May 27, 2007: “Great Expectations”
“Great Expectations”
May 27, 2007 – Pentecost Sunday
Acts 2:1-12
Introduction: Expectations
Expectations are powerful things.
Not too long after we first got married, Tanya and I learned that we have differing expectations in several areas. One of those areas is vacation…
Expectations are powerful things.
Making expectations is something all of us do. An expectation happens when you think ahead about an event or a conversation and form your own ideas of how you’d like that thing to go. Most of you probably had expectations when you came in to Sunday School this morning. Many of you have expectations for this worship service – maybe you expect to leave as a changed person. Maybe you expected to cry this morning. Maybe you have high expectations of my sermon.
Expectations play a crucial role in almost every kind of relationship we have. We have expectations for our marriages, and as a pastor and a sometimes-counselor, I have seen that expectations play a very large role in how well couples get along and stay together. Most often, young couples these days have unrealistic expectations of marriage that they get from TV, movies and love songs. They think that marriage is going to solve all their problems – they’ll suddenly be happier all the time, less likely to get upset, less likely to get angry at one another. We’ll agree on everything, and we’ll all live happily ever after. My spouse will ALWAYS be understanding, loving, helpful, sensitive, and right at my side when I need him or her. That’s a pretty tall order for ANY human being!
Expectations, the experts say, are an important part of management. If we want the best from those we lead, we have to EXPECT the best. If you’re expecting someone under you to act lazily and turn in poor performance, then it’s likely they’ll meet your expectations. But experts say if you expect the best from someone and treat them that way, then you’ll get the best from them. This generally holds true in all areas of life, I think.
Including parenthood… but parenthood is another matter all together. We have to expect the best from our children – but it has to be a REALISTIC best. We can’t simply expect them to excel at school, football, baseball, math, shop class, community service, gymnastics, music and art. That’s placing UNREALISTIC expectations on them. No human being is capable of the expectations we place on our children sometimes, and they know that. We wonder why they grow up to have low self-esteem and don’t want to do anything – all their lives, they’ve been expected to do too many things they simply can’t do.
But as powerful as expectations are, there’s something that’s even more powerful – UNMET EXPECTATIONS. When we expect a certain outcome, and did not expect anything different, we suddenly find ourselves disappointed. Unmet expectations can make us hurt and vulnerable. Our marriage doesn’t turn out quite as we’d expected – lo and behold, we DO fight, we disagree from time to time, and we’re not 100% happy all day long. Lo and behold, our children aren’t the top of every single activity we enroll them in. Lo and behold, my sermon is not what you might have expected it to be.
And it’s those unmet expectations that can maim our spirits for the rest of our lives. When our expectations are unmet, we can either change our expectations, deal with them, or harbor bitterness and anger over those unmet expectations. And that bitterness is lethal.
If we continue to have unmet expectations in marriage, something will eventually have to give. If we continue to have unmet expectations in our work, then eventually we’ll be dissatisfied and want to move on. If your boss continues to have unmet expectations for you, then it’s likely you’ll be looking for another job soon. If we continue to have broken expectations from our church, then eventually we’ll want to go somewhere else.
Human beings and human institutions will always let us down. Even when we have realistic and achievable expectations of people, they will let us down. And after a while, it makes us cynical, makes us stop trusting people. Or worse, it makes us start expecting the WORST in people and things – and those kinds of expectations are the most dangerous, because they’re the ones that we most often find fulfilled! It’s a cycle that just keeps getting worse and worse…
Expectations of God
What kinds of things do we expect from God? Have you ever been disappointed in God? One book that had a profound influence on me is called Disappointment With God, by the author Philip Yancey. And at first I was afraid to pick it up – after all, who wants to admit they are disappointed with God?
But I have been, many times. When I’ve prayed for someone to be healed and it didn’t happen, when I realized the impact that my parents’ divorce had on me. Like many of you, I struggle with sins and temptations that I would be better off without – but God has not chosen to answer those prayers either. I have found, like Job did, that I’m disappointed with God from time to time.
And that disappointment with God is not about God himself, but about my expectations of him. I have expected God to act in a certain way – to answer this prayer that I pray repeatedly, to reward me for doing something I ought to do, to punish me for doing something I shouldn’t have. And on those instances where I do not find God doing what I wanted him to do, it’s like a little dent is made in my faith. And after a long time, all those dents begin to add up.
And if we let ourselves go further and further down this path, eventually we end up with no faith at all. Sure, we believe in God. But we believe in a God who doesn’t hear our prayers, who doesn’t answer when he hears, who refuses to intervene in situations where only he can do something.
And here’s the thing – It’s OK to come to this place. It’s OK to find yourself there. We all do. Job did, and countless other biblical figures did too – Abraham lost faith when God didn’t give him the son he promised right away. David lost faith when God didn’t win a particular battle for him. Even Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, My God! Why have you forsaken me?”
It’s OK to find yourself there. But it’s not OK to stay there.
Expectations of God
We have expectations of God, too. We expect God to act a certain way, to do miracles and to answer prayers. We expect him to fix things that are broken. We expect him to always give us a warm happy feeling when we come to him in prayer. Expectations were a big part of our discussion in the book of Job this spring – just what were Job and his friends expecting from God?
