Expectations: Great and Otherwise
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Fourth Sunday of Lent – March 6, 2005
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: 1 Samuel 16:1-13/Ephesians 5:8-14/John 9:1-41]

            Back in August I talked about Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectations and now I’m back at it again. Remember the book? Just about every high school literature class goes through it; at least they did in my day. Pip, Philip Pirrip’s nickname, sets his sights, his expectations rather high. The book chronicles his achievement of great expectations and then the loss of them.

            As an orphan apprenticed to his blacksmith uncle, Pip’s chances of being a gentleman seem far away. However, someone takes him up and offers him the sponsorship to come up in the world. He assumes that it’s Miss Havisham, the mysterious crone who was long-ago jilted on her wedding day and who lives to cause men harm. Ultimately he learns that his expectations are not as great as they seem, or at least as substantive. He also learns that his benefactor is actually an escaped criminal and also the unknowing father of the object of his unrequited love. Indeed his criminal benefactor shows a great deal more character than would-be gentleman Pip and it has an effect on him.

            Now, there is the whole massive thing in about a paragraph and a half, at least the bits that I want. Throughout the novel we see differently. I think that is Dickens’ point in a number of his novels – things aren’t always what they seem. He is a master at drawing us along and then allowing us to discover that things are simply not what we thought them to be. And, when you give it some thought, isn’t that the case with most of life?

Dickens’ book still resonates, as do many classics, because they touch the core of human experience. All of us have expectations – great or otherwise – around which we orient our life and our behavior.

            Would you like a contemporary example? I was struck by a recent issue of Time. It’s about parents creating havoc for teachers because they miss the point of who the primary educator of the child is. I know you find it hard to believe, but I talk to people all the time who take their faith, their church membership in much the same way. As long as it meets their expectation, fine. However, don’t, don’t, don’t expect anything of them! And if you do, what a horrid person you must surely be because you’ve asked someone to live up to an expectation, an obligation, which might just run counter to their own.

            Yet, God does have expectations for us. What we see in the story from Samuel is God’s attempt at correcting the situation of Israel which resulted from King Saul’s corruption of God’s expectations. Saul was a man of great stature, but possessed of a small heart, so, Scripture tells us, God gave him a new heart. Still, it didn’t stop Saul from having his great expectations take precedence over God’s.

            Now Samuel is looking for a new king – and God tells the prophet to see that the expectations are different this time. It’s not just the fellow who can stand out in a crowd, literally, because God can see beyond that. God looks to the heart – to the essence of the human person. The man Samuel is looking for will turn and out to have all kinds of faults and foibles, but he will still be “a man after God’s own heart” because he can humble himself, admit his wrongdoing, and seek to bring his expectations into line with God’s. David is “God’s man” because he has a heart – not matter how flawed – that seeks after God.

            God’s expectations are always trumping ours. God takes not the first-born or the grandest, but looks to the heart. In the same way God takes the weak things of this world in order to teach us a way of different expectations. God looks on the heart and we can’t limit God by thinking that God will act how or when or like we want. If we do, then we’ll end up like Pip, with our great expectations disappointed and unfulfilled.

            The story of the man born blind in John’s Gospel helps us to see – pun intended – in a new way. Like so many characters in the Bible, he’s a type, an example for us. His physical blindness stands for the opaqueness of our spiritual sight. We are, all of us, blind in some way or another. The parents in Time who can’t see the problems they cause by refusing to discipline or hold their children accountable are blind. You see, there’s a reason our society lacks a sense of the common good and basic civility – it’s not being taught and often is not being modeled by the ones who are its first and best teachers. It’s the same with the parents I’ve talked with who find a sport, or a hobby, or whatever to be more important than their child’s spiritual formation. They’re blind as well. It is as though they cannot see – yet their eyes are wide open. This is the same charge that Jesus lays against the religious elite of his time, the Pharisees. They see, but not in the way they thought or in the way that they should have seen.

            The blind man’s healing becomes a story for us, a reminder that we need healing if we’re to see what God wants us to see and to develop those expectations for our life together that are from God. When Jesus makes the clay and anoints the man’s eyes, he’s doing something powerfully symbolic. Genesis tells us that we are made from “the dust of the ground.” God’s breath in that dust makes us, creates us. Now, in Jesus, God reaches again, not to make something new, but to complete creation. As John Shea, contemporary theologian and story-teller par excellence, says, “Creation is a work in progress and Jesus is activating the latent but underdeveloped spiritual sight of the human person. That is why one of the titles for Jesus in the early church was ‘eye salve.’” [On Earth As It Is In Heaven, p. 131] Jesus heals the man’s sight in more than a physical way, because now he sees the light shining not just outside, but inside himself.

