"Water. Word. That is the sign. It was always his" — Funeral of Donald Thiel

08. May 2026
Funeral for Donald Thiel
Romans 6:1–8 / John 14:1–6

Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. (Jn 14:5–6).

Linda asked God for a sign.

Fourteen years she had watched. MDS since 2012. Then VEXAS. Kidney, liver, treatment after treatment. Don praying every night — not for himself; for his family, for his friends. Don thanking the medical staff, offering a smile, keeping a dry humor when it would have been easier to turn inward. Don weeping at a charity podium because children were going through what he was going through, and somehow their suffering mattered to him more than his own.

Fourteen years. And Linda needed to know: where is he going?

So she asked God for a sign.

We understand that desire. We want something unmistakable. A vision. A voice from outside ordinary time. When someone we love is dying — when the question of where they are going presses on us like a weight — we want God to reach through the ordinary and show us something we cannot mistake.

But this is not generally how He works. He is not in the earthquake or the fire. He comes through what looks ordinary — water poured in a name, words spoken by a human mouth, bread and wine given at a table. He sends a pastor to a hospital room.

The week before Don died, Pastor Rathje came. They had a devotion. They prayed. And then the pastor asked: “Donald, do you believe that Jesus is your Savior?” Don said yes. That was the sign.

But there is a prior sign. Earlier than the hospital room. Earlier than Don's yes.

On the 12th of November, 1950 — Don was eight weeks old — someone brought him to the font at the old St. John's in Random Lake. Water was poured over him in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. That was the sign.

Not because Don did anything. He did nothing. He was eight weeks old. The sign was placed on him before he could ask for it, refuse it, earn it, or lose it. The Name of God was put on him. And the Name of God is not a label. It is a presence. It is God doing what his Name says — claiming you, binding himself to you, making you his.

Remember Luther’s Small Catechism: “Baptism works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation.” Not begins the process. Not plants a seed you must water by your own effort. Works. Done. For Don Klug, 12 November 1950.

As we heard and confessed together: “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:4–5).

Certainly. Not: probably. Not: we hope so. Certainly.

That claim does not require renewal. It did not diminish when Don stayed away from church. It did not shrink during the years in Florida, during the years of MDS and VEXAS. It was a done thing.

You have been baptized? Then what was done for Don Klug was done for you. The Name put on him is the Name put on you. It has not expired. It does not wait for you to get your spiritual life in order before it holds.

That was the first sign. Linda just didn't yet know what to look for.

But back to the hospital room. The pastor's question was the occasion. But the yes — where did the yes come from?

Not from Don's willpower in the final days. He had not been working his way toward a deathbed confession. He had been praying quietly for the people around him, keeping his distance from church, as many do. The yes was not manufactured in Fort Myers in April 2026.

The “yes” was the Spirit's work.

The same Spirit who had been at work on the 12th of November, 1950 — who had claimed Donald Klug at the font — who had been tending what was planted through the quiet years and the painful years and the years in Florida — bringing it, at the last, to speech.

This is how the Lord works. Not through visions that go inward and leave you wondering what they meant. Through the external Word — spoken out loud, by a human mouth, in a hospital room. The Word does what the Word says. The Spirit works through the Word.

“Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved”(Mark 16:16). Don believed. Don was baptized. He had been both since 1950.

The “yes” in that room does not belong to the heroic faith of a dying man. It belongs to the Spirit of God who planted that faith at the font and brought it to flower through a pastor's question, seventy-five years later. The achievement is outside of Don. The delivery came through a man with a Bible and a question.

That was the sign Linda asked for. It had been there the whole time.

And the Spirit had been at work the whole time. Not just preserving something abstract called faith. Making something of it.

Don spent twenty-two years feeding people — a restaurant in Random Lake, years as an executive chef at the Open Hearth, a man who knew how to make a table matter. God gives ordinary gifts through ordinary people. Through Don's hands at a stove, He gave. Through fifty-two years with Linda — love not as a feeling but as a showing up, in thousands of ordinary days, year after year — God gave. Through afternoons on the golf course that were never really about the golf: the laughter, Linda said, the friendly competition, the stories afterward about the day's triumphs and disasters, the easy joy of being with people you love — God gave. Through sarcastic humor delivered from a hospital bed, refusing to be pious about suffering, making the nurse laugh when she came in the room — God gave.

This is what the Spirit does with what he plants at the font. He makes it fruitful. He works through the neighbor, through the chef, the husband, the friend, the man who made people feel seen when his own body was disappearing. The Lord was with him. In all of it.

We give thanks to God for what He gave through Donald Thiel.

Don, through his humor in the hospital bed, reminds me Job, from the ash heap — from a depth of suffering that would stop most of our mouths:

“I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (Job 19:25–27).

In my flesh. Not: spiritually. Not: in some undifferentiated beyond. In my flesh I shall see God. These eyes. Specific. Bodily.

That is what is promised. Not an immortality of the soul drifting upward into vague light. Flesh. Seeing. God.

Don's yes in that hospital bed is Job's yes. A man whose body had fought for fourteen years and finally given out — and who still said: My Redeemer lives. I believe.

That yes did not come from the strength of a dying man. It came from the one who lives — and who, because he lives, will raise the body he has claimed.

The night before his own death, Jesus says to men who are about to watch everything fall apart:

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms” (John 14:1–2).

He says this knowing what is coming. Not: I hope things work out. Not: try to stay positive. Let not your hearts be troubled — because the one who says it is the one who is about to go through death in order to make it true. The rooms in the Father's house are prepared by Jesus going there himself, through Calvary, through the grave.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

The way is not a path you find by sufficient virtue. It is a person — the one who has already been where we are going and stands on the other side of it, alive.

Dr. Luther says: if you want your sins forgiven, don't go to Calvary. There forgiveness was won for you. But there it is not given out. Where is it given out? In the Word. In the water. At the Table where his body and blood are given for you. There is a difference. Both matter.

Forgiveness won at Calvary. Delivered here — in this word, through this mouth, in the water of your baptism. For you. You. You who are here today not certain where you stand. You who, like Don, have faith but keep your distance from the place where faith is fed. You who pray in the dark and are not sure what it amounts to.

The sign you are looking for is not a vision. It is the word being spoken right now, in this room, in your ears.

Has the Name been put on you in the water? Then the claim has been made. It has not expired. The Lord is not waiting for you to perform your way back to him before he makes good on what he said when the water was poured.

And the question the pastor asked Donald Thiel in that hospital room — it is asked of you today, through this word, through this mouth:

Do you believe that Jesus is your Savior? The Spirit who brought Don's faith to speech through a question is at work through this one. The word does what the word says.

The word being spoken right now — that is a delivery. The name put on you with the water — that claim holds. And when you come to the Table where his body and blood are given out, that too is the sign. Not for the righteous. For you, the sinner.

Water. Word. That is the sign. It was always his.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin