What are we expecting?

The Gospel for this past Sunday invites us to take a second look at John the Baptist, after our first look the week before. As attractive as John was to the crowds that flocked to be baptized, he truly puzzled the authorities of the day:

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, "Who are you?" He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, "I am not the Messiah." And they asked him, "What then? Are you Elijah?" He said, "I am not." "Are you the prophet?" He answered, "No." Then they said to him, "Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?" He said, "I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, `Make straight the way of the Lord,'" as the prophet Isaiah said. Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, "Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?" John answered them, "I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal." This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

Who are you and why are you doing what you are doing? That was the big question to which the authorities needed an answer. They needed to to identify John, classify him, and verify his credentials before they could figure out how he fit into their very carefully constructed world.

But that was the problem--John didn't fit into their very carefully constructed world. Jesus would be even less of a fit. As an aside, I find it interesting that we don't have any record of Jesus baptizing anyone--even though, as the Messiah, he presumably was "authorized" to do so. But just as John's baptizing was a scandal to the authorities of the day, Jesus' teaching and healing were scandalous to the authorities. It seems as if God doesn't have much respect for religious authority when God is doing something new. As one of the designated "religious authorities" of today, that often gives me pause!


One of the biological facts of our lives is that we generally see what we expect to see. We unconsciously screen out things that do not conform to our expectations. Whether we're driving down the street and looking at a landscape we've seen hundreds of times before, experiencing a worship service we've experienced many times, or solving a problem similar to others we've solved in the past, our mind automatically screens out the unusual and fills in the gaps with previous experiences. We naturally classify things to avoid being overwhelmed with stimuli.


Advent is the season of expectation. We wait in expectation of the anniversary of our Lord's first coming at Christmas and in expectation of Christ's second coming. But just as John and Jesus were not at all who people expected them to be and did not do what people expected them to do, we need to keep an open mind about what what Jesus coming anew into our lives might mean. Perhaps our expectation of Christmas is simply another holiday, hopefully with family and friends, with a few tastefully chosen gifts in the bargain as well. But, as the Grinch who Stole Christmas found out, Christmas doesn't come from a store. The challenge for us is to put aside our expectations and instead expectantly ask a different question:


What could God be up to this year?

Institution and Transformation

It has been interesting to watch a sense of urgency surface amongst congregations around the 'need for new members'. This is precisely the problem. The focus should be on the power to change lives, the desire of persons to find our congregations to be incubators for the development of the faith and vehicles for sending Christians out into the world to witness in word and deed to the glory, grace of love of God.
- Mary M MacGregor, "Everything is Transitory" in the blog The Missionary Leader

It has been an interesting couple of weeks at St. Edward's. A little more than a week ago, our Vestry gathered together for a Strategic Planning Retreat and began to talk about the long-term plans and future of St. Edward's--with a key difference. We didn't break out reams of paper and start brainstorming about things we wish we had or could do. Instead, we talked about the results of a demographic survey of the local area and how that might impact our future. Long about lunchtime, things were at a sort of a low point--this remains a challenging mission field. Yet as we transitioned from defining where we are now to looking at the possibilities for where we might be in the future, a fresh breeze of the Spirit began to waft through our little "upper room." We began to look towards future possibilities, not present or potential difficulties.

At the same time, these last two Sundays have invited us to look at the beginnings of the church--the giving of the Holy Spirit to both the disciples in the upper room and to the crowds on Pentecost Sunday and then the Great Commission (or, as my colleague Lauren Stanley preached: Go. Baptize. Teach. Need I say more?) yesterday (Trinity Sunday). As I mentioned in the announcements yesterday, this is priming the pump for a "summer of discernment" at both the parish and diocesan levels.  At the diocesan level, we're working our way through a strategic plan that will hopefully be adopted by Diocesan Convention in November and will be implemented in the months and years to come. On a parish level, we're more than halfway through my own three-year tenure as Priest-in-Charge and it is a good time to look towards our long-term future.

Yet as we do all of that, the desire and need to sustain the institution of the church can block out What is really important--our relationship with God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. To the extent that we as a congregation and as a diocese function as incubators of faith, places where spiritually hungry people can not only get fed but can help fed themselves and others, we will be doing what God has called us to do and we will grow. To the extent that we focus on drawing people in so that we can sustain the institutional church we will devolve into just one more nonprofit organization with its hand out, looking for a piece of the increasingly smaller charity pie.

So, this will be a summer for discernment--for talking and listening. We'll talk about St. Edward's, about the changing demographics of the community around us, and about the evolving plan to engage that community with the transformational Gospel of Jesus Christ. As we do that, my prayer is that we will remember that it is our call to prepare a place where people may experience God's transforming power.