God's Unexpected Presence

           When God makes promises, they always seem to come at a time of impossibility.  Abraham was without progeny, his heir as described in the Genesis account was Eliezer of Damascus and he had no hope of children because Sarah was barren.  God took Abraham outside, told him to look at the sky and told him that his progeny would be as many as the stars in the sky.  Abraham believed God and eventually Isaac was born.

            Of course that isn’t all to the story of Isaac’s birth.  When the three men came to Abraham with this promise, Sarah hid behind a curtain in their home and laughed.  She denied that she was laughing, but when Isaac was finally born, he was given his name, Isaac, because the name means laughter.  That is a great story and it is on one level a mocking of our doubt that God can indeed fulfill outrageous promises. 

            Abraham’s progeny have certainly numbered as many as the stars in the sky.  Here in the middle of the season of Pentecost, we are again reminded of the truth of the promises of God and what they mean for our own lives.

            I have been given remarkable gifts by my Lord.  But these gifts came at a price.   I grew up in the Episcopal Church, sang in the choir, was an acolyte and was very much involved in the youth program at my church.  When I was eighteen, I was at Penn State hoping for a career as a forester.  I had completed a year at Mont Alto, which was at that time the Penn State Forestry School.    When I got to the Penn State main campus, instead of getting into my studies and completing the work that would have sent me into a forestry career, I discovered the beer parties at the fraternity houses on campus and instead of forestry, I majored in carousing.  After a semester of this, Penn State had enough of me and suggested that I find another place to get an education.  My father came to State College and pleaded with my advisor, but the advisor was certainly right and I left State College, and my forestry career.   

            One Saturday morning, after I had been home for a while, my father was cooking breakfast in the kitchen and invited me to come and to help him.  In the process of this, he asked me what I planned to do.  I told him that I would probably get a job and see what I could make of myself.  He then asked me a devastating question:  “Great, where are you going to live?”  All of a sudden it came to me that this was a dividing line.  I needed to get on with my own life and be responsible for myself.  I couldn’t continue to depend on my parents for everything.  I left that kitchen with a much different attitude than I had had before.

            What I did was take a course in radio broadcasting that a great man named George Heid was offering in Pittsburgh and then get a job in Indiana, PA with a small radio station and begin a twenty year career in radio and television broadcasting.  I eventually wound up in Johnstown, PA working for Channel Six, where I did the weather, then I became the program director of a small station in town that was trying to do what Ted Turner did in Atlanta, by creating a station that would have a great presence on satellite television.  This didn’t work out very well and the whole thing went bankrupt.   While I was in Johnstown, I had gone back to school at the University of Pittsburgh.  So when my job evaporated, I talked to my rector about the possibility of entering the priesthood.  My church background came to the fore.  I talked to my bishop, Robert Appleyard and that fall, I entered Virginia Seminary to begin my preparation.  My career has been wonderful.  I had a great job as the rector of Christ Church, North Hills, and would do it again if my age hadn’t caught up with me.  I continue to love to preach at places like Redeemer and I know what a remarkable gift I have been given by my Lord out of the impossibility that I created for myself in the idiotic way that I pursued my original education in forestry.  God never gave up on me, but instead led and directed me in the way that I have gone. 

            Jesus’ instruction to his disciples is to live lives of expectation; to keep their lamps lit in expectation of the gifts that God would lavish on them.  He told them to sell their     belongings and give it all away; to store up for themselves possessions in heaven where nothing can take them away, and to trust in the promises of God to give them the Kingdom.  It isn’t always easy to do this.  We become enamored of our possessions and want to have more.  It is easy to lose sight of why we are here, why we are followers of the Christ and what it is that God expects of his followers.  Like Abraham, we are asked to continue to exist in the impossibility that seems to be what our faith requires, and to trust in the great Grace of our God to get us through.