August 9, 2026

Indianola Presbyterian Church

" Eulogy Virtues
Sermon by Rev. Trip Porch

August 9, 2026                                                                                                                                 Based on 2 Timothy 3:14-4:8; 16-18

I had a friend in college who planned her own funeral.

I don’t meant that morbidly. It wasn’t because anything was wrong. She was nineteen. Healthy. As far from death as any of us felt back in college. 

It was for an assignment. She was taking a class about the end of life, and one of the exercises in this class was to plan your own funeral. To go through the process of imaging how you’d like people to celebrate you after you’ve gone.
To consider the hymns. The readings. Who would speak. They even had you write an example of a eulogy. What you'd want people to say about you when you couldn't say anything back.

When she first told me, I'll be honest, I almost laughed at the surprise.
A college kid picking out her funeral music between her chemistry lab and lunch. It seemed a little dark, A little bit much.

But she kept talking. And the longer she talked, the less I wanted to laugh. 

She wasn't being gloomy. The exercise had a clear point to her. She had thought about what mattered to her, what she would want a room full of people to carry out the door, and something about saying it plainly had made her feel more alive, not less. 

She knew something at nineteen that most of us spend decades working very hard to avoid.

We are all going to die.

I know. That’s Not the line you were hoping for on a Sunday morning. 

Its the universal thought that we all spend our life trying to avoid.
But stay with me for a minute, because there is something freeing to this realization.

Because it turns out considering your own mortality is old wisdom.
Older than my friend's class by thousands years.
The Stoic philosophers had a phrase for it, memento mori.
Remember that you will die.
Some phrases even recount that this was the phrase chanted at emperors and generals in returning to Rome from war to keep them humble
For the stoics It was a phrase they repeated daily as a meditation.
They didn't say it to scare themselves. They said it to wake themselves up.
To remember that the time we are given in life is real, but that it is also precious because it is short, it's the only time you get… so savor it and make the most of it.

This morning, we get to hear similar wisdom I think from the apostle Paul near the very end of his life, an old man in jail writing to a young faith leader…

His name is Paul. And he knows he is nearing his end.

Listen to the way he says it. "I'm already being poured out like a sacrifice to God, and the time of my death is near." He isn't guessing. This is a man who can see the edge of his own life from where he sits. Chained up. Most of his friends gone. If anyone had earned the right to be bitter, or afraid, or to spend his last words settling old scores, it was Paul.

But instead, with his end in sight, he looks back over his life and writes this.

"I have fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith."

That's his whole summary.
That's what Paul reaches for when he takes the measure of an entire life.
And it reads to me almost like Paul’s writing a eulogy for himself.

He looks back at his life, the ups, the downs, his accomplishments and successes, his failures and shortcomings, but what he chooses to see is the line of faith.

It reminds me of something The columnist and writer David Brooks once wrote. He says every one of us carries two different sets of virtues. Resume virtues and eulogy virtues. 

The resume virtues are the ones you bring to the job market, the ones you highlight on your Resumé… Your skills, your wins, your titles, the things that make you useful and impressive to the world. The kind of things you try to work in even when your interviewer asks you about your weaknesses…

But Eulogy virtues, according to Brooks are the ones people actually stand up and name at your funeral. Whether you were kind. Whether you were brave. Whether you loved the people in your life well, and whether they could count on you. And Brooks' point, the part that stings a little, is that most of us spend too much of our life pouring our energy into building our list of resumé virtues.
And then at the end of our life we hope, somehow, that we would be remembered for the second.

Paul, at the very end, writes his own eulogy. In his own words.
And every word of it is the second list.

Not "I was impressive. I started so many churches, and travelled this far”
but …”I kept the faith."

So let me hand you the same exercise my friend got in that class.
Think for a moment about your own end of life.
If someone were to stand up and summarize your life in a single sentence, what would it be? Or at least… what do you hope it would be? 

Take a second and imagine the phrases that might be said to remember you by…

Now the harder question. Are those phrases what you're actually building in your life? Is that how your spending your time?  

Because we are all building a list, whether we mean to or not. 

Every ordinary week, we're laying down the material that somebody will one day say out loud of us. 

But here's the mercy tucked inside that. 

Nobody writes a whole life's eulogy in an afternoon. 

Those virtues, the ones people actually stand up and name, are never one grand gesture. They are cumulative. They are added up throughout your life. 

They're built out of a thousand small, forgettable moments. A meal dropped on a doorstep. The hard phone call made instead of dodged. The apology you finally worked up the nerve to offer.
The showing up, again, when staying home would have been easier.

Kindness isn't a moment you pull off once. It's a habit worn in over years, one ordinary choice at a time, until it's simply who you are.

So hear this as relief, not one more thing to fall short at. 

If the eulogy of your life had to be earned in a single heroic act, most of us would miss it. But that isn't how it works. It's made of the plain, daily stuff any of us can lay down. The days you came up short don't cancel it out, because there's always the next small moment of faithfulness to add to the pile. You aren't being scored on your best day, or your worst one. You are building your eulogy virtues, one ordinary week at a time.

And then there’s the last thing Paul does in this letter, the reason we've spent these weeks in it. He hands it off.

The whole letter is written to a younger man, Timothy. "Continue with the things you have learned," Paul tells him. Keep going. What I gave you, give to someone else. The race I'm finishing, you keep running.

