The Annual Report of the Rector, a preview.

There is a favorite scene from the classic film Cool Hand Luke. A prison work crew is forced to do hard labor under the sweltering sun spreading sand and gravel over hot tar over a long stretch of road.   They work under the hard gaze of some rifle bearing prison guards who show little compassion for the prisoners’ plight.  Luke, memorably played by Paul Newman, has emerged as a kind of leader among the inmates.  (His crime was sawing off the heads of parking meters…for which he would be a kind of local hero in a certain town I know.) Rather than feeling oppressed by the work, he begins to pick up the pace of the shoveling.  Faster and faster he spreads the sand, and soon the whole work- crew is almost swept up in a kind of frenzy shoveling. Soon, the whole stretch of road is complete, in a fraction of the time the embarrassed guards had expected.  Out of breath, sweating, but strangely exhilarated, his fellow convicts asked him, “What we goin’ to do now, Luke?”  To which Paul Newman flashes his typical, subversive smile and says simply, “Nuthin!”

Many of us at Grace Church have been feeling like we’ve been paving a long stretch of road for the past several years.  We have a long list of accomplishments in ministry: Restoration Project; Partnership with our sister church and school in Haiti; partnerships with Not Bread Alone, the Warming Place, and the Interfaith Cot Shelter; our Icon Writing Guild; our enhanced Sunday School and the Rite 13 programs for our Youth; our music and liturgies; healthier stewardship; the new Garth; our strong witness for the Earth…just to name a few of the activities that so many of us are or have been involved in.  We’ve been toiling at a good clip, perhaps not under the hot sun, but still.  We’ve been working hard for the extension of the Dominion of God.   What do we do now, Luke? 

Perhaps, God is inviting us to a new rest.  I know I could use one, and this coming year is a sabbatical year for me.  But it may also be time for us as a parish to take stock, to pause for a moment and ask ourselves, “in the midst of all our busy-ness, are we becoming the Church God is calling us to be?  Who are we called to be?  Is busy-ness the sign of health and holiness, or is it a sign of a deeper anxiety, rampant in the culture, that we have essentially copied because we haven’t paused to reflect sufficiently on where God is calling us?   There are small signs of fatigue and burn-out here and there.  Church attendance, especially among young families, seems to be trailing a little bit.  Gathering our annual pledges is a little slower this year than last.

I’m ready to open up wide-ranging conversations and discussions about just about everything under the sun.  The whole Episcopal Church, throughout the country, finds itself in a time of transition. There’s really no reason why the same wouldn’t be true for us here in Amherst. We are a healthy community in Christ, striving more deeply to make manifest the light of the Incarnate Christ in this season of Epiphany and always.  It would be a good thing, I believe, to hear how Christ is speaking to us at this time of our life together.  At this coming Annual Meeting, I hope to outline a way that all of us can pray and discuss the question that I believe the Holy Spirit bids us to explore. “What do we do now, Grace Church?”