Dad’s Last Sermon Preached

It has been over a year since I last wrote about my dad’s sermons.  I have mentioned in previous posts that my dad over his lifetime wrote over 750 sermons and that I am on a multi-year pilgrimage reading through them all in chronological order, one at a time each Sunday morning.  At the time I published that post in December 2022 (Dad’s Sermons Update), I was reading through a series of sermons that my dad wrote when I was a freshman in college in the fall of 1974 and winter of 1975.  Attending an in-town college, I was still able to attend church most every Sunday (I think I may have missed a few) so I may have heard him give many of these almost 50 years ago.  I am now reading through a series of sermons he first wrote and preached my last semester in college.

My dad was very organized.  Dating back to his first sermon in 1949, each sermon he wrote was safely ensconced inside a numbered manila folder.  On the outside, he wrote the date, location, and time he preached that sermon, always at a different location (he apparently had no reruns, never giving the same sermon to the same congregation).  Over his lifetime, he served as a full-time Presbyterian pastor at seven different churches, thus the reason some of the sermons were given multiple times over his career.

In 2018, I came across and read the sermon that he preached the day he retired (a Sunday of course), December 31, 1989.  So, realizing this was the last one he gave as a full-time minister, it got me wondering how he could have decided which sermon to give as his last (it was not to be the last sermon he ever gave before he died as even in retirement, he occasionally filled in for vacant pulpits—that last sermon was still waiting for me to be discovered one Sunday morning).  Could he maybe have written a swan song or a last hurrah?  But no, as was consistent with my dad’s character, it was not about his 40 years of service, it was about the topic most relevant to that church at that moment in time—finding a new pastor to serve in a small rural community so that the church would not die out.

On January 21^st of this year, I came across that last preached sermon—the one that had been waiting for me since I began this pilgrimage in 2017.  As soon as I saw the date on the folder (2-3-2002), I suspected this might have been his last given sermon as its last date was barely a month before he died.  But I knew I had a second source where I could confirm if this was in fact his last given sermon.

In 2021, I wrote a post, Roadmap to a Lifelong Career, about receiving from my sister my dad’s PASTORAL RECORD.

Unless you are a minister, you have probably never heard of this type of bound book which includes sections for recording a variety of activities and events that would occur throughout a paster’s life.  My dad had carefully filled out many of these sections throughout his career and continued even after he retired.  At the time I received it, I recognized it as a roadmap to my dad’s entire ministerial career, carefully scripted in his own handwriting (maybe today these are electronic records).

As you can see, included in that book is a section entitled: “RECORD OF SERMONS DELIVERED.”  I had previously determined in reading through that section that over his lifetime, my dad had preached 3,362 sermons.  But when I opened to that page again, I saw that the date for sermon #3,362 was 1-13-02, not 2-3-2002 as indicated on the manila folder.

I texted my siblings of my discovery and got responses from my sisters that it was around the 6^th of February his health had dramatically deteriorated and by the 11^th he was heading to the hospital.  It was not long after our mom had died in 1999, that he had been diagnosed with melanoma cancer and had been battling that for almost three years.  He finally succumbed to his cancer on March 7^th, 2002.

Returning to this sermon, I realized I was touching the typed pages of the last sermon my dad ever held in his hands while standing behind the pulpit.  As before, I wondered what it might be about.  By the initial date, I saw Dad had specifically written this sermon to be delivered on New Year’s Day, 1978 and that he had preached it again around New Year’s Day several other times afterwards.  As I read through it, I could not believe how prescient it actually was for his impending death.

The featured Bible passage for this sermon was from Philippians (3:13b-14) in which Paul writes:

Forgetting what lies behind and straining to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

In his sermon, my dad suggested that as is often the case around New Year’s, we reflect back on the year past but sometimes we might even look back further over our entire life, possibly with special emphasis on our failures.

Several times throughout the sermon, Dad requoted this passage from Philippians emphasizing we should not give up and even used the analogy of an athlete who does not look to his or her past performance, but rather strives towards the next achievement, stretching for that final goal, the finish line.

I knew from previous things I had learned about my dad after his death that another passage in Philippians (1:21) was his favorite, one upon which to base his life’s work:

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

This passage was so special, my dad had it inscribed on their tombstone after my mom died.

Finishing reading the sermon that Sunday morning, I thought this was a wonderful sermon with the central theme of not being too focused on the past successes or failures, but rather striving for the ultimate goal, which for a Christian believer, would be eternal life after death.  As I closed the folder, I realized with the preaching of this sermon and the Bible passage already awaiting him etched on his tombstone, Dad had achieved that prize, a strong faith he no doubt held his entire life.

So, congratulations Dad!  Way to go!