We have words in the Christian vocabulary for our expectations of God – faith. Hope. When we pray to God, we have FAITH that he will answer. When we or someone we love is sick, we have HOPE that God will work healing. When God has said he’ll do something, we have FAITH that he will do it – though sometimes we place unrealistic expectations on him to do that thing in a certain way or a certain time.
I’m not going to ask you to raise your hands if you’ve ever found yourself there. You know if you’ve been there sometimes – and it’s OK.
Pentecost
Looking back at the passage, I have to wonder what these disciples, these men and women, expected to happen while they waited. In the past two months, they have seen Jesus willingly march to Jerusalem where his enemies are waiting, preach bold messages right under their noses. They’ve watched as Jesus is arrested, crucified, buried, and raised again. They’ve watched him ascend into heaven with a promise that he’ll be back and that something good is about to happen.
And if we hadn’t heard the story already, what would WE expect, you and I? I think I would have expected something a little different than what happened that day – sound like a wind, a few tongues of flame hovering over people’s heads, some quick language learning… come on. Jesus did stuff lots more exciting than that! What about feeding all of Jerusalem with five loaves of bread and two fish? What about raising someone from the dead? What about all of the people of Israel suddenly being healed of their diseases?
But no. A little noise, a little fire, and a lot of preaching. And when it’s all said and done, we’re left asking the same question as those gathered there to hear Peter’s preaching: “What does this mean?”
But there’s a miracle here that we often overlook. And it’s a miracle that still happens today, over and over again.
There is a REAL and AMAZING miracle that takes place on that day of Pentecost – God changing lives, God changing hearts. The miracle is not the mighty rushing wind or the tongues of fire. The great miracle is not these men speaking in languages they’ve never learned.
The great miracle is this scared and huddled group of believers, locked for weeks behind closed doors, suddenly bursting out of the room and sharing their Good News with the world!
The great miracle is the hardened hearts of the Jews, who just a few weeks before had ordered Jesus to be crucified, suddenly responding in faith to the man they had had a hand in killing.
The great miracle doesn’t happen on the outside. It happens on the inside, where no one can see. But just like Jesus’ analogy of not seeing the wind but seeing its effects, so can we see the mighty effects of the Spirit’s work in their hearts.
Expecting God to Act
Sometimes our expectations for God are unmet. Sometimes he doesn’t answer that prayer, doesn’t send miraculous healing for that person. And then what do we do? We either have to change our ideas about God, or we begin to lose those expectations.
And eventually, we can end up cynical – thinking that God really doesn’t answer our prayers, that he’s not listening. Because of our broken expectations, we might think that God is actually out to get us, to do some harm to us because of something we’ve done. We can stop believing min miracles, stop believing in the power of prayer to change anything. It leaves our faith lifeless and useless. We suddenly believe in an impotent God.
And if we don’t see miracles around us happening every day, then maybe we need to change our expectations of miracles. Ever since Jesus left, those physical miracles – healings, feedings, natural phenomena – have been getting fewer and farther between. It’s not that God has stopped working miracles – it just seems he doesn’t do that kind as often anymore.
But here’s the key to what happened that Pentecost Day – those disciples EXPECTED God to do something. They may have expected him to do something different than he did, but they EXPECTED him to do SOMETHING. And because they were expecting it, they were in the right place and the right time when it happened.
God has the power to make the sun stand still, to part the sea, to shake the earth at its foundations. God has the power to heal the sick, to raise the dead, to feed the multitudes. God has the power to move the planets, to fling the stars into space. God has the power to work salvation on our behalf so that we can live in eternity.
But God also has the power to change the hearts of human beings. But have we forgotten to EXPECT him to do that?
How many times have we said of someone else, “That’s just the way they are, and they aren’t going to change.” We’ve trusted them too many times, and been disappointed too many times. We’ve see that they consistently do the things they are not supposed to. And so we write them off.
And “them” might be anyone – our spouse, our family members, someone who’s made themselves a thorn in our side… it might even be a whole community or a whole race of people. We come to a point when we stop believing it’s possible for them to change. And lo and behold, they DON’T change.
Or the “them” might be ourselves. Have I given up believing that God can change my heart and mind? Have I given up hope that he can cure me of the sinful problems I have? Have I given up hope that I can be any different than I am?
Have we given up hope that God can bring new people to this church? After all, everyone around here is “churched,” right? Are they really, or are we just excusing ourselves from our responsibility?
When we place those kinds of low expectations on someone, when we refuse to believe that God can change them or change us, we put ourselves in the awful position of judge and distant observer. Suddenly, we don’t have a responsibility toward them anymore. There’s no need to expect or hope that they will change. They won’t.
Imagine…
I want to try something with you. Close your eyes and imagine that person you think can never change – that person who you can’t trust anymore
Let’s imagine for a moment that they CAN change. Let’s imagine that no matter how many times they’ve broken our trust, no matter how many times they have hurt us, no matter how many times they have done the things they’re not supposed to do… let’s imagine that they can STILL change, even then. Would we treat them differently? Would we continue to share good news with them?
And let’s imagine for a moment that WE can change. Let’s imagine that we can wake up one morning and be free from that illness, that we could wake up and our bodies would be healed. Let’s imagine that we can walk out the doors of this church
Conclusion
We might be cynical about some of our human relationships, but we should NEVER be cynical about God. Because when we stop expecting God to do something, we miss it when he DOES. It’s not that God is bound up in our expectations of him. But we will miss what he’s doing because we’re not expecting it.
What do you expect God to do?
