What's On Your Gravestone? -- FPC sermon excerpt

In New Haven, Connecticut, where I went to divinity school, there is a burial ground called the Grove Street Cemetery. It is completely surrounded by the campus of Yale University.

One day, the president of Yale was walking through New Haven, and he looked up at the inscription on the gate of the cemetery. It said, “The dead shall be raised.”

The president commented, “They certainly shall … if Yale ever needs the property.”

According to the Yale Alumni Magazine (May-June 2006), the Grove Street Cemetery was founded in 1796 as America’s first planned burial ground. It contains a number of notable Americans, including Noah Webster, of dictionary fame … Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin … and Walter Camp, pioneer of American football.

It also has some gravestones with fascinating inscriptions. John Boswell was a scholar whose research into same-sex unions in the medieval church caused a stir in the 1990s. His stone has a line from The Chronicles of Narnia: “He was not a tame lion.”

Yale president Kingman Brewster’s grave includes one of his own lines: “The presumption of innocence is not just a legal concept. In commonplace terms, it rests on that generosity of spirit which assumes the best, not the worst, in the stranger.”

That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? It is carved into a wall of stone that goes all around his grave.

My favorites are the headstones of John Kirkwood and Lars Onsager. They were chemists, and were both friends and rivals. Kirkwood’s stone is inscribed with a long list of academic positions and honors — it looks like a complete professional résumé.

Onsager’s stone, on the other hand, simply says, “Nobel Laureate … etc.”

You can guess who came out on top!

All of this talk of gravestone inscriptions makes me wonder how I will be remembered when my time on this earth is over. Pastor of Fairfax Presbyterian Church? Husband and father? Midlife Man on a Mission? Runner of marathons … with unimpressive times?

We need to realize that each of us is carving an inscription through the choices we make every day. So, how about you? What’s on your gravestone?

The apostle Paul puts some advice in his first letter to the Corinthians that we need to hear as we think about the legacies we are leaving behind. Paul is writing to a church full of very talented people, and he admires the spiritual gifts that are at work in the church in Corinth. Some can speak in tongues, others have prophetic powers, others have wonder-working faith, and still others have enormous generosity (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).

These gifts are great, says Paul. Enormously impressive. But wait, he says … without love, they are nothing.

Speaking in the tongues of mortals and of angels. Nothing without love. Prophetic powers that enable a person to understand all mysteries and all knowledge. Nothing without love. Faith that is powerful enough to move mountains. Nothing without love.

Today, we might extend this list a bit to include President of Yale. Nothing without love. Nobel Laureate. Nothing without love. Speaker of the House. Nothing without love. President of the United States. Nothing without love.

So, what are you carving into your gravestone? An earthly achievement such as a prize or a presidency? Or are you making a commitment to love — a decision to show love to others?

Choose love. And live it. There is simply no better way to be remembered.

Smart Stuff -- FPC sermon excerpt

When you are driving around the DC area, it is good to do a lot of praying. It is also advisable, while you are praying, to keep your eyes open.

I know a man who works downtown, and who prays as he commutes. He doesn’t pray for safe travels, or for deliverance from detours and accidents. He prays for an open parking spot, right front of his destination.

He claims it works. At least some of the time.

Well, guess what? The day is coming when he won’t have to pray for a parking spot. He’ll be able to find one with his cell phone.

According to Kevin Maney in USA TODAY (February 10, 2006), we will soon see smart, networked parking meters — meters that can talk to each other and report information to a website. If you drive into an area and want to know where an open space is, you simply use your cell phone to access the website and find an unused spot.

Even better, you will soon be able to punch a button and make a reservation. The parking meter will flash a reserved sign and hold the space for you for five minutes.

Smart stuff.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that these high-tech meters will make people any smarter. I heard about a meter maid who was walking up the block writing tickets when she noticed a student staring at a parking meter.

“Young man, is there something I can help you with?”

“No,” he said, “I’m just waiting for my gumball. I’ve still got 5 minutes left.”