Because the faith was never Paul's to begin with. Somebody handed it to him. He carried it as far as his legs would go, and now, out of road, he puts it in Timothy's hands. This race was never a solo event. It's a relay. And that baton has been passed hand to hand, down two thousand years of empty rooms and full sanctuaries, until this morning it lands in yours. 

We’ve all received the baton of faith in our life from someone else who ran theirs…
A grandma in the church. A Sunday school teacher or choir director.
A friend who wouldn't give up on you. 

Some Paul, back down the line, who kept going so it could reach you.

So the sentence you're building was never only about you.
Part of what gets carried out the door at the end is what you put into the hands of the people coming up behind you.

I think about my friend, nineteen years old, planning her funeral. I understand now that it wasn't morbid at all. She'd learned early what Paul knew at the end. Naming your human  honestly is not the same as being afraid of it. When you know the race has a finish line, you stop drifting and start running. And you can run without panic, because you were never running alone, and the crown at the finish is a gift, not a verdict.

We are all going to die. I can't preach that away.

But you will not run out of road alone. The One who stood by Paul stands by you. The faith was handed to you by someone faithful, and you have hands to pass it on. And whatever sentence your life is writing, it is being written by someone who is already, right now, completely loved.

So go build a good one.

Fight the good fight. Finish your race. Keep the faith, and hand it on.

Amen.

WE GATHER IN AWE AND PRAISE

PRELUDE                                              “Shall We Gather at the River”                           arr.  Greg Howlett

WELCOME                                                                    Rev. Trip Porch

One: This is the day that the Lord has made

All: Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

*CALL TO WORSHIP                                                                           

One: We come this morning
Many: with the days we have been given.

One: We come because we were carried here by others,

Many: by the faith of those who ran before us and would not quit.

One: We come, and we are not alone.

Many: The One who has always stood beside us is standing here now.

One: So let us worship the God who holds us
Many: from our beginning to the very end. 

*HYMN 375                             “Shall We Gather at the River”                                              HANSON PLACE

*PRAYER OF CONFESSION                                                                

God who stays, God who remains, we spend so much of our lives building the wrong list of virtues. We chase what looks impressive. We measure ourselves by what we finish and what we own, and we let the things that matter most go untended. We are slow to love the people right in front of us. We drift when you have given us a race to run. We forget that we are already held, and we wear ourselves out trying to earn what you freely give.

Forgive us. Turn us back toward the life you meant for us, and remind us that we have never once been alone. Amen.

*ASSURANCE OF PARDON                                                      

*RESPONSE OF PARDON 582 “Glory to God, Whose Goodness Shines on Me” GLORY TO GOD

*PASSING OF THE PEACE                                                               

     One: The peace of Christ be with you!

     All:      And also with you.

WE LISTEN FOR GOD’S WORD

MUSICAL OFFERING                                “Come Thou Fount”                                   American Hymn Tune

                                                                                                                                                                           arr. Craig Courtney

CHILDREN’S MESSAGE                                                                    Dorothy Kyle

PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION                                                                   

SCRIPTURE    2 Timothy 3:14—4:8, 16-18  CEB

 But you must continue with the things you have learned and found convincing. You know who taught you.  Since childhood you have known the holy scriptures that help you to be wise in a way that leads to salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus.  Every scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character,  so that the person who belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good.

I’m giving you this commission in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is coming to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearance and his kingdom.  Preach the word. Be ready to do it whether it is convenient or inconvenient. Correct, confront, and encourage with patience and instruction.  There will come a time when people will not tolerate sound teaching. They will collect teachers who say what they want to hear because they are self-centered.  They will turn their back on the truth and turn to myths.  But you must keep control of yourself in all circumstances. Endure suffering, do the work of a preacher of the good news, and carry out your service fully.

 I’m already being poured out like a sacrifice to God, and the time of my death is near.  I have fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith. At last the champion’s wreath that is awarded for righteousness  is waiting for me. The Lord, who is the righteous  judge, is going to give it to me on that day. He’s giving it not only to me but also to all those who have set their heart on waiting for his appearance.

One: Holy wisdom, Holy Word,

All: Thanks be to God

SERMON                                                                               Rev. Trip Porch

WE RESPOND TO GOD’S WORD

*HYMN 376                                             “When All is Ended”                                                       YOGANANDA

PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE  followed by the Lord’s Prayer using debts and debtors.

TIME OF OFFERING   online giving is available at  www. indianolapres.org/give

OFFERTORY                                                        “Reflection”                                                                     Mark Hayes

                                                                                                                                                                                                     arr. Marvin Gaspard

*OFFERTORY RESPONSE  709              “God, We Honor You”                                   ABUNDANT BLESSINGS

*PRAYER OF DEDICATION 

Generous God, everything we have was first handed to us by you.

We give it back now, gladly, so that it can be carried to someone else.

Take these gifts, and take our lives, and keep them running toward you.

*HYMN 846                                    “Fight the Good Fight”                                                          DUKE STREET

TIME OF COMMUNITY SHARING

CHARGE & BENEDICTION                                                                                                 

POSTLUDE                                 “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”                 arr. Vicki Tucker Courtney

 Acknowledgments: Unless otherwise indicated, all texts and music are printed and broadcast under OneLicense.net license #A-702452