Great
Expectations
Rev Alison
Longstaff, March 30, 2014
Bath Church
of the New Jerusalem
Habakkuk 2: 18-20; Luke 7: 24-35;
HS 3857:6-7 Portions
Happiness
is equal to reality divided by expectations.
- Jodi Picoult from the novel, 19
Minutes
My
happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse
proportion to my expectations. - Michael J. Fox
Did you know that “all true yoga instructors should be vegan”? Well,
actually, there is a yogic principle called “Ahimsa” and it means non-violence”
or “do no harm.” This is a broad
principle with many applications. But,
because people are people, in our North American yoga culture “Ahimsa” has
become narrowed down in meaning until it has become the expectation “be
vegan.” My favorite yoga teacher in
Waterloo, Ontario—a top-notch instructor and excellent human being—gets judged
regularly by other yoga practitioners when they discover she’s not vegan. She’s not even a vegetarian, shockingly
enough, though she dabbles in both from time to time. This teacher lives and breathes and works
diligently at non-harming in all aspects of her life, especially in her relationships
and business practices; yet some yogis judge her for not living according to their
rules, which is that “all true yoga instructors should be vegan.”
Brilliant author, life coach, and writer for O Magazine, Martha Beck,
experienced a similar collision with other people’s expectations. In her book, Expecting Adam, she
describes her experience when she discovered that she was carrying a Down’s
syndrome child. She was working on a
degree at Harvard at the time and suddenly found herself a political pawn,
caught between warring expectations. Many
of her fellow academics and professors assumed she would abort, reacting with
horror and judgment when they discovered that she was going to go ahead and “bring
an idiot child” into the world. One
doctor even went on a campaign to convince her that she was doing herself, the
world, and her unborn child a heinous disservice by not aborting immediately.
Conversely, once word got out that Martha was not going to abort, she was
besieged by folks who wanted to make her the poster child for the pro-life
movement. They rushed up with all sorts
of expectations about what she believed and what she would be willing to do for
their cause, and they got very angry with her when she wanted just to be left
alone with her decision. She did not want to be telling anyone else what
they should or shouldn't do in a similar situation. On top of having to deal with her own grief
and loss in discovering her baby’s special needs, she found herself battling
insults and arguments from both sides of an ideological war by people who were trying
to force her to behave according to their
expectations.
In the gospel stories we see the clash between what Jesus was expected to
be and do for his people, and what His actual mission was. The Jews of the day had long been expecting a
Messiah—a Messiah that would free them from Roman dominion, restore their
Temple to its former glory, and establish an earthly kingdom of unassailable
power and might. The disciples themselves
expected to be elevated to positions of power alongside Jesus when He became
“King.”
But Jesus’ purpose was to teach and model that the important things are not
physical power and might but the spiritual realities of love, service,
humility, and compassion. But the
incredibly dense disciples kept mishearing Jesus’s actual message, deafened
to it by their overriding expectations of what they thought He was supposed to
be. “Yeah, yeah, ‘love,’ okay. But seriously, can I sit at Your right hand in the Kingdom? I asked first!”
The thing about expectations is that the more attached we are to what we
imagine something should be, the more
blinded we will be to what it really is.
The more attached we are to our expectations of anyone or anything, the more likely we are to be disappointed or
angry when that person or group or event doesn’t measure up to what we expect. There is a direct correlation between our
expectations in relation to reality and our happiness.
We live in a
world full of expectations. We all have
them. Expectations are not bad
things. We need expectations or we
couldn't function. We expect the floor to
support us when we get out of bed. We
expect the air we breathe to be relatively safe and life-sustaining. We expect our
hearts to beat and our blood to circulate.
It is
good to become aware of how some of our expectations affect our own and each
other’s happiness. Our default
setting is to project our expectations onto others, and we do it all the
time. We can’t help it. We just do, without even thinking. We expect others to have the same “script” we
do. Then when someone inevitably doesn't
behave or speak or choose the way they are supposed to, we tend to get rather
grumpy with them and possibly quite judgmental.
Have you ever
gotten annoyed with someone for not doing what you thought they should do? Conversely, have you experienced someone
being mad at you for not doing something they expected you to do, and you had
no idea they expected it of you?
How recently
have you found yourself thinking something along the lines of, “If that person
really loved me, he or she would have known or done ...” Or perhaps something
like, “All good church members (or committee members or family members or
spouses, etc.) should know that we always … (fill in the blank)”?
