A Sermon Delivered by The Rev. John D. Painter at Centenary United Methodist Church, Metuchen, New Jersey November 30, 2008 (The First Sunday of Advent)

Text: Mark 13:24-37

“But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake–for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” —Mark 13:24-37, NRSV

Keep awake!

That’s one way to summarize the last lecture of Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Dr. Pausch delivered his final lecture in September 2007, after he had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. He showed a love of life and an approach to death that many people have found inspiring, and his lecture has turned into a phenomenon, viewed by millions on television and on the Internet. He went on to write a best-selling book, along with Wall Street Journal columnist Jeffrey Zaslow, titled The Last Lecture—a book about love, courage and saying goodbye.

On Friday, July 25, 2008, Randy Pausch succumbed to cancer at the age of 47.

Dr. Pausch expected maybe 150 people to attend his last lecture. After all, it was a warm September day, and he assumed that people would have better things to do than attend a final lesson from a dying computer science professor in his 40s. He bet a friend $50 that he would never fill the 400-seat auditorium.

Well, Professor Pausch lost that bet. The room was packed, and when he arrived on stage, he received a standing ovation. He motioned the audience of students and colleagues to sit down. “Make me earn it,” he challenged them.

According to Jeffrey Zaslow (The Wall Street Journal: May 3, 2008, and September 20, 2007), Randy Pausch hardly mentioned his cancer in the course of his 70-minute lecture. Instead, he took everyone on a rollicking and riveting journey through the lessons of his life. He talked about the importance of childhood dreams, and the stamina needed to overcome obstacles. “Brick walls are there for a reason,” he insisted, showing slides of the rejection letters he had received over the years. “They let us prove how badly we want things.”

He pushed his audience to show patience toward others, saying, “Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you.” He celebrated his mentors and his students with an open heart, and revealed the depth of his love for his family.

Giving a nod to his techie background, Randy Pausch showed good humor: “I’ve experienced a deathbed conversion,” he said with a smile. “I just bought a Macintosh.” And wanting to show the crowd that he wasn’t ready to kick the bucket, he dropped to the floor and did one-handed push-ups.

Keep awake! That’s what Randy Pausch seemed to be saying as he invited his audience to rethink their ambitions and find new ways to look at other people’s flaws and abilities. Keep awake to what is truly important in life. After showing pictures of his childhood bedroom, marked up with mathematical notations he had drawn on the walls, he said, “If your kids want to paint their bedrooms, as a favor to me, let ‘em do it.”

Keep awake to what really matters. In this case it’s children—not bedroom walls.

After the lecture, Randy Pausch’s only plan was to spend his remaining days with his family. But a video of his talk began to spread like a virus across the Web. Randy was soon receiving e-mails from people around the world, telling him that his lecture had inspired them to spend more time with loved ones, quit pitying themselves, and even resist suicidal urges. Terminally ill people were inspired to embrace their own goodbyes, and have fun with every day they had left.

His last lecture really woke people up.

Then Randy gave part of his talk on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and ABC News named him one of its three “Persons of the Year.” People urged him to write a book, which he resisted at first, since he wanted to spend time with his family. But since he needed to exercise, and had to be alone as he rode his bike, he began to use his daily rides as a time to reflect on his lecture, his life and his dreams for his family.

And so, for an hour each day, he would talk to columnist Jeffrey Zaslow through a cell-phone headset, and over the course of 53 long bike rides he shared the insights that became the book called The Last Lecture.

Keep awake! That’s what Randy Pausch says to us in his Last Lecture. And that’s what Jesus Christ says as well in his final lecture to the twelve disciples, only hours from his execution. The Last Lecture of Jesus Christ is found in today’s Gospel reading in Mark 13. Of course it wasn’t really a lecture, and he wasn’t in a classroom—in those days, “classrooms” and “lectures” were rare. Conversations as the group walked from place to place or camped around the fire at night were more the rule, perhaps. However, I believe at the very heart of the “last lectures” of Randy Pausch and of Jesus of Nazareth there is a word of hope. And that is a word we so desperately need in these opening days of Advent 2008.

As I was thinking about this morning’s Message, I had been watching a news broadcast that oscillated between ongoing news of the failing economy and the horrific breaking news from Mumbai, India, about the vicious terrorist attacks. Worries about banks failing and the economy collapsing, war and terrorism, and continued ravaging of the environment seem to bubble up in many of our news broadcasts. With such chaos around us, we may sometimes find it difficult to know how to hope, and in what to place our hope. Yet in Advent we are reminded to hope once again, and to wait expectantly for the coming Messiah.

