Image: Ann Scull, Mustard Seeds
August 2, 2015
You and I, for the most part,
spend our time here together thinking of what Christ expects from us.
This is as it should be.
But today, I would like to turn
the thought around and think for a few moments of what we can expect from
Christ.
I wonder if much of the religious
frustrations and failures of our day are not the by-product of false
expectations.
Many people, it seems, have come
to Christ and the Church in search of something that is not here, something
that he never promised to provide.
Our gospel reading for today deals
with this issue.
Jesus and his disciples had just
crossed the Sea of Galilee, from east to west.
On the eastern shore, he had fed
the five thousand.
Then many of those same people had
followed him and found him on the western shore.
But Jesus was not flattered by
their desire to be with him.
He said,
"Very truly, I tell you, you
are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of
the loaves." (John 6:26)
In other words, they were
following Jesus because he had given them free food.
And they were hoping he would do
it again.
In fact, they may have been hoping
that he would become their meal ticket for the rest of their lives.
They would depend on him for food;
but we can't imagine Jesus as a co-dependent.
That expectation proved to be
invalid: it did not happen.
What those people wanted and what
Jesus stood ready to give them were not at all the same.
This was not a unique event in the
experience of Jesus.
People often asked him for things that
he either would not or could not provide.
And that is still happening today.
It raises for you and me an
interesting question:
What can we expect from our religion?
In the gospel, the primary
interest of the crowd was food for the body
Jesus' interest was in food for
the soul, so it wasn't long before the party was over, the fat lady had sung, and
the people went home.
This kind of thing is still
happening today.
We may as well face the truth that
multitudes of people have become disillusioned with their Christian faith.
They are looking for something
they will never find.
This has to be one of the reasons
why people drop out of Church, and turn their time and attention to other
matters.
You and I are not completely off
the hook for such disappointment.
There have been times when we have
been less than honest in our proclamation of the gospel.
We have spoken of the Christian
faith in glowing terms, as though it were the magic solution to every problem, the
automatic answer to every question, and the absolute remedy for every personal
and social ill the world has ever known.
We have reported our experience
with God in terms of perfect peace and complete satisfaction.
All of these things may sound good
in a sermon or a testimony, but none of them is the total truth and we know it.
To be sure, there are times of
comfort and truth (peace) in our faith, but here are also times when we, too,
are disappointed.
We have waited for answers that
never come.
We have worked for causes that
failed.
We have searched for solutions and
never found them—at least not yet.
To put it bluntly, we all have had
those moments when we felt that God let us down.
We should not be embarrassed to
admit that.
Read your Bible and you will find
yourself in the presence of some great spiritual company.
Who was it that prayed from a
cross, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34)
Spiritual disappointments are a
fact of life, and no thinking person can long avoid them.
None of us can avoid them
completely.
So perhaps it would help if we
would take the time to evaluate our expectations.
What do we want from our faith?
What can we realistically expect
from Christ?
Like the people in the story, we
sometimes turn to Christ in anticipation of that which he never promised to
provide, or could not provide.
The people in the story expected
that Jesus would make life easier.
One thing we have no right at all
to expect is an easier life.
Somehow, somewhere, we have gotten
the idea that faith in God is supposed to solve our problems, reduce the
necessity of struggle, and virtually eliminate suffering.
The thing we seem to forget is
that it did not work that way for Jesus.
Faith, for Jesus, was a source of
strength that enabled him to face up to life, and carry off a victory in the
face of it.
Let me quote from a letter written
by a television evangelist.
He is one of those who preach that
faith will make life easier.
Indeed if you have the right
kind of faith,
Here is part of what the
evangelist wrote:
"My little boy was killed by
a car when he was only eight years old.
I later learned that if I had known
how to believe in God, the angels would have protected him and he might still
be alive today."
My friends, that is either a sad illusion or a deliberate
distortion of biblical faith.
I suppose you can pull out a proof
text here and there and piece together that concept.
But the overall message of
Scripture is that faith in God does not make life easier.
And those who expect it to work
that way are doomed to bitter disappointment.
The second reading of Paul to the
Ephesians told us to "...put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt
and deluded by its lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind: clothe
yourselves with the new self." (Ephesians 4:20-24)
So let's go back to our original
question:
What can we expect from a Christ
whose faith led him to a cross?
What can we expect from that
Christ?
How can we ever think of him as a
cosmic nursemaid whose chief concern is making our lives a little easier?
We had better interpret our
relationship with him not so much in terms of comfort, but in terms of courage
and strength.
His purpose is not to make life
easy for us to handle, but to make us strong enough to handle life whatever it
may bring.
Friends, if you are looking for
something that will turn your life into a bed of roses, then you may as well
close the New Testament.
You will not find it there.
You will not find it there.
But if you are looking for someone
who can fill your life with purpose, with power, then come to Christ.
We can expect that from him.
He has promised it, and he can
provide it for you and for me.
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