June 30, 2013
Gregory
Harrison. In the three years I’ve been
here he has shown up in several sermons.
He was the pastor of Wesley UMC in Amherst for five and a half years
when I was a student and took my first jobs.
But my connection to Gregory goes further back because he also went to
the Christian family camp I’ve been going to since I was five, a Camp Farthest
Out that meets on the shores of Lake Winnipesauki. Winni for short.
In
the early years of camp I encountered him mostly at the table of the Dalgaard
family. They always sat at the same
table in the back corner. I was friends
with Elvi and her sister Lisa, Gregory was Elvi’s godfather and had grown up
going to Winni with Elvi’s dad John and aunt Lisbeth. At mealtime, if I wasn’t sitting with my grandparents, you could
probably find me at the Dalgaard’s table – and Gregory was often there as well.
Gregory
usually lead the high school and young adult groups at Winni, so when I got
older I became even more familiar with him.
He had a great sense of humor, taking part in the funniest
side-splitting acts at Stunt Night. I heard Gregory give morning meditations and
talks and learned that like many adults at Winni, Gregory was a person who knew
how to pray in a way to get answers from God.
I learned he was
the youth pastor at Wesley UMC, in Worcester and there were a large number of
campers from the church who had started coming to Winni because of his invitation. Gregory also invited some teen-aged boys, a
group Gregory affectionately called his “cubs” to camp. Gregory was a single man with no children of
his own. But he swam at the YMCA and met some of the young lifeguards. They were generally good kids, but a bit
rough and on the verge of getting themselves into trouble. Gregory would start by inviting them to
breakfast, and then to youth group activities like mountain climbing and apple
picking, and teaching them to pray. And
Gregory brought his cubs to Winni. By
the time I was in high school Gregory’s oldest cub, David, was going to Yale
Divinity School with his fiancé, Gina. The two of them were my prayer group
leaders one year when I was in high school, and they led the evening program
for the high school kids for several years.
The year I started college and began
attending Wesley UMC in Amherst Gregory was still in Worcester, but at the end
of that year the pastor in Amherst retired.
When I heard the news that Gregory had been chosen to take that charge I
was ecstatic. It truly felt like divine providence guiding my path and my
expectations for all that Gregory could do with this wonderful church were
high. And for myself I assumed that I
would soon become a cub too and Gregory would give me advanced instruction on
prayer.
I could talk about
the years when Gregory was my pastor all day, but for this sermon I need to
jump quickly to the end of his ministry five and a half years later. This was
the weekend when Gregory was dying of cancer.
Lisbeth Dalgaard, his cub David, two other Winni friends, and I were
joined with five members of his family to keep vigil in the parsonage while
Hospice helped us tend to him. It was a
powerful, life changing time for me.
But when I went into Gregory’s room for the last time alone and tried to
say goodbye I discovered that I was so very angry with him. I was realizing that he had fallen so short
of the expectations I had of him. The
Gregory who was pastor of the church seemed to be a very different person than
the Gregory I knew at Winni. He was
formal, standoffish, uptight and could easily get his feelings hurt. He never adopted me as a cub, and one time
when I was out of college and struggling to find my way in the world, the only
time I went to his office for pastoral care, he didn’t console or pray with me,
he scolded me. I was angry that he was
dying before he had gotten around to passing on his spiritual gifts to me. So,
clinging to my faith in eternal life in Christ, I was honest with Gregory. I told him I was too angry right now. I
would say “I love you” later.
Have
you ever had anyone in your life who seemed close to God; someone who had
wisdom, inner peace, the light of Christ shining from their eyes? Have you ever wished that they could share that
with you – that you could gain even a portion of what they had?
This desire is at
the heart of today’s scripture lesson from Second Kings. It is our last story
about Elijah for this season, the mighty prophet of God whose prayers could
cause God’s spirit to set a soaking wet altar aflame, provide an everlasting
supply of food during a famine and who had the awesome experience of
encountering God as a still small voice – sheer silence. Right after that
encounter God told Elijah to find and anoint Elisha as the prophet to take his
place. Elijah found Elisha plowing a
field, and without a word threw his prophet’s cloak, his mantel over Elisha’s
shoulders. Elisha got the message, left
his parents and his work and became Elijah’s cub, an apprentice prophet. You
can find that story back in 1st Kings chapter 19.
