as much as we grieve his loss, he would want us to know that he is in a better place.
Earlier this year I read the experience of a man named Don Piper. Don was driving on his way home from a conference and was crossing a small two-way bridge and an oncoming semi-truck suddenly swerved into his lane and drove right over his Ford Escort, crushing him and his little car. The medical personnel arrived, ran a series tests on him and confirmed that he had died instantly. Because he was clearly already dead the emergency workers did not make any attempt to move his body out of his crushed car.
90 minutes after the car accident a pastor named Richard who was driving along the road, stopped and asked the medical person personnel and police, “What had happened.” They explained how Don had his car run over by this semi truck and was instantly declared dead. Richard felt compelled by the Holy Spirit to pray for the man who had died. With the permission of the police and medical personnel, he walked over to the crushed car, lifted up the tarp, he began to pray for him. For some reason he felt led to sing the old hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” As he began to sing, to his utter shock Don, the man in the car, began singing with him. His life, ninety minutes after being clinically declared dead, returned to life.
In this book called 90 Minutes in Heaven, Don describes what it was like to actually go to heaven and to meet his friend Mike from high school who had led him to Jesus Christ…a popular athlete who had died at 19. He also describes movingly the beautiful music of heaven, the thousands of voices and countless different kinds of music, yet somehow all coalescing into a mesmerizingly beautiful, coherent, and sublime melody. He talked about the beautiful colours of heaven and how he felt more alive and more joy and happiness than he had never known on earth.
If heaven is real and Jowin is there, while his death has hurt us, death hasn’t hurt him It’s simply become a passageway to greater place.
There was a pastor named Don Barnhouse who served in Pennsylvania.
He was married with young children.
His wife died when they were young.
One day not long after his wife when Don was driving down a freeway in Pennsylvania with his young son and daughter. The sun was descending.
There was a huge semi-truck coming toward them in the oncoming lane. As the truck passed them the shadow of the truck swept over their little car.
Donald turned to his kids and said, “What would you rather have hit you, the truck or the shadow of the truck?” His kids said, “Well, of course, the shadow, because the shadow can’t hurt us!”
And Donald explained to them that 2000 years on the cross Jesus allowed the “truck of death” to run over him so that only its shadow would run over us. He explained how on the cross Jesus bore our sins on the cross so we could be forgiven and experience the life of God, but also in a life to come in heaven. He explained he bore the brunt of death on the cross so that only its shadow would run over us.
This past week, someone in our community that I know well, shared with me that her 25 year-old niece was killed in a tragic car accident. She was driving her car on windy road on a rainy, foggy night at high speed and she swerved off the road. She wasn't wearing her seatbelt. She went right through her front windshield, and died. And my friend was telling me that, a few days after her tragic death, she was grieving, mourning the loss of her beloved niece, and out of the blue she had this clear vision of her niece flying through the windshield and landing right into the arms of Jesus.
And on the night of November 28, when Jowin's car was in a terrible accident, he flew right into the arms of Jesus. And if Jowin could speak to us today, I know that he would say: "I'm in a better place."
His parents, Raymond and Peo, also told me that Jowin would not want his death to be in vain - that he would want something good to come out of it. I've been meditating on Psalm 90, where it says in verses 9-10 (and I'm just going to excerpt part of it): All our days pass quickly, then we fly away. We are like the new grass of the morning. In the morning it springs up new, but by evening it is dry and withered. And the Psalmist says, in verse 12: Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Our endless days are numbered. And whether they pass away at 21, or 81, they are just a mist - it is here for a moment, and then gone. And in light of the brevity of our life, the Psalmist urges us to number our days, and to gain the wisdom that comes from the perspective that our lives on Earth will be over soon. And Jowin would challenge us to prayerfully reflect on the purpose, the meaning, and the potential legacy of our own lives. Why are we here? Who are we becoming? What difference are we making?
And the second thing that Jowin would want to say to us, if he were here, would be to prepare for our death. According to Jowin's psychologist, who was meeting with him one-on-one, the day before Jowin died, Jowin recommitted his life to God. As a young boy, Jowin believed. During his teenage years, he fell away from conscious relationship with God, but on the day before he died, in the presence of his counsellor - who happened to be a Christian - Jowin reoffered his life to God.
And if you offer your life into God's hands, you'll find that He carries you throughout this lifetime, giving you a greater peace, joy, sense of meaning and purpose than you would otherwise have. And on the day that you die, you'll find yourself cast from this life to the next, with God's everlasting arms beneath you.
Let's pray.
4
posted by Shigematsu at 10:18 AM
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