Raising Expectations

Jeremiah 31:1-6; John 20:1-18; Colossians 3:1-4

Rev. Chris Harbin, Central Baptist Church—Lowesville, VA

23 March 2008

I saw what you did with that cross today.^[1] When I came in, it was draped in black, but now I see it adorned with flowers. I guess that is a significant tribute to what the cross has meant in my life. You see, I was one of Jesus’ followers. We never expected to find Jesus nailed to an instrument of such dread cruelty, but then, Jesus was always surprising us. He was always raising our expectations to a new plane. That weekend when Jesus hung on the cross was the darkest hour in our lives—black like the trappings on your own cross here. Afterward, however, what had been black and disgusting became beautiful—full of new expectations and hope.

It was always hard to keep up with Jesus. Whenever we came to a point of understanding something, it seemed Jesus introduced a new idea to shatter what we thought we knew. We had grown up with certain concepts and expectations about God. Jesus did not think nearly as much of our ideas as we did. When John announced Jesus as the Messiah, we were thrilled! We knew about Messiah and were eager for a new political reality in Israel. Jesus began talking about God’s messianic reign, but somehow it was not at all what we anticipated. He called us beyond our expectations to adopt God’s expectations in place of our own.

Maybe you know what I am talking about. Have you ever had that experience of certainty about some divine truth and seen Jesus completely shatter your understanding? It can be rather unsettling. It can also be the beginning of a new relationship with the God of infinite wonder.

Jesus had that kind of effect on people. Either they were excited by the thrill of the ride, or they were too afraid to listen any further at what he had to say. His words were either wonderful release or a threat to all one held dear. You’d think that after three years we would have become accustomed to surprises. That would seriously underestimate their impact, however. You see, he called for a complete reversal in the way one would most naturally live.

At that marriage feast in Cana, it wasn’t just that he turned water into wine. He made the very best wine, such that all else served at the feast paled in comparison. Jesus took Nicodemus by surprise, and this was a learned man and religious leader of the people. With all his study, it was as if Nicodemus did not have the vaguest idea of God’s will to offer reconciliation to the world. Jesus not only determined to travel through Samaria when everyone else would bypass it, he stopped to talk with a woman—the kind every pious man took lengths to avoid. As if that were not enough, he then had us stay there two extra days to teach the hated Samaritans about God’s messianic reign.

His sermon on the mountain was shocking enough. It got everyone’s attention, for being so outlandish. More extraordinarily, however, he then proceeded to live by such impossible standards of love and grace. His ideas were not simply intellectual exercise for reflection in synagogue study groups or themes for feel-good song lyrics. They were the very values by which he daily lived.

We figured God loved us and called us to love our families and friends. We prayed for personal blessing and God’s judgment upon our oppressors. He called us to adopt God’s higher order of expectations: to love our enemies and assume their concerns as our own. We had all manner of excuses to live differently. Jesus emphasized how seriously he took loving enemies by embracing the cross.

We looked for God’s reign in political expression. He called us to live God’s reign despite any political expression. We looked for fulfillment by advancement in power through association with Jesus. He called us to loving, sacrificial service as the only measure of fulfillment. We sought to protect him from death in order that we might advance our own security. He called us to discover true security in laying down our lives that others might experience His reign over death.

It was rattling. When he spoke of his impending death, we could not grasp it. When he spoke of his coming resurrection, it made no sense. When he finally made his way to the cross, we were dumbfounded. Peter tried to fight, but Jesus would not have it. His messianic reign would not come through violence, fear, or coercion. We watched him be taken away, improperly tried, unjustly accused, and wrongly condemned. Finally, he gave up his life on the cross, and the rest of our expectations died with him. They sealed our hopes and dreams in a borrowed tomb.

With his death, what were we to do? How do you follow one who has just died? Our hopes and dreams were brutally crushed. Before Jesus could raise our expectations to a new level, they had to be utterly destroyed.

Early Sunday morning after a fitful, sleepless night, Mary went to the tomb to anoint his body. She was unprepared not to find him. She ran back to tell us his body had been stolen. Peter and I ran to the tomb to check it out. I got there first and froze in shock. Peter arrived and entered the tomb, finding it empty. We didn’t know what to make of it, but I believed that once again, Jesus had shattered our meager expectations. There was more to the story than we had yet understood.

Mary stuck around shedding tears in her distress. She was too engaged in her anxiety over what she thought had happened to understand the question the angels posed. She turned and asked Jesus himself where his body had been placed. That she would be talking with Jesus was beyond her imagination. She knew he was dead. We all knew he was dead. Our hopes and dreams were lying in some dark corner with Jesus’ body. Meanwhile, Jesus called us to a new reality of expectant hope.

“Mary, Mary, my death is not the final chapter to banish hope. It is the beginning of a life of new expectations in the presence of God!” You can imagine Mary’s consternation and confused joy on hearing Jesus speaking to her! Banished hope returned, but confusion returned with it. Jesus was alive! That meant that hope was not lost after all, but it was radically transformed in character. Hope and life were not bound to the chains of death and the power of violence. For the moment, nothing made sense.

She ran to share what she had seen and heard. Her message had that unsettling quality of Jesus’ words and deeds. It left us grasping for understanding, reviewing all we had heard him say and do. We couldn’t process it all quickly enough. If Jesus were really alive, it would not give us back our old hopes, dreams, and shattered expectations. It would replace them with a whole new understanding.

It’s kind of like that cross, isn’t it? How can something so dreadful become a thing of beauty? Yet there is new life thriving on its arms. In the midst of death, disaster, and despair, there is a new quality of hope that would raise our expectations to a wholly new level. When Jesus died on that cross, part of me had to die as well. Will you join me in allowing His risen life to infuse your own with a whole new character of living? He did not die so we might live again as before, but that we might live a new reality according to wholly new expectations.

—©2008 Christopher B. Harbin

This sermon in pdf

¹ Last Sunday, we ripped black cloth to tie around a cross in the sanctuary as a symbol of our participation in tearing apart the Body of Christ.