PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD
“Prepare the way for the Lord. Make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all people will see God’s salvation.”
These were the words of one calling in the wilderness, as foretold by the prophet Isaiah and recorded in Isaiah 40:3-5.
700 years later, from out of the desert came a man named John, announcing that the Kingdom of God is at hand and that everyone must repent and reconcile with God. His was the voice calling in the wilderness saying, “prepare the way for the Lord.”
Despite his appearance being dressed in camel hair clothing, his food preferences consisting of wild locusts and his condemnatory style of teaching, John’s words reverberated over all of Judea and vast numbers of people from Jerusalem and surrounding villages were drawn to him and were baptized by him. Again, he called on everyone to repent and to prepare the way of the Lord. Someone greater than him is about to arrive and whose sandal straps he was not worthy to untie.
Then one day, John saw Jesus coming to him and he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who is preferred before me, for he was before me.’ I didn’t know him, but for this reason I came baptizing in water: that he would be revealed to Israel.”
Jesus was then baptized by John and thus began his public ministry. One day, Jesus went home to Nazareth and as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on Sabbath day. He was handed a scroll which he unrolled and found and read the passage where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” What Jesus read was another prophesy of the prophet Isaiah describing the coming of the Messiah who will deliver the poor from marginalization both spiritual and material, liberty and freedom to the captives and the oppressed and recovery of sight and healing to the blind and the broken and the establishment of God’s favorable year. What the prophet Isaiah described was the Kingdom of God breaking into the dawn of creation.
Jesus rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the synagogue attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all looked intently at him. And then he said, “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” No other declaration could surpass the life-affirming greatness of what he said. For at that very moment, he revealed himself as the Messiah who has just inaugurated a new space, a new time and a new way where God’s love, grace, peace, forgiveness and justice would reign. He has just inaugurated the Kingdom of God.
Fast forward 2,000 years since then and we are now in the midst of the continuous unfolding of the Kingdom of God towards its completion in a perfected state in the fullness of time. “Prepare the way for the Lord” continues to be the call to all of us as we live in faith and in ways that demonstrate the love and grace of God in a world whose values and norms have become the complete opposite of love, grace, peace, justice and forgiveness; for us to live in faith and in ways that demonstrate the love and grace of God in a world whose trajectory is veering away from His Kingdom.
Today, we celebrate the 120th year of our beloved St. Mary’s School. We know from our church history that the establishment of schools was the third pillar in Bishop Charles Henry Brent’s missionary strategy, which included the establishment of a Christian congregation and a health center, to complete what he said was the tri-ministry of the Church – the ministry to the soul, the mind and the body.
We know also from our church history that Bishop Brent clearly understood that the Christian faith would be better embraced and practiced if the human mind is freed from ignorance to be able to make critical appreciation of God’s love and desire for humanity and creation.
However, what we may know very little about is Bishop Brent’s belief that civilization, for all the astounding advancements it has made possible, has also brought evil into this world and that it was the responsibility of the Christian Church to equip people with the weapon with which to counter these. He wrote and I quote, “All I was able to see at the moment was a well-defined racial group who were in danger of being taught the evils of civilization with no knowledge of God in His supreme revelation of Himself, by means of which to repulse them.” Unquote.
He may have been joking when he said and again I quote “It might be and I think it probably so that pagan superstitions are measurably adequate for the religious needs of tribes who are wholly excluded from outside contacts.” Unquote. He said this in reference to us Igorots and, again whether or not he was joking, he observed that the paganistic beliefs and practices of our forbears may have been adequate for us while we were in seclusion from the rest of the world. He however continued and I quote “But the moment a secluded people are introduced to the big world of men, it becomes the responsibility of the Christian Church to furnish them with the best it has in its gift. The American nation was responsible for dragging the Igorot into the market-place of the world. The American Church, I argued, ipso facto became responsible for giving them the equipment of manhood and womanhood. To me, the existence of such a people in my jurisdiction was a call to their evangelization.” Unquote.
