Sermon for 1st Sunday after Trinity. “Expectations” preached at the Eucharist, Sherborne Abbey on Sunday, 2 June 2024 by the Reverend Christopher Huitson. (2 Corinthians Ch 4: v 5 – 12; Mark Ch 2: v 23 – 3:6)
When you are speaking to someone on the telephone who is talking rather quietly what do you do? What I do is to speak more loudly. I can’t hear what they are saying and assume they can’t hear me either and so I speak up. But think of it from their point of view. They are speaking in their normal voice and can hear me perfectly well. So I shout and they whisper. What I should do is to speak more softly and then, because they can’t hear me so well, they will speak more loudly. Well that’s my theory anyway, but, do you know, I find it very difficult to put into practice!
This is an example of how our expectation can influence how we interpret our world. Our experience affects our expectation. But equally our expectation reinforces our experience. That may be good or it may give rise to a vicious circle. We often underestimate the influence that what we expect to happen can have on our lives. It is not simply a matter of some people having an optimistic outlook and others always expecting the worst. I think we may well subconsciously engineer the result so that it comes out as we expect. The optimist expects a successful outcome and more often than not that’s what happens. A person’s self-confidence is of great importance. The pessimist is already convinced that things are going to go badly and so approaches the task half-heartedly. The project fails and so the pessimist can say: “There, I told you so!” He has, of course, the satisfaction of being right.
What we expect of ourselves, then, is fraught with ambiguity. What we think others expect of us can also be a source of conflict and stress and Jesus himself was no stranger to the pressure of expectation. He was born into restless and violent times. The Jews were under Roman rule and they greatly resented it. Historians tell us that oppressed people tend to look for a great leader, a deliverer who will rescue them and free them. The children of Israel had the OT prophecies to encourage them and inspire in them the hope of a Messiah. Indeed, from time to time someone would put himself forward with claims to be that Messiah – perhaps lead a local rebellion which the Romans would put down with their usual efficient savagery and then everything would quieten down for a while. John the Baptist was asked if he was the Messiah. He denied it but sent messengers to ask Jesus the same question. People were on the lookout; their expectations were high.
But for others, expectations were different even opposite to the general mood. The Sadducees did not expect a Messiah at all and ridiculed such ideas while the Pharisees certainly did not think that an itinerant preacher from the unsophisticated North, from little rural Nazareth, could possibly be “the One” they were looking for. Their expectations, then, produced foregone conclusions: Jesus could not be the Messiah, they thought; therefore he could not heal with God’s help; and so they took no notice of the extraordinary healing of the man with the withered arm and instead concentrated on the illegality of a healing having taken place on the Sabbath. The restoration of the injured man’s arm made them look foolish but they saw it as contrary to the religious law, and so, in their eyes, Jesus had to be eliminated. It is this concentration on what could or could not be done on the Sabbath which underlies the other part of our Gospel reading. Pulling off ears of corn would have been seen by the Pharisees as harvesting and likewise milling wheat into flour would also have been forbidden, even rubbing the ears in their hands. Even worse, from their point of view was the way in which Jesus referenced King David and what he had done. They expected the Messiah to be a descendant of David so Jesus himself was making that claim and also asserting his Lordship over the Sabbath and setting out his ability to state what was permitted on that special day of the week.
The expectations of the Pharisees therefore produced a great distortion. And Jesus was subject to the pressure of expectations from others too – of the disciples, for instance, who wanted a live leader not a dead one and who, perhaps, looked for the great day of the Lord to be inaugurated by the climax of the clash between the authorities and Jesus.
As Christians how do we find our expectation is healed? Well, wholeness comes when we replace the demand of expectation with the request of hope. When we expect, we make demands on ourselves, – on others, – on God. But if we hope in trust, we look for what is good; we allow our ideas to be examined and corrected; and we destroy the power of false expectations and heal its hurtful and negative force. Then we may serve others by looking for their best interests and so we shall love our neighbours.
But secondly, we are to love our neighbours as ourselves and we shall do that by not setting up demands upon ourselves which it is impossible for us to fulfil. We need to know that we are loved and accepted by God.
Thirdly, people have false expectation of God. Some see him as a sort of divine Santa Claus, but we will serve him best by receiving the grace that he gives us with thanksgiving. Then we shall find, as did the disciples, that while God may not give us what we desire, he does, in fact, give us what is beyond expectation.
Today’s epistle reminds us of words St. Paul writes in his 2nd letter to the people of Corinth: “God has caused his light to shine in our hearts, the light which is knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”