In a variety of ways, everyday gadgets are now wising up, talking to one another, and making life a little easier for us. Sewing machines can now download images and embroider them on your clothes. Shipping crates are calling their owners for help if they get lost. And some gas pumps are running Microsoft Windows, allowing you to order coffee, download music, and check traffic while you fill your tank.

These advances all come from improved communication and networking. A system called Home Heartbeat connects sensors on appliances, doors, and other fixtures. You can program the system to tell you — by text message — every time the front door opens and the TV turns on.

My kids would not be happy at all if they were being monitored by Home Heartbeat.

God has always wanted us to be a part of his network, so he sends us a message in Proverbs chapter 1 about staying connected to wisdom. What’s so innovative about this passage is that Wisdom is portrayed as a woman, a flesh-and-blood character who walks into the middle of human life and delivers a powerful message from the Lord.

Wisdom “cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice,” says the writer of Proverbs (1:20). At the busiest corner she calls out, speaking her message at the chaotic entrance to the city. Wisdom does not hide in the safety of a church sanctuary, or in the calm and quiet of a Bible study classroom, but moves confidently into the raucous world of high-tech parking meters and Windows-running gas pumps.

“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?” Wisdom speaks directly to us today, criticizing our tendency to grab hold of easy answers and simple solutions. “How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing,” she asks, “and fools hate knowledge?” (v. 22).

Lady Wisdom challenges us to embrace the full complexity of this world that God has created. She pushes us to plug into a network of Christians who are exploring what it means to be people of faith in fast-paced, high-tech, multicultural community. Our problem with becoming wise is not due to a lack of knowledge — we can find all the information we want on the Internet. Instead, our failure to gain wisdom has more to do with our being unwilling to follow the guidance of wise people — mentors, friends, parents, teachers. It is so important that we remain connected to a church community in which people are sharing their wisdom with one another.

Godspeed Living -- FPC sermon excerpt

We’re older than we think.

Four centuries old, as a matter of fact. The year 2007 is our 400th anniversary as Americans.

This milestone has nothing to do with the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Instead, our country’s 400th anniversary goes all the way back to 1607, when the first permanent English colonists arrived in Jamestown. They whupped the Pilgrims, beating them to the New World by 13 years.

One of the three ships that brought the colonists to Jamestown was Godspeed, a three-masted square-rigger that sailed the Atlantic for nearly five months to get to Virginia. The ship was just 88 feet long — about the length of a double tractor-trailer — and had a top speed of 4 miles per hour. The colonists endured what we would consider to be intolerable conditions, with 13 crew members working on the deck and 39 passengers stuck in the cargo hold with 40 tons of supplies.

The smell? It must have made grown men cry.

Imagine yourself onboard the Godspeed, pulling out of London on a cold winter day in December 1606. The weeks pass slowly, with nothing to look at, nothing to do. Boredom takes over. Food rots. Tempers flare. People stink.

Finally, you sail into the Caribbean. You head north in search of Virginia, and a violent storm strikes your ship. You have to drop sail and ride it out, running the risk of being blown onto the offshore bars of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. There, you would surely be washed into the sea and drowned.

But God is with you, and in May of 1607 you finally reach your destination — Jamestown. You have been delivered by Godspeed, a ship whose name means “May God cause you to succeed.”

That’s a good name to keep in mind as we begin our 401st American year.

Isaiah 43 contains a promise from God: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, and you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you” (Isaiah 43:2). This is the kind of promise that the crew of Godspeed must have lived by, especially as violent winds howled around them and towering waves crashed over the deck of their ship. “Do not fear,” says the God of earth, wind, water, and fire; “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.”

Notice that the line “When you pass through the waters" starts with “When,” not “If” — it is certain that we will all face difficult times. When you move through the thing that scares you the most — “I will be with you,” says God. When you struggle through job loss, academic failure, personal betrayal, disease, depression or divorce — “they shall not overwhelm you,” says the Lord. God promises to give us help and protection and peace, in the face of the worst terrors and trials that life can throw at us. A focus on being God's people --in the face of any obstacle, any failure, any challenge, any terror, any trial -- is what I call Godspeed Living.