"Unexpected Grace" Sermon

Unexpected Grace            

A sermon preached at the Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church contemporary service on June 17, 2012 and the traditional service on June 24, 2012. 

Text: Not a day goes by without His unfolding grace (The Message) II Corinthians 4:16

Not a day goes by without His unfolding grace. Do you believe that? Do you believe that every single day God is working out His purpose in your life? Sunshine and rain? Every day there’s grace if only we open our eyes to it and more importantly, our hearts. And not just believe that in theory, but experience it and feel it and know it?

You know, it’s easier for me to see that when I look back on my life than when I’m living through it. When I look in the rear view mirror I can see God’s plan and why He sent me down this road instead of that one. I can see God’s Providence and God’s purpose for my life.

Sometimes in life there are seasons of incredible grace, when it’s just impossible to miss. I want to tell you about one such season today. As you know, I’ll be going on a sabbatical July through October. I’d like to tell you how this came to be, what Deb and I are going to do, and our hopes for it all.

Here’s how it came about: The Lilly Endowment, Inc. has a program open to all Christian ministers in the United States where they will offer funds to churches to allow their clergy to take a three or four month sabbatical. The funding is very generous and includes money for the church to hire an interim pastor to ease the load on the church – and so we’ll have John Dykstra here July through October. I encourage you to welcome him with open arms.

Now, this sabbatical is not intended to enhance the minister’s professional skills. It is not intended to benefit the church except in the indirect help it will get in having happy ministers. It is not for burned out clergy. I’m feeling lots of energy in my ministry here at Fox Chapel. I wouldn’t qualify. It is not for the “worthy.” Some of you have kindly said, “Congratulations, Lee, you deserve this.” Well, I appreciate your kindness, but I think I’m with Bob Ball’s Mom on this one, that one rule of life is that no one “deserves” anything.

The Lilly Endowment has a vision to offer ministers an opportunity to engage in whatever activity will “make your heart sing.” When I applied last year I thought I had put together a fabulous proposal. I was disappointed when it was denied and I learned later that I had made it too church oriented and had not been (shall we just say it) selfish enough. And it just wasn’t what they were looking for. So, I half-heartedly revised and resubmitted and when I got word last September that it had been approved, I was astounded. I really didn’t expect it this time. But that may be always true about grace. And this unexpected grace will offer a once in a lifetime opportunity and for that I’m grateful.

I’m grateful to the Lilly Endowment for their exceeding generosity. I’m grateful to our Session for encouraging this effort wholeheartedly. I’m grateful to Chris and Joan and Cathie for their unfailing support and for being willing to go the extra mile over the next four months as they pick up the extra workload. Be kind to them. And I’m very grateful for your support. Thank you.

I invite you to go to the blog. There’s a much more you can read there. By the way, if ever I thought there were two words I’d never use together, they are the words, “my blog.” But check it out. The site address is widely available, including in the Highlights sheet today. If you wish, you can sign up there for regular email updates so you can follow us along the way.

So, what would make your heart sing? For some ministers it has been a trip down the Amazon or touring the great cathedrals of Europe. Learning a language or building fine furniture or going to a place like Machu Picchu or Lourdes or Geneva or Iona. For Deb and me, what would make our hearts sing is a once in a lifetime opportunity to enhance our marriage and our family life in ways that would be impossible otherwise. For us, this is the greatest priority. To make sure our marriage is strong and remains strong and to make sure we stay connected to our families.

Here’s the plan: We begin our sabbatical by flying out on Sunday, July 1 for a week at a marriage retreat center on Coronado Island, just off the coast of San Diego. We’ll be with Walt and Francoise Becker, counselors who specialize in working with clergy couples to strengthen marriages. Our goals are threefold:

(1) To do a relationship “check-up.” They’ll help us “look under the hood” of our marriage. That will be fun. Everyone needs to do that from time to time. It keeps the engine running strong.

