Last Lecture

                                                —by Chris Stinnett

 

            The great English scholar Samuel Johnson famously said, “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Everyone knows he must die and everyone ignores the fact from day to day. When the prospect of death is immediate, the situation changes noticeably.

            That helps to explain the sudden interest in Dr. Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor who is dying of pancreatic cancer. He offered his “last lecture,” an honor usually given to retiring faculty members. In his lecture, Pausch spoke for 76 minutes about life lessons he hoped to pass on to his three children, all of whom are less than seven years old.

            His last lecture touched hearts all over the world. It is available on YouTube, it has been featured on ABCNews and Oprah Winfrey’s show. And now it is being expanded into a book, to be published by Hyperion. But Pausch is quick to point out that the lecture was never about dying, but about living. “The book is the same way,” he said. “I had no interest in writing about dying.”

            Since leaving Carnegie Mellon, Pausch has lectured once at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. His subject: time management. Faced with the imminent end of his life, Pausch wants to teach his three children how to live.

                “For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:2-3 NIV).

            On the last night of Jesus’ life before his death and resurrection to eternal life, He met with His disciples in a room. They ate and drank together and He gave His “last lecture.” He knew this was the end of His ministry on earth and that the next 24 hours would be horrible. But He didn’t talk about pain and suffering and death. He talked about life.

            That’s what Jesus always talked about. He talked about the way life should be and how God planned for us to live. He talked about the sin that makes our lives miserable, futile and fatal, and how He came to offer forgiveness. He talked about a life that is so full and rich and right that it can leave this body behind like an oak bursts out of an acorn and lives, really lives, into eternity.

            Jesus did not come to offer death, but life. The only interest He has in death is as an enemy to be finally defeated. What counts is life, and that’s what He came to bring to us. He did not come to teach us how to die; He came to teach us how to live and then to make that life possible.

            Most people avoid thinking about death, but when death is at hand, many suddenly want to know how to live in Christ. The time for that is now, not later.