And now
realize that each one of those thoughts is rich with information about you and
what you expected, and not-so-much information about what someone
else should have said or done. It can be
uncomfortable work to unearth our expectations and realize that the things we
have assumed are not the global, universal rules for everyone that we think
they should be. But I promise you: the more you uncover and identify the
expectations you place upon yourself and others, the more you will be able to
realize how you have contributed to past miscommunications and disappointments
in your relationships, and the more you will be able to both avoid, and/or
navigate wisely such miscommunications and disappointments in the future. You will have much more space to choose your
responses, and be much more aware of your own expectations and be able to
communicate around them rather than just project them onto others and then be
disappointed.
All of our unacknowledged, hidden expectations have the potential to do harm
to the health and well-being of all our relationships. The spiritual work of getting to know oneself
and learn about one’s own expectations pays off big time when it comes to
managing personal happiness and having healthy relationships. It simply pays to become more self-aware,
because then we can own and manage our expectations, and reduce the potential
harm we might do by speaking and acting from them without thought.
How tragic that Martha Beck had to defend her decision not to abort her
baby from warriors on both ends of the abortion divide.
How ironic that the principle of Ahimsa (or non-harming) is used as a justification
for judgment, contempt, and exclusion.
How naive it was for the disciples to expect Jesus to overthrow the Roman
government, and make the Jews great again in the land of Canaan.
And yet that is us. It is what we
do, again and again, until we learn better.
We have expectations of ourselves, of those we love, and of God; and
unless examined, they can all get in the way of healthy relationships.
When someone
is letting you down, know that it is connected to your expectations. The part you can control and change is what you
expected. Sometimes our expectations
are justified; sometimes not.
Regardless, it is reality that we must embrace, not what should have
been.
Go easy on
yourself and others. Do no harm. Assume the best when you can. Try, try not to get mad at others for
not living their lives according to your conscience. And know that God’s plan is always bigger
than we can envision, more wise than we can imagine, and more loving than our
wildest dreams. It is okay if we can’t
see the Big Picture yet. Isn't it cute
that we expect we can?
The Readings:
Habakkuk 2: 18-20 “An idol does no good, because a human made it; it is only a statue that teaches lies. The one who made it expects his own work to
help him, but he makes idols that can’t even speak! 19 How terrible it
will be for the one who says to a wooden statue, ‘Come to life!’ How terrible it will be for the one who says
to a silent stone, ‘Get up!’ It cannot
tell you what to do. It is only a statue
covered with gold and silver; there is no life in it.
20 The Lord is in his Holy Temple; all the earth should be silent in his presence.”
20 The Lord is in his Holy Temple; all the earth should be silent in his presence.”
Luke 7: 24-35
24 When John’s followers left, Jesus began talking
to the people about John: “What did you go out into the desert to see? A
reed blown by the wind? 25 What did you go out
to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, people who have fine clothes and
much wealth live in kings’ palaces. 26 But what did
you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, and I tell you, John is more than a
prophet. 27 This was written about him:
28 I tell you, John is greater than any other
person ever born, but even the least important person in the kingdom of God is
greater than John.”
29 (When the people, including the tax collectors,
heard this, they all agreed that God’s teaching was good, because they had been
baptized by John. 30 But the Pharisees and experts
on the law refused to accept God’s plan for themselves; they did not let John
baptize them.)
31 Then Jesus said, “What shall I say about
the people of this time? What are they like? 32 They
are like children sitting in the marketplace, calling to one another and
saying,
‘We played music for
you, but you did not dance; we sang a sad song, but you did not cry.’
33 John the Baptist came and did not eat bread or
drink wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon in him.’ 34 The
Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! He eats too
much and drinks too much wine, and he is a friend of tax collectors and
sinners!’ 35 But wisdom is proved to be right by
what it does.”
HS 3857:6-7 (Portions) Humankind was such when the Lord came into the
world that we had grown even more concrete-minded, especially those who were
members of the Church. This is illustrated by the disciples who were unable to
understand things in a metaphorical or abstract manner, even though they were
with the Lord constantly and hearing so many teachings about His kingdom. They
were unable to have any other concept … of the Messiah
than that He would promote their race to a position of power and glory over all
the nations of the world. Even after hearing so many things from the Lord about
the heavenly kingdom, the disciples were still unable to think anything else
than that the heavenly kingdom would be like an earthly kingdom, where God the
Father would be supreme, after Him the Son, and then themselves the twelve.
[7] If they had been
told that the word 'disciples' was not used to mean themselves but all people
who are truly good and are living a conscientious life, or that in the Lord's
kingdom there are no thrones and no positions of government and dominion, and
that they would not be able to pass judgment on even the smallest aspect of any
other person, they would have rejected those teachings, and each would have
left the Lord and gone back to his own employment. The Lord spoke in the way He
did so that the disciples would receive what He said and gradually be lead to
think more spiritually or abstractly. Spiritual or internal truth always lies
stored within the Lord’s external words, and in course of time can be laid
bare.
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