Today’s passage in
2nd Kings chapter 2 finds us at the end of Elijah’s life. Like Gregory, it seems Elijah’s life was
brought to an abrupt end, sooner than expected. Elisha had a sense of what was to come, and didn’t want to miss
anything. Though Elijah invites him to
go on his way three times Elisha refused to leave him. They travel through some holy land. From Gilgal to Bethel, where years ago their
ancestor Jacob had a vision of angels going up and down a ladder to heaven.
From Bethel to Jericho, where Joshua’s army blew their trumpets and the walls
of the city at the entrance to the Promised Land came tumbling down. From Jericho to the Jordan River which
parted like the Red sea as the Israelites crossed over on dry land. When they got to the Sea Elisha rolled up
his mantel like Moses’ Rod, struck the river and again the waters parted and
the master prophet and his apprentice crossed over into the land where Moses
had died.
When they were
there Elijah asked Elisha, “Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken
from you.” What should Elisha ask
for? Eloquence, a quick mind, last
minute instructions about how to carry on as a prophet? Claiming his place as Elijah’s heir he asked
for what all firstborn heirs got in those days – a double portion – twice as
much as the other heirs. But not a
double portion of money, or property.
Elisha asks for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. Eugene Peterson translates the Hebrew, “Your
life repeated in my life. I want to be
a holy man just like you.” Elijah’s reply is important for us to hear. “that’s
a hard one, you have asked a hard thing.”
Elisha’s request was not something Elijah could give on his own. For only the Lord can make us holy. Only the
Lord can give us the spiritual gifts that attract us to wise people who have
inner peace, a twinkle in their eyes, deep wisdom and joy. Elijah couldn’t make a sure and fast
promise. But he did use his gift of
prophecy to assure his cub. “If you see me as I am being taken from you, it
will be granted you.”
Sure enough, just
after he spoke these words, the two men saw the chariot of fire swinging low to
take Elijah home to heaven on a whirlwind.
Elisha saw the whole thing, and as he was watching Elijah’s mantel fell
to the ground. When Elijah sailed out
of view like a rocket ship ascending to heaven, Elisha’s grief began. He tore his clothes in mourning, and then
picked up his mentor’s mantel, used it to part the Jordan river again and
return to his work, no longer an apprentice, but a full prophet of the Lord.
In
the days and weeks and months after Gregory’s death I had a lot of time to
reflect on the time I had spent with him.
It fell to me, as the one closest to Gregory and living near-by, to sort
through his worldly possessions in the parsonage. Gregory died in January so we had several months to get it ready
for a new pastor in July. In a way I
had never expected I had taken the roll of the daughter he’d never had. And it gave me an opportunity to reflect on
his whole life as I came across letters, diaries, photographs and books. With the help of friends I began to process
all the years that he had been my pastor, to move beyond looking at
expectations he had not met, to seeing what God had been doing in and through
our relationship together. Eventually I
came to see and accept many gifts that I hadn’t noticed when I had only been
looking for what I thought I wanted.
Also in these months my own call to ordained ministry became much
clearer – enough so that I began visiting seminaries and taking the first steps
in my church on the path to ordination. When I met with members of the District
Committee on Ordained Ministry for the first time the members questioned my
motivation in relation to Gregory, wondering whether I was somehow trying to
fulfill his dying wish rather than answer my genuine call. I assured them that Gregory had never once
suggested that I should become a pastor, and that though my time with him had
shaped my understanding of my call – the call properly came from God. Five and a half years after Gregory died,
fifteen years ago now, with help from many other mentors and spiritual guides I
took on this mantel, the stole symbolic of ordained ministry.