            The expectation – the great expectation – that God has for us is that we should be enlightened, filled with light. This is far more than just some quaint theological idea. It makes a difference in our sense of self, the expectations we have, and then of our appreciation and approach to others. Elsewhere Shea writes, “It moves toward mystical recognition and suggestions like that of William Blake. ‘If the eyes of perception were cleansed, we would see things as they are – infinite.’ At the beginnings of ‘Auguries of Innocence,’ Blake expands the suggestion in concrete imagery: ‘To see a world in a Grain of Sand,/And a heaven in a Wild Flower,/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,/And Eternity in an hour.’ The emphasis is on seeing the spiritual, perceiving the infinite grounding of the finite world, sensing the Eternal.” [p. 146] What we see in these scriptures is nothing less than the gradual unfolding of God’s presence in the ordinary – in us. That’s what we’re meant to see, to perceive, to sense in every aspect of our lives.

            As I said, this perception, this sight then makes a difference. As Paul tells the Ephesians, “Live as children of the light … Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.” The light that dawns inside us, our ability to see the holy in the ordinary, should bear fruit in the way in which we treat one another. Religious piety, lived faith, should show itself in action. Thus, our covenant has all of the points of how we are to go about living and even offers them in the appropriate order. First, we are to share in God’s worship and service – in the gathered community and then in our daily lives. Worship is not just something that we do on a Sunday morning, is it? Worship is how we orient our lives so that they become transparent enough for the glory of God to shine through us and into the world.

Second, we seek to grow in the knowledge and expression of our faith. We may have close to four hundred people here in worship on a given Sunday morning, but I don’t see that many in adult education. Not between services. Not even for the Lenten classes. How sad that we can make time for so many other things in our lives, but not take an extra hour or two to learn more about the thing that makes us most who we are – our faith.

Third, we reach out with love and compassion to those in need. Here I am proud of this gathered community, because benevolences are a priority. I am told that the offering from this church for the relief of those affected by the Tsunami totaled almost half of the offering sent through the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. Still, how much more could we be doing if those first two points were really lived? How many more lives would be touched by compassion if we allowed it to flow out of our worship and deepened in our knowledge of God’s presence in our lives?

Fourth, we treat each other – those in covenant with us here – with love and understanding. We’re getting better, especially in meetings, but above all else, this place of meeting, this community must be a safe place. A place where people can come knowing that they will be received and loved as they are. And our willingness to treat each other with love and understanding must extend to our visitors and neighbors. I long for the people of Wauwatosa to say of us what was said of Christians in Antioch long ago, “behold, how they love one another.”

Finally, we return to God a portion of God’s gifts. Ah, the hard part, real theology, money. Here we’re doing better, but because a number of folks have increased their already generous giving. Almost a third of our church members pledge nothing and some give nothing. I don’t get the logic of how we think an organization like this accomplishes its work without all of us giving to support it. The programs that we do, the services that we offer, the outreach to the community that we extend comes at a price. If we own this covenant and say that this is my church, my community, then I would think we would be willing to support it? I am and there are many who do. I pray that the number grows.

You see our covenant isn’t so much about what we believe but about how we live what we believe, that is how we behave. Christians over the century have been trying to see things one way and missing the point, I think. Jesus tells us again and again that we are to follow him, that is, to take his teaching into our hearts and allow it to make a difference in our lives. There is a different set of great expectations that God offers us – and that shows itself in our living out God’s love in this world.

To go back to my opening image, Pip learned a hard lesson about his expectations. Eventually he discovered something deeper and more meaningful than his question to become a gentleman and to make his way in society. Instead of a gentleman he becomes a person. That, it seems to me, is the whole point of human existence, to become a person in the truest sense of the word. It is, as I read it, why God sent the Christ, to restore us to personhood. So what happened to Pip still holds true for us. Jesus waits to anoint our eyes and God still looks on the heart, all to make creation complete and to give us spiritual sight. Do we see, or do we simply curse the darkness? Do we seek healing, or stay content with the comfortable expectations of our blindness? The decision is, always, ours, as are the expectations, great or otherwise. Amen.