Manage your expectations

Luke 7:18-35

When Kate and I were going through pre-marital counseling one of the pieces of advice we were given was to manage our expectations. It’s such good wisdom for marriage that I pass it on to every couple I counsel now. Manage your expectations: What does that mean? It means coming to an understanding of what one another expect, which can only be done through good communication. It means checking in with one another to listen and understand what your spouse expects. Then, it means bargaining with one another about how to come to expectations that you share. Managing expectations requires talking, sharing, and, above all, listening to one another. This is a recipe for a healthy marriage. Couples that fall apart often struggle communicating their expectations with one another; they wait in vain for their partner to pick up hints without ever truly sharing them, or they share them but one or both of them refuses to listen.

Managing expectations is key to healthy relationships with one another, and, based on what Jesus says in today’s reading, it also seems a critical part of a healthy relationship with God. In order to have faith in the God who is real we have to get to know Jesus for who he really was and is (and not who we want Jesus to be). In order to understand do this we have to listen to him. We have to read scripture like this and remove what we want to hear, instead listening for what Jesus is saying. If we want to have a healthy relationship with God it starts with understanding who God is and who God is not. It requires us to understand when we are worshiping God and when we have crafted God in our own, human image.

This is not as easy as it seems, because even in the Gospels Jesus is constantly misunderstood. In today’s reading he questions the people, “What have you come to see? A prophet? More than a prophet?”

He begs the question: “Who do you think I am?”

He’s looking for a confession of faith. He’s looking for a profession that he is the son of God, the Messiah. But the people are silent. It says in verse 29 that they “acknowledged the justice of God,” which is miles better than the Pharisees and the tax collectors, but acknowledging God’s justice and confessing who Jesus is are far from the same. Lots of people confess God’s justice, but do they know Jesus? So, Jesus concludes with a jarring critique of the people of an entire generation, comparing them to children in the marketplace who do not understand what it is they are looking for. They didn’t like John the Baptist because he was too much of a recluse; now they don’t like Jesus because he is not reclusive enough. The only person, at the end of the day, who will satisfy the people’s desired messiah is themselves. Nobody is happy with anything on offer.

Do you know people like this?

Jesus tells us we had better check our expectations, because most of the time we don’t see Jesus as he is but as we want him to be. It’s interesting that Jesus uses the phrase “To what will I compare the people of this generation…” because clearly it wasn’t everybody in that generation; clearly there were some disciples. More to the point, this critique could be leveled against every generation. And don’t we all love being lumped into a generation? Man, those baby boomers are ruining it for all of us! Yeah, but the real problem is Gen-X. Now, don’t even get me started about millennials!

Who doesn’t love being labeled with the worst generalizations of their generation? I know I do. Millennials are all lazy, and they spend all their time in their phones, and they don’t know how to have a conversation anymore, and they think the world owes them everything. I hear people say things like this and I want to wave my hand and say, “Hi, my name is Frank and I’m a millennial.” Oh, but it’s not about you; it’s just people like you. These generalizations are there for every generation, and, not surprisingly, every generation feels some kind of superiority over the generations that follow—of course they do; they birthed them!—but if you apply the stereotypes to individuals it becomes harder to level the same critique. If you actually sit down and get to know people from a different generation it becomes harder to see them as a sweeping generalization; instead, they become people. And that brings me back to Jesus, because a relationship with Jesus requires seeing Jesus not as a concept but as a person.

If Jesus were a concept then we could decide whether we want to “be Christian” or not, apart from any shared expectations. Then, faith would be a process of intellectual assent, saying “Yes!” to the Jesus-way—without caring whether the Jesus-way causes us to question ourselves or not. This is too often what Christianity is. It’s seen as membership in the way we might have membership at a gym; not participation in the body of Christ.  The point is that Jesus is a person with whom we can have a relationship. God is not only divine but also became human so that we could know him in a much more tangible way. So, while this relationship is bound to be different from the relationship you might have with a spouse, it is nonetheless a relationship. Jesus lays out expectations and we counter. Jesus knows us; do we know him?

The key to a healthy relationship with Jesus is not so much bargaining, because that probably won’t get you very far. Instead, the key to a relationship with Jesus is reminding ourselves how intimately close God is, and it is striving to understand who Jesus really truly is; not who we want him to be. We will either discover the true God or make ourselves into god. If it isn’t about Jesus, then we decide what is right and wrong; we decide who is righteous and who is not. When we end up making those choices—just as Adam and Eve did when they first tasted of the knowledge of good and evil—we inevitably choose against Jesus.

Jesus casts aspersions on a generation, because that generation—like every generation—makes God in their image. We all do it. Jesus doesn’t live up to our expectations. So, we decide that God is like me. Whenever it’s convenient we listen to Jesus; whenever it’s not we listen to that voice in our heads that tells us, “You know, I think I really know better.”

            The really good news is that, even as Jesus was laying blame on a generation of people, he came to and for the very same people. They would eventually crucify him, but they were also his disciples. We are all part of a generation and none of us want to be stereotyped by the worst of it. All of us want to rise above the generalities and become exceptional. The honest truth is that we won’t do enough; we’ll still often act those children casting aspersions from the corner of the marketplace. Yet, Jesus came for people such as those, people like us; for the worst of a generation; not just the best. You are more than your generation. Thankfully, to God you are a person, crafted intricately and specifically beautiful. Most importantly, you are loved by a God who was particular in a surprisingly similar way; human, vulnerable, yet powerful. Get to know that God. Manage your expectations—God will help you along the way—because while we were being children he was showing us what it is to be child-like, while we were sorting people by generations he was creating relationships with individuals, while we were judging he was saving. It’s a relationship worth having.