Takoma Park Baptist Church, Washington, DC, March 5, 1989
Anyone who works in an office or who has had to do either writing or typing knows that you do not proofread your own work. You just do not proofread your own work. Why not? Because the tendency is to see what we want to see, and what we expect to see, not what is really there. And so if you read over your own handiwork, you will see, more than likely, what is supposed to be there, but you will miss a good many of the mistakes, just because you didn't expect them. I know on many occasions I've typed a letter or some other document, then glanced at it, thinking it had it right, sent it out, and later found out that it had all sorts of typos. All because I saw what I expected to see; and what I did not expect to see, that I missed completely.
There is a series of optical illusions that illustrates the same principle. Maybe you've seen these in some book: one of these optical illusions asks you to look at some familiar traffic signs and read them. And so there in a familiar red hexagon with familiar white letters on it is a sign familiar to every driver: S POT. Says Stop, doesn't it? Ah, I expected so much to see Stop that I did see it, even though this' version said SPOT! And the book has many other examples: sentences with a word repeated, but we are so sure we know the sentence that we don't see the repeat. Sentences with a word left out, but again, our mind just supplies what our eyes do not see.
The truth is that we are programmed to experience the expected. The truth is that we are ready to suppose that we know how things are going to go, and even seeing the evidence will not change our minds.
For the truth is that after wave reached a certain age that we’ve seen it all, we’ve got everything down pat, we know what to expect. And even if you slap us in the face with new evidence, we just keep right on seeing it in the way we've always seen it. We are victims of our own expectations.
And I submit to you that we Christian folk, after we’ve been into this church thing for a good while, we also imagine that we’ve got God down pat. We imagine that we know what God is going to do, or more likely, what God is not going to do. And so, no matter what happens, we stay where we’ve always been. We Christian folk are victims of our own expectations, spiritually, and, I’m going to argue today, we are victims of unrisen expectations. We are victims of unrisen expectations; that is, we have settled for an understanding of God that expects nothing and therefore sees nothing; that assumes that God is semi-retired and way off in the stratosphere, and can be counted on to remain conveniently silent. But we haven't seen much precisely because we have not expected much. We are, I say, the victims of unrisen expectations.
Jesus at the climactic day of the Feast of Tabernacles stood in the middle of the Temple precincts and announced with a loud and clear voice, "If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes on me, as the scripture has said, 'Out of his heart shall flow streams of living water.'" His is a promise that is bold and forthright; it is a promise made to a people who had gone through so many religious rituals and who had kept so many laws and who had read so many Scriptures that they thought they knew it all, and moreover, that nothing was really going to happen. His is a promise made to a religious people who keep on keeping on, keeping on going to church, keep on saying their prayers, keep on making their offerings, but with no real expectation that anything remotely likes streams of living water, life -giving energy, will be found in their hearts.
But I’m suggesting that the real reason there was no life nor energy is their low expectations. And so the people react; listen: “Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was? This man doesn’t fit our expectations.
Look at what’s going on; look at how we victimize ourselves, how we cheat ourselves, because we do not expect God to be at work, here and now:
First, we cheat ourselves, we becomes victims of unrisen expectations, because we are caught up in the commonplace. We are caught up in the very ordinariness of life and cannot imagine that God would break in here.
Is the Christ to come from Galilee? And only a few pages earlier in John's Gospel we heard the same question, with an even nastier twist, from Nathanael, "Can anything good come from Galilee"? We cheat ourselves out of an experience of the living Christ because we have taught ourselves that he will not come from the ordinary, unexpected places.
How often have we come to worship in this place without really expecting to hear an authentic word from our God? We come, we do our religious thing, we plunk our bodies down in the right place, just in case the unheard of should occur, but we do not come with our souls on tiptoe, expecting a word from the Living God. It has nothing to do with how we II the sermon is prepared or who the speaker is; it has nothing to do with whether the music is lively or the feIIowshIp warm. All these things can be in place, and yet the missing ingredient is expectation -- expectation. If we come with no hope that here we shall meet the Spirit of Christ face to face, then I guarantee it won't happen. We wi11 be victims of our own shriveled expectations.
How often have we come to this table and expected nothing more than a tiny taste of bread and juice? And as the little boy said to his mother the first time he had the. Lord's Supper Mom, “They just didn't give you much for refreshments.” How often have we come to this tab I e and expected it to be nothing more than a routine, nothing more than a memorial to a dead Christ, who is supposed to stay conveniently dead. And I tell you, if we do not bring to this table some anticipation that here in some unique way we shall be met by the Christ Himself -- welI, it won't happen. These commonplace things, this bread, this wine, these common things: can anything good or special come from them?
Victims of unrisen expectations; but if you will hope and believe, then out of your heart shall flow streams of living waters.
