It’s Not What You Expect
A sermon preached by Robert Lee Nichols, Jr.
Luke 9:51-62
Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church
Contemporary Worship (Father’s Day) June 20, 2010
Traditional Worship June 27, 2010
Okay, here’s a question for those who are parents. When it comes to having kids, if you knew then what you know now, would they be here on this earth?
Some of you are shaking your heads “no.” Others are giving me this incredulous look like how dare you ask such a question! Well, I have to say there have been all kinds of surveys and studies on this and the results are mixed.
Truthfully, you never can prepare people for what it’s going to be like to be parents, can you? It’s just one of those things you have to enter into blindly. How do you prepare someone for colicky babies and ear infections and temper tantrums and all the other fun things involved in raising kids? It’s always a surprise, never quite what you expect.
And that’s the subject of our sermon today. It’s not what you expect. One of the pleasures of summer is that we don’t have to stick with the large and grand themes of the Christian faith – the nature of God, the purpose of the church, the meaning of life.
In these more casual days we can turn our attention to the marginal and the peripheral and not feel bad about that. It’s a summer indulgence. So, that’s what we’re going to do. And here’s the crux of today’s sermon. Life never comes out the way you expect it to. It just never does. You’re always on a detour. And since that’s true, it’s important to understand the difference between hopes and expectations and reality and it’s important to know what to do with this inconvenient matter of disappointment. The secret to life and the secret to happiness is the ability to enjoy the scenery when you’re on a detour.
Fatherhood did not come easily for me. It was tough and I’m not sure I was very good at it. My daughter and my son turned out just fine. But I think it was in spite of me and not because of me. I kinda wish I could go back and do it all again. One of the tough parts for me was adjusting my expectations of who I thought my children should be. You know, you have this conception of who they will be and what they will be like and they never are. And this was a great struggle for me. I confess to you that I anguished in the desire to make my kids into a mirror image of me (perfect) instead of letting them be the people God put them on this earth to be. It took me forever to realize that the one with the problem here was not them, they were just fine. It was me! There was a difference between my perception of how the world ought to be and God’s plan. I was the one who had to adjust and change. Ah! Parenthood!
Grandchildren. They’re the best. One of the great things about grandchildren is that they liberate you from the need to have them be a certain way. They can do whatever they want. Popcorn in bed at 10 o’clock? No problem. Splurge on some frivolous purchase? Let’s go shopping. Wear plaid pants with a tie dye top? That’s a perfect match.
We have three incredible grandchildren, Connor and Leah and Caitlyn. Caitlyn has Down Syndrome. It was tough coming to terms with that. You know, having such a challenge when you set out to be a parent or a grandparent it’s not what you sign up for. And yet, our precious Caitlyn is such a dear treasure. She is such a lover. She’s a great example of how sometimes it’s best to give up your expectations, your projection of what you think is perfect and just let God give you this great gift.
You may be familiar with this piece called, A Trip to Holland. It’s by Emily Perl Kingsley, a woman who has a special needs child. It pretty well says it all.
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability -- to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this...
When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans... the Coliseum, the Sistine Chapel, Gondolas. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting. After several months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland!" "Holland?" you say. "What do you mean, Holland? I signed up for Italy. I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy." But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place full of pestilence, famine, and disease. It's just a different place. So, you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around. You begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. And Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned." And the pain of that experience will never, ever, ever, go away. The loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.
Happiness is marked by the ability to enjoy the scenery along the inevitable detour life will take you on.
I do a lot of pre-marital counseling here at the church as we prepare couples for the joys and challenges of Christian marriage. One of the instruments we use is one called Prepare/Enrich. It measures the amount of conflict a couple has around a number of issues: finances, household roles, leisure activities sexuality, family, friends, spiritual beliefs, and so forth. It scores them according to their ability to solve problems together and work as a team. It also measures individually qualities – assertiveness, self-confidence, dominance, flexibility, emotional maturity. And one of the most telling things it measures is what is called Idealistic Distortion – that is, how much does each idealize their partner and their future marriage? The higher the score, the more likely they are to have problems. Idealistic Distortion. The more perfect you think they are and you are together, the sooner you’ll crash and the harder you’ll fall.
