Famous Last Words
Matthew 28:16-20
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Whenever I’m preparing a sermon based on the lectionary I always try to find a connection between the texts for the week. Sometimes it’s fairly obvious thematically and sometimes it’s not. This week, however, you’ll notice that both the texts we read are farewell discourses—last words of exhortation and instruction. Jesus gives final instructions to his disciples before his ascension (a passage now best known as “The Great Commission”) and Paul says some final words to the Corinthian Church with whom he has had a rather rocky relationship.
Final words are important because they’re often the first thing people will remember. Ending well leaves a lasting impression. It’s like the piano teacher taught many students over a lifetime career. When she got them ready for recitals, she would encourage them to perfect their endings. She insisted they practice the endings over and over again. When her students grumbled that it was boring going over and over these last few measures, she would answer: “You can make a mistake in the beginning or in the middle or in some other place along the way. But all will be forgotten when you manage to make the ending glorious.”
Maybe that’s why the expression “famous last words” is so, well, famous. Some endings are glorious and some ignoble. I found a web site that listed a bunch of famous last words, dying words of famous people. Interesting stuff.
• Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen was on his death bed when his doctor said to him, “The angels are waiting for you.” To which Allen replied, “Waiting are they? Waiting are they? Well–let ’em wait.”
• Karl Marx’s housekeeper asked the dying man whether he had any last words. He said to her, “Go on, get out – last words are for fools who haven’t said enough.”
• Mexican bandit Poncho Villa, when he was shot by assassins, said, “Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.”
• Writer Oscar Wilde, dying in a Paris hotel, said, “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”
• And my personal favorite—Union General John Sedgwick at the battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse in 1864, seeing Confederate sharpshooters 1,000 yards away said, “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dis—“
Last words can be sublime or ridiculous. They don’t necessarily have to be dying words. Jesus was going to be with the Father, Paul was moving on in his missionary work, but in both cases their last words were directed at those whom they had trained and nurtured in faith—words of command and commissioning for those left behind. Think of them as final orders—the last and most important statements that become the first and foremost words of instruction for a new generation of disciples.
I like the juxtaposition of these two “last words” because they round out the scope of what Christians are to be about. Jesus’ focus is on those outside the community of faith while Paul’s is on the relationships within the church. Focusing on both aspects of community are essential for disciples of Jesus—those within and those without.
The most important word in the Great Commission is “go.” Jesus’ authority has been given to the disciples—authority to preach and teach his Kingdom message, the eyewitness authority of the cross and resurrection, authority to heal and make people whole. Clothed with that authority they were to “go” and share it, use it, express it powerfully among “all the nations.” Their tasks were to “baptize” and to “teach”—proclaiming God’s forgiveness and new birth through Jesus’ death and resurrection and inviting people on a journey toward a new, wholistic, healthy, and redeemed way of life. The disciples were to be on a journey following Jesus and were to invite others to join the journey as well. Jesus’ last words were the first words that launched a worldwide movement of faith.
If you look in the book of Acts you see that the first name for the early Christian church was “the Way.” Jesus himself had said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Christianity was originally designed not to be a religion, but the way—a path to be followed, a journey to be undertaken, a mission to be carried out. Jesus’ last words to his disciples were a command to follow the way that he had shown them. All other ways and paths ultimately were dead ends.
I was thinking about this as I was reading the spiritual autobiography of E. Stanley Jones as part of my doctoral program. Jones was a missionary to India and traveled all over the world as an evangelist, preaching the good news of Jesus. Jones wrote his autobiography in 1968 at the age of 83 which, in my view, makes his words especially profound. Jones spent his whole life following in the way of Jesus and teaching others to do the same. His was a Great Commission life.
