Walking through a Graveyard

There's nothing like an open grave to offer a glimpse of life by John Ortberg Eugene Peterson tells a wonderful story in his memoir, The Pastor. (By the way, it's a fabulous read. If you are a pastor, or were a pastor, or might be a pastor, or know a pastor, or can pronounce pastor, you should get it.) Eugene (I call him "Genie") and his wife were visiting a Benedictine monastery named Christ in the Desert. On their way to the refectory where they were to have lunch, they walked past the graveyard and noticed an open grave. Eugene asked which member of the community had died recently.
"No one," he was told. "That grave is for the next one."
Each day, three times a day, as they walk from praying to eating, the members of that community are reminded of what we spend our waking hours trying to forget.
One of them will be the next one.
The contemplation of death used to be a regular feature of spiritual life. Now we live in what Ernst Becker called "The Denial of Death." Woody Allen wrote that he didn't mind the thought of dying; he just didn't want to be there when it happened.
Frances de Sales wrote long instructions designed to help believers reflect on their deaths as vividly as possible. Human beings are the only creatures whose frontal lobes are so developed that they know that the game will end. This is our glory, our curse, our warning, and our opportunity.
In Jerusalem, hundreds of synagogues have been built by Jews from around the world. One was built by a group from Budapest, and according to an ancient custom, they had a coffin built into the wall. There is no body in it, they would explain to visitors. It is present as a silent witness to remind us: Somebody will be the next one.
The Talmud teaches that every person should fully repent one day before his death. When a visitor asked, "But how will I know when that day is?" he was told: "You won't. So treat every day as if it were the day before your last."
I thought of that this summer. One of the most formative people in my life was a red-headed professor of Greek at Wheaton College named Jerry Hawthorne. He is something of a legend in Wheaton circles. He was the kind of teacher who made everyone want to be a better student. He was such a diligent person that if you did not do your best, you felt shabby and ill-hearted by comparison. He took everyone's failure personally; as if your failure as a student were really his failure as a teacher.
One of the students in our class was showing up sporadically. A friend and I snuck up to Dr. Hawthorne's office, stole some stationery, and wrote a note "from Dr. Hawthorne" apologising for being too poor a teacher and promising to teach better if only this student would give class another, better try.
The student rushed up to Dr. Hawthorne's office; we stood outside the door as he apologised profusely saying it was all his fault, not Dr Hawthorne's; he was the failure. To which Dr Hawthorne could only reply, "What are you talking about?"
He was the heart of our little community. He was deeply humble and deeply pious and at the same time deeply earthy. He was the worst joke-teller I have ever known—he would turn beet red and mangle whatever joke he was telling long before the punchline and jab whomever sat next to him in the ribs, apparently under the theory that if humour could not induce the appropriate amount of laughter, then pain would.
He was the man who challenged a number of Wheaton students—including me—to consider devoting our lives to church ministry. He changed my life in more ways than he could ever know.
This summer I got a call from Jane, his wife, that he was ill, and it was severe. His family created a website so people could follow updates about his health; in a matter of days over 400 people had written tributes about how this skinny, humble, reticent Greek professor had changed their life.
When he died, all seven of us who had roomed together and been shaped by him 30 years ago gathered from around the country to remember, and laugh, and cry, and pray, over the man who had been our friend, who had been in the best and deepest sense of that holy word, our teacher.
I am so grateful he was in our lives, and grateful I got the chance to tell him. If you are reading this, if you are involved at all in serving the well-being of the church, you have your own Dr. Hawthorne. And it is a gift beyond words to be able to express what they have meant to you. If your Dr. Hawthorne is still alive, I strongly suggest: make a call, write an email.
I also thought, looking at the lives that Jerry touched, about what matters and what does not. It is people who count, when a life is spent. It is hearts and not resumes that get poured out before open graves.
It is the reality of the Next One that makes time so precious, makes life so weighty, makes love such a gift.