Andrew Payne was a Mission Intern with our United Methodist Board of Global Ministries from 2000 to 2003. He served in Zambia and in Atlanta, Georgia. He now lives in Germany with his wife, Sonja. Reflecting recently on Mark 13 and the Advent call to hope, Andrew Payne wrote: “For guidance, I look back in my own life for lessons learned in times when I felt utterly lost and had my assumptions about myself, the world, and the future irrevocably changed. For me that came when I became a missionary for Global Ministries. As a Mission Intern, right out of college, I was seeking a transformational experience. I thought I would become a deeper, more spiritual and driven person. In some ways I was transformed but in many ways I was wrong.

“When I moved to Zambia, the poverty and hunger affected me in ways I did not expect. The social systems behind the poverty and hunger were extremely complex and hard for me to understand; I could not even begin to fathom a solution. I realized it would take what seemed impossible decisions on so many fronts by so many people to make any change in the situation there. It forced me to question the very assumptions that brought me half-way around the world in the first place. I did not understand why I had come, what I was trying to do, where I could begin, or how I would do anything.”

Jesus confronts exactly such hopeless thoughts in Mark’s Gospel. Mark 13 is filled with predictions of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple, along with forewarnings of coming tribulation and the ultimate return of the Messiah. Over the long history of the Church, this “Little Apocalypse” (as it has been called by many) and other similar Gospel passages have been interpreted a thousand-and-one different ways by those who scour the Scriptures to determine when Jesus would return. But today this task seems far less important as we become aware of the Gospel message of hope in the face of hopelessness.

It is important to remember that when Mark wrote this first Gospel, the Romans had just waged a brutal war in Palestine suppressing a revolution. War in the ancient world was unbelievably brutal and violent. Terms like genocide come close to lived experience at that time. Towns were burned, and innocent people were slaughtered as a matter of course.

The capstone of this terrible period was the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. This devastated the people of Judea and ended the Jewish religion as it was practiced in Palestine. It set the whole nation adrift. It would have been an event that was only dimly approximated in our time by September 11, 2001…or by the recent attacks in Mumbai.

To Mark’s community, Jesus’ words would not have sounded like a simple prophecy of the far future, but rather a reflection of the terror and the events surrounding them. The temple had been destroyed, many were killed or had fled the cities, and the Romans had erected sacrilegious symbols on holy ground.

Jesus uses the prediction of the destruction of the temple to teach us how to hope. After he has outlined events to come, Christ gives an analogy of the servants and the master. He instructs his disciples to remain awake as servants would for their master, ending with the powerful words, “And what I say to you, I say to all: Keep awake” (Mark 13:37).

“In Zambia, the situation was beyond my abilities to fix or even totally understand,” Andrew Payne admits. “It seemed beyond redemption in any meaningful way for those living there. But then I realized, suddenly and powerfully, that there was another story. In Zambia, in the students, and missionaries, I saw a thousand hands and feet seeking to be the body of Christ—the hope of the world for others.

“I became awake to a different reality. A reality marked by love. To me this is the Advent hope, the hope of Christ found in one another and the Spirit. It is a story that has been repeated since the beginning of the church. As desperate as the times were, Mark’s community set down in words the first Good News of Jesus Christ. It is a story that remains powerful today.”

Believing that we can live without consequences, or that—against all odds—everything will just work out, is not hope. Jesus has called us to something more responsible and far deeper. True hope lies in understanding the real narrative and the deep truths of salvation lying at the heart of reality. Such hope is as much about the future and about understanding what really matters in the world.

This hope makes more sense to us in times of chaos and confusion and shows us how powerful the hope of Advent in Christ really is. Advent is a time to come together and be awake to God in the world, to hear God’s story, and to remember where our hope truly lies.

PRAYER

Lord, we are waiting. We’ve been waiting for a long, long time; waiting for hope, and for love that breaks down hostile walls, and light that brightens darkened minds; waiting for peace that always seems at hand, yet never quite arrives; waiting for abstract qualities like truth and justice to become concrete: the Word made flesh, dwelling among us. Lord, thank you for Advent, for this time of hope-filled preparation that makes the waiting all worthwhile. Amen.

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November 30, 2008 The Last Lecture Page  PAGE 5 of  NUMPAGES 5

  Bob Kaylor, Senior Writer, et. al., “The Last Lecture of Jesus Christ” in Homiletics (November-December 2008), p. 41. I am deeply indebted to the writing team at Homiletics for the direction and substance of portions of this Message, as indicated below.

  Ibid.

  Ibid.

  Ibid., pp. 41-42.

  Andrew Payne, “Reflection on Mark 13 (for the First Week of Advent 2008),” accessed November 29, 2008, at  HYPERLINK “http://gbgm-umc.org/global_news/full_article.cfm?articleid=5227″ http://gbgm-umc.org/global_news/full_article.cfm?articleid=5227. I am also grateful to Andrew Payne for offering additional direction and substance for this Message, as indicated.

  See Ibid.

  Ibid.

  See Ibid.

  Adapted from a Prayer for Advent at Homiletics Online ( HYPERLINK “http://www.homiletics.net” www.homiletics.net).