One of the things that Jones wrote about struck me as being especially profound. Most people see living the Christian life as being abnormal—that normal human life is characterized by sin and selfishness. But Jones remembered that we were created in God’s image—that we were created inherently for health and wholeness. In other words, “Everyone, everywhere, by his makeup is destined to belong to Christ, for he is made by Christ and for Christ.” When we choose to shake off that destiny, through sin and selfishness, we suffer. He writes about a man who became an atheist, saying to a friend, “Oh, I’m sorry but I don’t believe that anymore.” Jones asks, “Why did he say he was ‘sorry’ that he didn’t believe anymore? Why didn’t he say, ‘Hallelujah, I don’t believe that anymore? No, everyone goes away [from Jesus] sorrowful, for he is going away from home…Is it hard to be a Christian? No, it’s hard not to be a Christian. It is hard to live against life.”
That’s a powerful statement. We’re wired for the Christian life, wired for following Christ, wired to be in the Way. Follow it and we find peace. Step off the way and we suffer.
Jones writes about a doctor he encountered who understood this principle. The surgeon said to the missionary, “I’ve discovered the Kingdom of God at the end of my scalpel. It’s in the tissues. The right thing morally, the Christian thing, is always the healthy thing physically.” When we live in the Way, when we follow Jesus’ commands to live simply, to not over-consume, to maintain sexual purity, to love others unconditionally, to take time for prayer and Sabbath with God there’s a physical effect. When we live in the Way, we find our way to health, both individually and as communities. Jones quotes a Dr. William Sadler who said, “If humanity lived in a truly Christian way, half the diseases of humanity would drop off tomorrow morning and we would stand up a healthy new humanity.” That’s not to say that diseases don’t come through no fault of own, just that we give ourselves the best chance at healthy living when we follow the Way.
Jesus commanded his disciples to live in the Way and invited others to join them for the purpose of healing the whole world. The Great Commission is about conversion, but not mere conversion to a new religion, or about getting more people to go to heaven when they die. That’s a caricature of Christian faith. The call to Christian faith is a call to live in the Way—the Way in which Jesus leads us and promises to be with us “even to the end of the age.”
Faith isn’t about simple cognitive assent to a set of beliefs. Instead it’s a full commitment to a way, the Way, of living. If our faith does not drive our whole lives—from where we live to what we do with our money to what we eat to where we spend our time—then it is not the Way. Living in the Way changes everything.
That leads us to the second set of last words in this week’s scriptures. Paul writes to the Corinthian Church with a similar set of exhortations, again in the imperative voice. Notice the first one: “Put things in order” (NRSV). The NIV renders this, “Aim for perfection,” but the sense of the Greek is more aimed at restoring things to their proper place. In other words, Paul is exhorting the Corinthians to put their feet back on the Way, to “listen” to what’s important and to “live in peace” with God and each other.
If we want to experience health and wholeness, if we want to be at peace with ourselves and with others, if we want to make our lives count for something, then we must re-order our priorities and join the journey that is the Way. Like E. Stanley Jones, Paul had lived that Way and had discovered that there really was no other way of living that could be as life-giving.
I meet a lot of scattered people as I go around Park City—people whose lives are pulled in a thousand different directions, people whose ordering of life seems to be out of whack. I’m always amazed when I go to parties or to other gatherings and most of the conversations are about things. I was at one gathering where I tried to join in a couple of different conversational circles but I was disappointed. One was a passionate discussion about granite counter tops, another treatise on the floor plans of the houses in the neighborhood. When things become the only point of connection with people, that’s not the Way.
We’ve had a number of suicides in our town—an inordinate amount in my view. These are all people who, by all accounts, seemed to be successful. Depression is a disease, to be sure, but I wonder how much the illusion of success contributes to feelings of despair? What happens when you’ve achieved everything the world has to offer—money, home, car, vacations, etc.—but it’s not enough? How hard it must be to come to a point in your life when you’ve discovered that the way you’ve followed isn’t the Way.
I’ve talked to couples in crisis whose marriages are breaking up because one or the other (or sometimes both) of them insist on having things their way. There’s a belief that somehow if they could only exchange their spouse or their life situation everything would be better. Affairs, for example, are a destructive short cut in an attempt to find personal fulfillment, but it’s a path that leads off a spiritual and emotional cliff. Abusive relationships are one thing, but a willful dismissal of the marriage covenant is another. When the divorce happens people often discover that the way they undertook was a path to misery. That’s not the Way.