Over
all this time I have continued to reflect on the mantel of faith Gregory left
to me. Though the Gregory who came to
our church in Amherst was very uptight at first, over time he did melt, soften,
become more playful, more approachable able to love and be loved by the
church. He started to let his humor
show, and he started sharing the remarkable stories of answered prayer that
he’d experienced through CFO. Gregory
also helped the church learn to pray and hear God’s answer. He started a weekly prayer group at the
church and the number one prayer each week was for families with children – as
we only had a handful of teens when he first came. Not long after they started praying one family appeared and were
warmly welcomed, and they brought their friends, and then more and more came
until we had a respectable Sunday School and a children’s choir. Gregory may not have adopted me as a cub,
but he use the times when he took me back to campus after church events to
share bits of his prayer life and wisdom with me. He also attracted a large number of Winni friends who visited on
Sundays and we’d all go out to brunch after worship. When I graduated and decided to stay in the Pioneer Valley,
Gregory encouraged me to transfer my church membership to Wesley, invited me to
serve as the secretary to the Church Council, serve on the town-wide Martin
Luther King celebration committee, become a member of the lay leadership
committee and to represent the church at cluster meetings where I met other
pastors, several of whom were on the District Committee for Ordination. I have
come to see Gregory’s mistakes as important lessons about what not to do as a
pastor! Gregory was paving the way for me to grow in church leadership and I
hadn’t even seen it happening. I also
had several opportunities to travel to Montreal to visit the Dalgaard family
with Gregory. The first trip was to
attend Lisa’s wedding, while Gregory served as one of the ministers. I spent the night of the rehearsal dinner
with aunt Lisbeth preparing food for the reception and which was the beginning
of my special relationship to her, one of my spiritual mothers. Last Saturday I was back in Montreal for
Lisa Dalgaard’s wedding. Her sister
Elvi was consciously filling in for their father, John who died 12 years
ago. And I was standing in my robe and
stole at the front of the aisle, as Gregory had done for Lisa at her first
wedding. I was wearing Gregory’s mantel
with thanksgiving.
But
of greatest importance, I feel, was what I learned about the art of passing
mantels – sharing spiritual power.
While at first I could only imagine that God put Gregory and me together
so that I could receive what he had to offer me, after Gregory’s death as I
reflected on our years together I realized that I had only seen half of God’s
plan. The Lord knew that I had
spiritual gifts that Gregory needed to grow in faith and love as a follower of
Jesus Christ and as a pastor. Though as
I child I had believed that all the people at Winni were angels and spiritual giants
I came to see that something about camp made us live as our best, healthiest
and holiest selves. And the real work
was taking those selves back into our everyday lives. As I got to know Gregory I began to understand the wounds of his
life, wounds that caused him to put up walls of formality, wounds that allowed
his feelings to be easily hurt, fears that were keeping him from sharing his
highest and best self with his congregation.
In those first months of his appointment the congregation was dismayed
at this person who was now their pastor.
In the midst of one painful conflict they started turning to me, the
person who had known him the best and loved him the most – seeking
understanding of Gregory’s behavior with the hope of getting to a better place
with him. Gregory, a grad of Harvard
and Harvard Divinity School mistakenly thought that the residents of a college
town like Amherst expected sermons full of complex theology. In the first year we would strain our brains
each week trying to make sense of what he was telling us. When he asked me for feedback I replied,
“Tell some stories!” “I can’t,” he
said, “I’m a single person, pastors usually tell stories about their
families. I don’t have one.” “What are you talking about?” I
replied. You’ve got a great big family
called Winni CFO. After that his
sermons were much better.
Again
I could go on and on. My point is
twofold. First spiritual power,
spiritual gifts were not Gregory’s to give.
They were gifts from God. And Gregory was not the only person with gifts
to give. God used my presence in
Gregory’s church to encourage, even expect him to pick up and daily wear the
full mantel of God’s grace, love, joy and peace that had been passed on to him.
We
started out this morning singing Freely, Freely. In Jesus’ name I came to you to share his love as he told me
to. We are all wearing mantles of
spiritual power, created by God, passed on by others who love and follow Jesus
Christ. We to do two things with these
mantels. First we are to discern that
they have been gifted to us, passed on by the communion of saints who have
dropped them at our feet. God calls us to pick them up, put them on and wear
them with grace. Second, no matter how
long or short you have been wearing your mantel of God’s spiritual power, you
are called to share it with the people God puts in your path.
The
mantel is the Spirit of God descending upon our hearts. As we sing this next hymn, let it be your
true and deep prayer. That mantel is
symbolized with fire. The altar of our
hearts, no matter how soggy they may seem, can be set on fire with God’s holy
Spirit of love. This is the little
light we each have. We’ve been
promising since Sunday School that we would let it shine, and hold it high for
all to see. Let this hymn not just be a
song, an interlude before the offering. Let it be your prayer. Teach us, O God,
to love thee as thine angels love, one holy passion filling all my frame; the
kindling of the heaven-descended Dove, my heart and altar, and thy love the
flame.
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