In the second place, we are the victims of unrlsen expectations sometimes because we will not put our preconceived theologies to the test. We have been taught something or we have believed something, and the very act of God will not change it.
The Pharisees said to those who wanted to believe In Christ, “Has not the Scripture said that the Christ Is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” And of course they were exactly right. Their reading of the Bible was accurate. But they did not match their reading of the Bible with curiosity about the facts of the case. If they had, they would have found out soon enough that Jesus matched their expectations. But the truth is that even their reading of the Bible was so full of preconceptions that they were not open to new truth.
We are the victims of unrisen expectations, you see, because somehow we get to the point where we believe we have al I the truth locked up: that we know what the Bible says, we know what the tradition is, and no amount of new information is going to change us. A pastor friend says the one of his members tells him she won’t come to Bible studies, because she doesn’t want to hear new theories.
Do you know that old saying, "Don't bother me with the facts, my mind is made up?" We take it a step further sometimes: don't bother me with the facts, I've al ready read the Bible. And our reading of the Scriptures can be so rigid and so fossilized that we are not ready for God to show us something different; we will ignore what God is doing in His church because we think we have God all wrapped up in a package.
And so as we come to the Lord's Table this morning we do well to remember that none of our theories can contain him, none of our readings of the Scriptures do justice to hi s dynamic spirit. God is bigger than my theories about Him, God is bigger than my understanding of the Bible, God is bigger than all our theologies about Him. God in Jesus Christ comes to break all the old molds, and here at this table there is mystery. There is mystery; I cannot possibly articulate a theory that would explain or interpret everything that the Lord's Table means. I n fact every time we come to it I find some new layer, some nuance I had not seen before.
We do well, then, not to miss this banquet's fullness just because of our unrisen expectations. Come to the table and wait to experience streams of Living waters flowing from your heart.
One last thing: notice in this little story in John's Gospel that we lose out on what God is doing because we wait for somebody else to authenticate it. We become the victims of unrisen expectations because we don't trust what we are experiencing, and we have to wait for somebody else to validate it: some authority figure, some power person tells us what to believe, and we swallow it, but when we do, we miss those streams of Living water in our own hearts.
The officers went back, having failed in their mission to arrest Jesus, and when the Pharisees confronted them and demanded to know why they did not arrest Jesus, the soldiers said, “No man ever spoke like this man." The Pharisees answered them, "Are you led astray, you also? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?"
In other words, who are you to make up your own mind about Jesus? Has anybody important believed? Has anyone of the right folks believed? The Pharisees are contemptuous of ordinary foIks. Just as they looked down their noses at a man from Galilee, now they scorn those who dare to make up their own minds about this Christ. “Have any of the authorities or of the Pharisees believed on him?"
And I tell you, thousands of us are cheating ourselves, making ourselves victims of unrisen expectations, because we will not trust our own instincts about Christ. We wait to take our cues from somebody else. We listen to the gutter talk on the street that uses His name only as a curse, and decide from that that we do not have to revere Him. We hear the half-baked pronouncements of TV evangelists and determine that that's what we will believe. And then we come to church and listen to the Sunday School teacher and the preacher and decide that that sounds good too. And what Jesus Christ is really waiting for is for each of us to make up our own minds about Him. Who is Jesus Christ to you? Who is He for You? What is it He is doing I n your life?
Don 't settle for second-hand religion; don't wait for somebody else to tell you what you ought to believe. I've a I ways been a little uncomfortable with the idea that we parade athletes or beauty queens or politicians around and ask them to give their testimonies, as if these are any more valid than anyone else’s. Do not take your faith from somebody else's cues; make it your own.
I like what is often said, that God has no grandchildren. God has no grandchildren. Everyone has to be born again directly; you don’t get there on mom's apron strings, you don't get there because some professor with a string of PhD's behind his name says so, you don’t get there just because somebody you love thinks you ought to walk this aisle, and most of all, you don't get there just because the pastor screams it out at you and makes you feel guilty. You gain your salvation by seeing what Christ is doing for you, in you, right now, and by trusting him on your own. Otherwise you are a victim of unrlsen expectations.
A number of years ago C. S. Lewis wrote an autobiography and called it “Surprised by Joy.” Joy was Joy Davidman, his wife, whom he married late in life, long after he had supposed that romantic Iove was beyond his experience, and after he thought his life pattern had settled down. But to his amazement, here was this woman, this creature, doing something in his heart that he had not even thought possible; and once he opened his heart to receive it, it made him a new man: surprised by joy.
Come now to this table to be surprised by joy. Lay aside for the moment how commonplace, how ordinary it is. Lay aside even your fine theologies about the Lord's Table, waiting for the Lord to show you something new. And lay aside everyone else, every authority figure in your life, save Christ Himself. Let your expectations rise and rise, and still rise, so that there may be streams of living water flowing from your heart.
