How to Say Goodbye

This morning, as we continue our Easter celebration of the risen Christ, I would like to talk to you about what would we say, who would we include, and how we would point out and thank the influential people in our lives if given the opportunity to make a video tape of all the most important things we have ever learned in this life. Partly my motivation for this topic is to do what I like to do when I get a chance: to introduce or tease out a topic in the course of the sermon that we can unpack in more depth during the forum time that follows. It is my sneaky version of what in the advertising world is called product placement: like when you see a box of Corn Flakes in full vision on a kitchen table in a scene from your favorite television program. For a fee, a product is placed right where we are likely to see it. The topic we are going to discuss at the forum is one I suspect would not pack the room: we are going to talk about how to plan our funerals. So later on you can make a choice: get outside and enjoy this gorgeous day or go over to the auditorium and learn some pointers about funeral planning. I know the choice seems crazy. But first let me make the case.

Let me begin with a story of an amazing person whose story is reaching people around the world. It is believed that well over six million people worldwide have gone onto the Internet to listen to his lecture at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. On September 18, 2007 computer science professor Randy Pausch went before 500 students and faculty to deliver his last lecture. Last lectures were a tradition at the school. It was a chance for one chosen professor a year to distill all of his life’s lessons and work them down to one hour. Randy Pausch began speaking that day and announced what he would not talk about. He wasn’t going to talk about the cancer that was eating away at his body: people at the school already knew of his condition and that he was dying. He did begin with a slide of the CT scan of ten tumors in his liver. He had been told that he had three to six months of good health until pancreatic cancer would end his life. It was the same fast moving and painful cancer that took the life of our beloved Canon Jones just two years ago.

What Randy Pausch did in that last lecture, and continues to do on his daily web blog that anyone can visit to check up on how he is doing and feeling, was to offer his audience his simple philosophy for living. He talked about how good he was feeling even after the many treatments. He hit the floor to do some pushups to prove it. He clearly did not want people to feel sorry for him. His take was that we cannot change the cards we are dealt in life but only how we are going to play our hand. He was playing his hand with energy and humor and grace. Randy Pausch also announced to the crowded lecture hall that he would not talk about his family – his wife and his three children. He said he was good, but not that good to speak of his family without tearing up.

The last lecture is a fascinating look at how one man chose to sum up all that he knew to be true. He spoke about childhood dreams and the lessons he had learned about enabling the dreams of others. He always wanted to play football in the NFL and work on animation for Disney. He did not achieve the first dream but did succeed at the second: he worked on the animation in the movies Aladdin and Pirates of the Caribbean. He did share however that playing football in high school taught him one of his most important lessons: the importance of fundamentals. His team had to learn the basics of the game: tackling, blocking, plays, before anyone would be given a ball to throw around. The basics are important. He spoke of never losing childlike wonder, helping others, telling the truth, apologizing when you screw up, showing gratitude, focusing on others and not yourself. He spoke of overcoming obstacles: his favorite saying was “brick wall let us show our dedication.” How many brick walls have you run into over the course of your life that have determined what you would do next?

Taken in its entirety, Randy Pausch’s last lecture is not grand, earth shattering or unique. There is not the sense that he was trying to unpack the mysteries of the universe. But that wasn’t his purpose.

In interviews – and there have been many since that last lecture -- Pausch gets emotional. "The only times I cry are when I think about the kids -- and it's not so much the 'Gee, I'll miss seeing their first bicycle ride' type of stuff as it is a sense of unfulfilled duty -- that I will not be there to help raise them, and that I have left a very heavy burden for my wife." His wife and children, he said, "mean everything to me. They give purpose to life and a depth of joy that no job can begin to provide. And I hope they will remember me as a man who loved them, and did everything he could for them."

He is concentrating now on creating videos for his children.

One of the reasons I want people to take a moment when they are in the midst of life, when they are healthy, even when they’re still young, to consider some simple things like how they would imagine their funeral if they could plan it, is because thinking ahead about a day that will come to all of us can be a tremendous gift to our family and friends. That’s what Randy Pausch was doing. In those early days when all we can feel is shock, and numbness and grief, a file of information to reach for with everything pretty much mapped out, can be a wonderful thing.

In the gospel for today, Jesus is doing in a different setting and a different time, what Randy Pausch did in his last lecture. This was Jesus’ form of making videos for his children to watch when they got older. In the lengthy goodbye to his followers, Jesus reminds them of what God has promised. He tells them he will never leave them orphaned. (John 14:18) that they are to love one another as he has loved them. (15:12) Jesus also says this: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 2In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

These verses have become for me some of the most important of the gospels. They hit us by their simplicity. Religion is not always the easiest thing to understand and even harder to explain when you think about the big questions: the creation of the universe, the miracle of life itself, the battle between good and evil, the power of nature, the role of faith when it comes to justice, and war, and poverty. Jesus says: don’t worry. Believe in God. Believe in me. I can do that.

Believe in me, Jesus says. Believe in him to love us even when we become at times unlovable. Believe in him when we have stopped believing in ourselves, when our confidence is shaken and our self-doubts drown out all the good things we have going on. Believe in him when and if we’re ever diagnosed with cancer, and have lost a loved one, and when you win the lotto, and when you’ve been awarded tenure, and when you’ve met your life’s companion, and when you’re in middle school or high school and think it’s the most miserable experience anyone could have.

There are many dwelling places – many mansions as an older version of the Bible translates the Greek. Many of us can find it very easy to wonder whether God has enough time, or room or energy to notice our small lives. We can wonder whether God has the time to track us down if we stray or get in trouble or whether God grows bored of our seemingly little concerns. Another obstacle in believing is when and if we spend a lifetime knocking on doors that seldom open, or the doors get shut real quick, or others want to keep us out or down. It is not surprising that we might wonder if there is enough room for us in God’s plan.

But listen to what Jesus told his followers and tells us: there’s room, Jesus says. There are many dwelling places. And to prove it, he will go there first and scout them out. And one day he will come to us and lead us to that place.

In Randy Pausch’s amazing last lecture, he speaks of what he calls the head fake. The head fake is when you think the point of a lesson is to learn the thing you expect -- when in fact, the real purpose was to learn something totally different. Or put another way, the best kind of learning is when you don’t even realize you are being taught. It comes naturally. This coming from a man whose job it was at Carnie Mellon to work on creating the virtual reality of video games so that players would become so enthralled that they even forgot they were learning.

I believe Jesus also uses the head fake teaching technique. When we hear him speak of his dying and being one with the Father, we may think that we have to wait to die and reach heaven before we get to check out the rooms that God has prepared for us. That we have to wait until then to know the purpose of life itself. That we have to wait for later for all our sins and past misdeeds and colossal failures to be wiped away. This is Jesus’ ultimate head fake. He is not talking to his followers about later on; he is talking about the here and now. He’s not just talking about heaven; he’s talking about life here. To say “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” – this is not about excluding others. Rather, it is about Christ grabbing us by the hand and walking us through the multiple choices of faith options so that we can reach the place that has been prepared for us. Just for us. No one else.

Acknowledging that one day we will die is but another way to say that, if we believe and remain open, God will show us how to live our lives now, what values are most important, how to build a community around us, how to create a just society and world for all of God’s children. Jesus said another thing on the tape he left for his children that we can never forget: I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.