Over and over again we see the consequences of not following the Way. We see how hard it is to not be a Christian, the dashed hopes, dreams and relationships left in the wake of a hell-bent-for-leather run toward the so-called American Dream. The American Dream is not the Way. It will not lead us to health or fulfillment or peace, only to last words that are empty. Only the Way of Christ is the true way to life.
But here’s the paradox—it is also the way of death. When we choose the Way, we put to death the old ways of living we’ve become so used to. Paul uses this language often in his letters—“dying to self” and “dying and being raised with Christ.” When we choose the Way, we are saying no to other ways. We can’t be on two paths at the same time. Think about that famous Robert Frost poem—“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…” The Way is the path less traveled by—the path that makes all the difference.
The last words of Jesus in Matthew, the Great Commission, are words directed at us as his church in this place. “Go and make disciples,” go and show others the Way. The truth is that if we, as followers of Christ, don’t ourselves live the Way and show the Way in our community, no one else will. As followers of Christ, we must put things in order and show how this really works. We can bring health to our community in the power of God’s Spirit…if we follow the Way.
Jesus’ words and Paul’s admonitions are a tough sell in our culture. To suggest that there is one true Way toward human fulfillment and completion is seen as being very pretentious. After all, we live in a “free” country and freedom means that we should be able to do whatever we want, right? Insisting that we must be obedient to a specific path turns people off to faith.
“Obey” is a four letter word in our freedom-loving culture, but the truth is that we all obey something—be it money, power, sex, self, or a host of other things. Ultimately, however, these things can enslave us. If we obey money, debt and the balance sheet become our master. If we obey sex, we are subservient to our passions. If we obey the need for power, we are enslaved to overwork and the furious pursuit of our reputations. Freedom without limits is the illusion of freedom.
There are certain laws that are absolute—obey those laws and you are free. A pilot, for example, is free to fly provided that he or she obeys the laws of flying. Ditch the laws and you ditch the plane. Jesus preached about the Kingdom of God as being the reality which orders all of life—the Way. Follow the Way and we are free to live without guilt, without the tyranny of immediate gratification, without the endless pursuit of things that ultimately do not satisfy. Follow the Way and we are free to be all and do all that God has planned for us—like God says through the prophet Jeremiah, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).
“Go and make disciples,” was Jesus’ last command. To do that, we have to become followers ourselves. We need to be committed to the Way ourselves and doing that requires discipline. We get to know the Way by intentionally spending time with Christ in study and prayer and we get to know Christ even more as we live out the Way in our daily lives.
Paul’s final words to the Corinthians are a benediction—words of sending forth. “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” God longs to go with us on our journey in the Way.
This morning our communications team is doing some surveying about words that will come to define our church and its mission. There are a lot of good ideas there, but I’ll admit that I’m partial to phrases that invite people to join a journey, to join the Way. My prayer is that we will be a church on the Way, where people are being transformed by conforming to the Way of Christ.
But let me make this a little more personal in closing. All of us will someday have some last words—will they be words of fear or words of faithfulness? Will we look at our lives as having been fulfilled and having meaning because we have been on the Way, or will we look back and see all that we missed in our pursuit of other more selfish ways?
Ministering in different cultures, E. Stanley Jones found a simple gesture conveyed a lot of impact. He taught people to hold up three fingers which stood for three words: “Jesus is Lord.” Those are the words that determine our allegiance, and the words that launch us on the Way. When we submit ourselves to Christ, when we allow God to have the last word in our lives, we discover true freedom.
In a moment, I’m going to pray and I’m going to invite you, if you are seeking a new beginning, a fresh start on the Way, to pray with me. If you feel led, I invite you to come to the altar rail during the hymn to pray. It’s a way of taking those first steps on a journey with Christ. Maybe you don’t feel worthy, don’t feel like you could be a disciple of Jesus. That’s OK, none of us is worthy on our own. It is God’s grace, poured out through Christ, that makes us so.
No matter what mistakes you’ve made or what other paths you’ve chosen, today’s a new chance to begin toward a glorious ending!
Sources:
Jones, E. Stanley, A Song of Ascents
