Believing in the Gospel

In the late 1990s, I worked with others to create a comprehensive Clergy Personnel Policy Manual In our research into the kinds of policies offered by other dioceses, we stumbled upon the notion of “Sabbath Leave” as an alternative to either short-term study leaves or long-term sabbatical leave. As the name suggests, a sabbath leave is a time of rest and renewal—an opportunity for a priest to take a substantial break and do whatever they need to do to recharge.

We adopted a sabbath leave policy which entitles a priest to take up to three months off every seven years. The policy was recently modified to ensure that parishes are provided with up to two days per week of interim coverage when their priest is on sabbath leave (a priest forgoes travel allowance during a sabbath leave, which frees up additional funds if a parish requires coverage beyond two days per week).

Clergy News

After authoring the policy in 1997, life intervened to prevent me from taking a sabbath leave until 2012— some 25 years after my ordination! I decided to go on leave between January and March, reasoning it would feel different from a summer vacation, being off during busy winter months and being wellrested for the celebration of Easter.

A wise old priest told me the best way to set up a sabbath leave is to: a) plan nothing for the first part because you need to return to yourself; b) study for another part; and c) get away for the rest of the time. I followed this good advice and after a few weeks of doing whatever I wanted, I headed to France for a French course in Lyon, and then a tour of Paris and the battlefields and beaches of World Wars I and II.

On Ash Wednesday, I went to la Basilique Saint-Bonaventure, a medieval church in Lyon. It was startling to hear the priest say “Convertissez-vous et croyez à l’Évangile” as he smudged our foreheads. The effect of those words was quite different from “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” which always feels like an invitation to consider that, while you cannot escape death, you can choose how to live. To hear “Repent and believe in the Gospel” felt a lot more like an instruction than an invitation!

I thought about both admonitions and saw them weaving together to say: “You will die at an unknown time, so now is the time to live in a good way, and the Gospel of Jesus will show you what that looks like.”

Good Friday and Easter, the death and resurrection of Jesus, speak to the very heart of the Gospel—and to our lives as followers of Jesus. In baptism we are “made one with Christ in his death and resurrection” and we pledge, among other things, to “seek and serve Christ in all persons” and to “strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.”

Believing in the Gospel means trusting that you have already died with Christ and will rise with Christ. It means you have nothing to fear in the face of death or life’s hardships: you belong to God, who is with you in everything you encounter. Nothing can separate you from the indestructible embrace of God.

Grounded in this deep assurance that all shall be well, God frees us to focus on living in a good way— showing the courage, compassion, justice, kindness, mercy, peace, hope, and love of Jesus in all we think, do, and say, every day of our life. In other words, when life’s unsettling lemons threaten a devoted follower of Jesus, they will instinctively focus on making lemonade for others.