You see, when we fall in love we project all of our hopes and our dreams and our desires onto that other person. They become perfect. Or pretty close. There is something in the human heart that demands this idealization of the other person. It’s infatuation, attachment, romantic love. And within this whole process there is this chemical explosion that takes place within the body that literally distorts our vision. We truly do look through rose colored glasses. It’s a form of madness. The very word Infatuation is from the Latin meaning, to be made a fool of.
Thank goodness, this period of romantic love lasts no longer than about a year and a half. It is time limited. The system couldn’t stand much more. Then you wake up and smell the coffee. You begin to see the other person not as you want them to be, but as they really are. There is this realization that, oh my gosh, my partner is not what I though he or she was going to be. I am not what I thought I was. And we, together, are not who I believed we will be. It’s a real danger point. And it could happen before the wedding, just after (sometimes at the honeymoon), or months later. But it’ll happen. And it’s not a bad thing. In fact, you might say this is when the marriage really begins because now we can see our partner not as we wish they would be, but as they really are. And we can start dealing with reality.
Jesus and his disciples are moving from Galilee up in the north towards Jerusalem to the south, And this series of amazing events occur as the disciples discover the difference between their expectations about discipleship and the reality of Jesus.
On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set towards Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them? But he turned and rebuked them.
Strike one. Discipleship isn’t about power and vengeance.
As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go!” Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Strike two. Discipleship is about sacrifice not comfort.
To another he said,”Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
Strike three. This discipleship is about ultimate loyalty. Are you in or are you out? Who do you choose?
Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say goodbye to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Strike four. Discipleship is about commitment. What matters most to you?
Bang, bang, bang, bang! Just like that, the disciples discover the difference between what they believe discipleship to be and what it really is. And that can be jolting. So, what about you? Did you expect following Jesus to be like this? Did you expect it to be so hard? So slow? So hot? Did you expect evil to be as powerful as it is? Both in the world and within you? Did you expect the church to be so political? Disciples to be as imperfect as they (we) are?
In every sphere, there is this difference between what we expect and the way things are in the world. Growing into mature discipleship means giving up our way and accepting God’s way. One of the great Christian authors we have today is a man by the name of Henry Nouwen. Henry Nouwen asked his spiritual mentor to give him a blessing. And here is what the mentor wrote:
May all your expectations be frustrated. May all your plans be thwarted. May all your desires whither into nothingness. That you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child who sings and dances in the love of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
That’s the prayer of a wise man, who knows that for mature discipleship to develop the scales have to fall away from our eyes so that we can experience the world as God intends it rather than the way we would have it be. It’s the prayer of someone who knows that whether we’re talking about fatherhood or marriage or discipleship or just living with the hand we are dealt, the deepest prayer must be, Not my way, O Lord, but your way. Not my kingdom, but Thine. May you know that kind of blessing.
In conclusion I want to read you something and show you something. This is from a devotional that Delinda read at staff meeting the other day. It’s called, What Do You See?
Floating in a small bowl of water in my refrigerator are seven four leaf clovers. I have been collecting them for several weeks, ever since a friend said to me, “I really, really want to see a four leaf clover. Are they hard to find?”
Remembering that conversation, a few days later I paused to look more closely than usual at a patch of clover. I saw rising slightly about the many three leaf clovers one with four leaves. Of course I picked it for my friend. Since then, I have made it a point to look at other patches of clover when I walk my dog. After seeing the unusual clover I found, my young friend began looking for them too. So far she has found more than a dozen in her yard.
Do my experiences and hers prove that we grow more four leaf clovers where I live than in most places? I don’t think so. We find them because we look carefully at what is before us. We don’t assume that all the sprigs are the same and have only three leaves. And because our eyes are open, we see what is there. It occurred to me that we sometimes look at people – especially people we know well – the way I used to look at clover patches, not really seeing them at all. We operate on our idea of who they are (or were) and do not actually look at them as they are today, this moment. They’re just one among many, nothing special – like a patch of clover. We know what’s there, so we don’t have to look.
Many a time we look at those around us and project our own “stuff” onto them. Occasionally we are able to see them as they really are. This video is from Britain’s version of America’s Got Talent. The woman’s name is Susan Boyle:
(Show clip)
What if we decided to look at people differently? What if we approached those around us in their “holy uniqueness,” assuming that they are special – because they are? What if we made it a pattern to remember why we value them. And why God created them this way.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.