SUNDAY EXPECTATIONS

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©

It is Sunday morning, and I am preparing for church. We are going to a new church this morning. Well, the church is not new. This congregation has been around for a hundred years or two. And we have worshipped there before, when we were in college, and occasionally since. So we have expectations…

…that the church will be as we remember it from happy days of yore, with a magnificent choir composed of students pursuing vocal doctorates, and an amazing organist who is the dean of the school of music, and that since it is the cathedral church in the cathedral town of its district, that the appointed pastor will know his way around the pulpit, even though preachers don’t stay in pulpits much anymore…

…and if my expectations are not met, I shall complain, to my wife, and to God… oops…

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Life Together, says that a pastor should never complain about his/her congregation, certainly not to other people, and especially not to God. Not to God? If you can’t complain about off-key sopranos and thought-stuttering preachers to God, to whom can you…

Oh, that’s the point. Bonhoeffer goes on to say that it is not only preachers who should not complain about the congregations, but parishoners who should complain neither about the preacher nor other church members, because in doing so we lose our chance to hear what God is telling us.

When the church does not meet our expectations, it is because our expectations are in the way, not because God is not in the church. If the church is just as you want it, only your expectations are met, not the God who exceeds your expectations.

A “bad” worship experience allows us to meet the “good” God…if we examine ourselves and our expectations first, instead of jumping to conclusions and complaints.  

It is Christ who is the Word, the communication of God. Our assumptions and expectations and desires about Christ are only words, not Word. When our words stop being so noisy, we can hear the Word.

Pretty dense stuff, right? Not what you expected from Christ In Winter? Well, remember what was just said about expectations and complaining…

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

I tweet as yooper1721.