We can safely argue therefore that while Bishop Brent considered mission schools as the venue for the acquisition of knowledge so that the mind of the Christian must be capable of reason and always open to learning as part of practicing and enjoying his and her faith, he also considered the schools as the means by which people can learn to repulse the evils brought about by civilization. As stated in the history of Brent International School Baguio, “For Bishop Brent and his role models, the development of character was of greater importance than the acquisition of grades, although scholarship as such was given a very high priority. This character development was conceived in an Episcopalian tradition that was essentially both Catholic in its attitudes and critical in its approach.” Proceeding from this vision, the over-riding aspiration of our schools should be the education of students who are able to repulse the evils of civilization so that they can care for and transform the world and humanity as God wants us to do. The over-riding aspiration should be the education of students who are to participate in the unfolding of the Kingdom of God. This aspiration is the heritage of our school that we honor today.
Reviewing the history of our mission schools in recent decades, as opportunities and new challenges emerged in the ECP’s mission landscape, these schools were granted operational independence and consequently were organized as non-stock educational corporations with their respective governing boards and management bodies. These schools, while acknowledging their origin and character as Episcopal schools, assumed full authority to define their respective vision, mission and goals based on their understanding of the context, opportunities and challenges in which they operate. We rejoice and give thanks to God that despite the financial challenges that faced our schools, they were able to maintain their track record of excellence in various arenas of learning. Our very own St. Mary’s School continues to shine in the field of secondary education.
Last year, we in the Church realized that our schools are providing and can provide vast opportunities for the propagation of Episcopal mission in this country. Instead of merely operating as social service institutions, they can be effective mission fields for the learning, teaching and practice of and living out our Five Marks of Mission. Hence, we began a re-framing of the mission of our schools towards this direction.
Gus Speth, former Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and Chair of the UN Development Group, said and I quote “I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy… to deal with those issues we need a spiritual and cultural transformation – and we scientists do not know how to do that.”
We can add to Mr. Speth’s observation the social realities of poverty and injustice which also appear to be the top global social problems. And following his observation, we are wrong to say that these are the top social and environmental problems because as he said, the problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, the very same evils that Bishop Brent has observed to have become worse with civilization.
Indeed, selfishness, greed and apathy could not be solved by some scientific formula. It can only be dealt with by responding to the call for humanity to prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him, and make the Kingdom of God alive in our midst. For us Episcopalians, we prepare the way for the Lord by embracing and living out our Five Marks of Mission – proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom of God, baptizing, teaching and nurturing new believers, responding to human needs by a loving service, transforming unjust structures of society and challenging violence of every kind, and safeguarding the integrity of creation. For St. Mary’s School and all our mission schools, the thrust is the formation of students who, as Episcopalians or as members of any other faith traditions or even non-faith, shall embody and live out the Five Marks of Mission and thus become leaders in caring for and transforming the world into the Reign of God. As Christians, this is our understanding of a progressive future.
To make the Five Marks of Mission alive in our schools and church communities, we must provide a welcoming and transformative environment at all times. We must guard against the temptation for self-preservation which in our world today is becoming the norm. Our schools and church communities are blessed with certain resources, which in some areas such as here in Sagada, include big tracts of land, institutions and centers for various human activities. With selfishness, greed and apathy ruling the world, the tendency to keep our resources for the exclusive use of our members and institutions is a temptation we are succumbing to. Under the guise of protecting these resources, we are creating ghettos exclusively for Episcopalians. This is not what a welcoming church should be as we should realize that self-preservation is just another term for selfishness, greed and apathy.
Having realized the utmost importance of schools as part of our transforming community, we want to see that these will continue to operate long into the future and thus we need to ensure their long-term viability. At the last alumni homecoming of St. Mary’s School, there was a collective meeting of our minds to strengthen and grow our endowment fund to be a major source of support. I join the voices calling for the intensification of this initiative as I have seen how the endowment fund of the Episcopal Church in the Philippines, now totaling more than half a billion pesos, is continually opening up fresh possibilities for the pursuit of our Five Marks of Mission.
School foundation day celebrations are joyful occasions to look into the past and give thanks to God for His blessings as well as to recognize the vision and efforts of those who have founded, worked hard and grown these institutions from generation to generation into what they are today. Years from now, at an SMS foundation day celebration, people will look back at our generation and ask what have we contributed. We pray that they will give thanks to God for enabling us to re-frame the mission of our school towards the Five Marks of Mission and for growing up a fund that allows this school to continually operate long into their times and possibilities.
Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Make the Kingdom of God alive in our midst.
Amen.
+BRENT H.W. ALAWAS
08 December 2024
The Episcopal Church in the Philippines 