(2) To think about ways we can stay connected as a couple while both of us practice our crazy jobs. Our friend, Wes Rohrer, explained to us years ago, both of our jobs involve non- profits, working with volunteers and lots of stress. They both involve illness and death, and they are both “endless and boundless.” That is, there is never enough time to get done all that needs to be done. It’s impossible, so how are you going to deal with it? We hope to learn some ways to deal with it.

(3) To begin to look to the future to see what might five years from now look like, and ten years and twenty. We are like most people in that we don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to think about what retirement will be like for us, where we want to live, what we want to do and what the timing could be. So, we hope to spend some of our hours thinking about such things.

We finish at The Cottage on Friday and then transfer to a B & B on Coronado Island for four days of decompression. We plan on walking the beach, watching the Fourth of July fireworks, going to the San Diego zoo, and just have fun. 

We’ll return to Pittsburgh in the middle of July and I will then go for a week with my Mother and two Sisters in Oklahoma. Just the four of us. How cool will that be! We’ll never have such quality time alone without children and spouses and in-laws and outlaws.

Over a long Labor Day weekend Deb and I are planning fun weekend with children and grandchildren. The daunting goal for this weekend is to help Lee learn how to have fun. We’re going to borrow a friend’s home in the Laurel Highlands. We are going to go to Idlewild and Soakzone, but mainly we just want to be together and have fun.

In September Deb and I will go to England for two weeks. We’ll begin in the beautiful city of Bath. Tour the city, visit the Cotswolds, and even take a cooking course. On the fifth day we will go to London and stay there for the remainder of the two weeks. We’re going to tour the sights, go to the theater, see the museums, get out into the countryside, meet the people and hopefully experience everyday life more than doing all the boring tourist stuff. Though, I have to say, Deb is eager to go to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. I may go to Wembley or Lord’s that day or the British War Museum. We’ll see. The proposal that was approved encourages us to do kind of unimpeded and unplanned wandering – to go against our natures and be spontaneous and allow whatever happens to happen. Not to over plan or over schedule.

We’ll be in Pittsburgh most of the time during the sabbatical, doing fun things:

I’ll be taking a reading course under the direction of Martha Robbins from Pittsburgh Seminary, studying marriage. And we’ll be doing all kinds of “domestic enhancements.” Deb and I’ll take cooking classes and a gardening class at Phipps. Part of the time we’ll work with a dog trainer to help alleviate some of the fear reactions one of our dogs has. Keegan is a rescue dog and he came to us ten years ago with some issues. Remember the line from “Rocky?” I’ve got issues. You’ve got issues. We’ve all got issues! Well, Keegan has issues and we’re going to try to bring those down a notch or two.

By the terms of the grant I’m not allowed to engage in church activities. That doesn’t mean you won’t see us around town, but I‘m not supposed to have anything to do with work. 

So, that’s how this came to be and what we’ll be up to. Here’s what we hope for. Or one way of thinking about it: Richard Rohr has written a beautiful book entitled, Falling Upward. In it he talks about the two halves of life. Both essential. Here’s what he says:

There is much evidence on several levels that there are at least two major tasks to human life. The first task is to build a strong “container” or identity; the second is to find the contents that the container was meant to hold.

The first half of life is spent constructing the container, the vessel – forming an identity, building a home, finding a mate, developing friendships, becoming part of a community, establishing a career, achieving some measure of success, accumulating possessions and building a platform for your life. In the second half we find the contents these containers are meant to hold. And more and more pour it out. If the first half of life is spent discovering the script the second half is best spent actually writing it and owning it and living it. And, perhaps most importantly, enjoying it.

So, in a sense that is what Deb and I are trying to do. We don’t have anything to prove. Our expectations for the sabbatical range somewhere between vast and modest. We’ll see what happens. But for certain we want to make sure the rest of our days on this earth are well spent and we want to make sure our marriage is vital and our family relationships strong and true. We want to discover how life every day is filled with His unfolding grace.

Thanks to you for allowing this to happen. Be praying for us. And check out the blog to follow our adventure.