What Do You Expect?

Expectations are in the air. Whether you know it or not, expectations you carry around for yourself, your family, your friends, and your community and its leaders give shape to your life.

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought as I regularly hear conspiracies related to COVID-19. In North Dakota, apparently conspiracy theories are our thing. I’ve bent my pastoral ear to theories about hospitals receiving more revenue for COVID-19 patients , or death certificates recklessly adding COVID-19 as a cause of death, or that this whole thing will go away after the election.

I suspect there might be an expectation that the system is out to get people. That the Democrats or the Republicans or the refugees or the women or the people who are gay are out to get you. There is an expectation that a person’s freedoms are at risk, that the world is getting worse, that all leaders are suspect.

It leads me to wonder about my role as a spiritual leader. What do people expect of me right now? Do they expect me to challenge their conspiracies? Expect me to remind them the very person they are naming as suspect may have been the doctor they have trusted for decades, or the refugee who dreams of work and well-being as much as they do.

Expectations. In my marriage and in my life as a pastor, I have found that unpacking expectations deescalates an angry moment. It adds clarity to the muck of assumptions and suspicions.

Perhaps my pastoral question needs to center on expectations.

“What are you expecting God to do in the midst of this?”

“How are you expecting communal healing in 2020?”

“How do you expect God needs you and I to speak truth into these matters?”

“What to do you expect our own church and our own local community to look like in a year if we have spoken so many untruths?”

There was no expectation life would emerge from that empty tomb on Easter morning. So I refuse to accept that this world has gotten worse and all leaders are suspect. I’ll expect an alternative. And perhaps I need to expect myself to ask more faithful questions out loud.