Once upon a time, there was a young man called Jeremiah.
He was from quite a good family –
his father was a priest, although not a high
priest,
and owned a fair bit of land not far from
Jerusalem.
So Jeremiah grew up in a fair amount of comfort,
loved and nurtured by his family.
Perhaps he had planned to be a priest himself when
he grew up.
But then one day, in about 626 BC, God came to
him, and said:
"Jeremiah, I am
your Creator, and before you were born, I chose you to speak for me
to the nations."
Jeremiah is shattered!
“Lord God, you’re making a big mistake!
I am a lousy public speaker and I’m too young
for anybody to take me seriously.”
But God insists:
“Don’t put yourself down because of your age.
Just go to whoever I send you to, and say whatever
I tell you to say.
Don’t let yourself feel intimidated by anyone,
because I’ll be there as back up for you.
You’ll be okay;
take my word for it.”
And Jeremiah is touched by God, and enabled to
speak God’s word.
Some six hundred years later, Jesus is teaching in
the synagogue one Sabbath day, as he often did.
There was a woman in the congregation who was
twisted and deformed –
perhaps she had scoliosis or perhaps it was an
arthritic condition.
Certainly it was long-standing.
We are told she had been like this for eighteen
years.
And Jesus suddenly notices her, and heals her.
She is able to stand fully upright again, and
starts praising God.
Well, that didn’t please the leader of the
synagogue.
Healing people like that on the Sabbath –
wasn’t that dangerously close to work?
“Oi,” he goes, “Stop healing people on the
Sabbath!
Now then you lot, if any of you want healed,
you come on any of the other six days of the week;
I don’t want any Sabbath-breaking going on
here!”
“Oh come on, mate,” says Jesus.
“I saw you taking your donkey down to the
drinking-trough earlier this morning, Sabbath day or no Sabbath day.
If it’s all right for you to take your donkey to
have a drink on the Sabbath,
it’s all right for me to heal this good lady,
whom Satan had bound for eighteen whole years!”
The leader of the synagogue had nothing to say to
this, but the crowd really cheered.
---oo0oo---
I think it’s about expectations, isn’t it?
God expected Jeremiah to proclaim His word to the
nations.
Jesus expected that the woman would be healed,
Sabbath day or no Sabbath day.
The ruler of the synagogue expected Jesus to keep
the Sabbath.
And Jeremiah and the woman?
I don’t think they expected anything at all!
What does God expect from us?
What do we expect from God’s people?
And what do we expect from God?
Firstly, then, what does God expect from us?
Jeremiah was expected to go and proclaim God’s
word.
He had been specifically called for this purpose,
and although he was horrified when the call came,
and tried to get out of it,
he ultimately accepted it, and trusted in God’s
promise that
“Attack you they will, overcome you they can’t”;
a promise that was fulfilled many times over in
the Biblical narrative.
I wonder what God is expecting of you?
I know I am expected to preach the Gospel.
Like Jeremiah, I was very young when I was called
–
about fifteen.
Unlike him, I wasn’t able to answer that call
for many years for reasons that I won’t go into now,
but suffice it to say that for about the past
thirty years I have known that this is what God has wanted me to do.
This is what God expects of me.
I am so grateful, every time I preach,
that all I am expected to do is to provide the
words;
God does the rest!
So what does he expect of you?
Some of you will know, definitely, what God
expects;
you are a steward,
or a local preacher,
or a musician.
Or, like my daughter, you’re called to
children’s ministry.
For others, it’s less clear cut.
You have a job, perhaps, or are bringing up a
family.
Or perhaps that is all behind you now, and you are
retired.
But whatever it is you do, you are expected to be
Christ’s ambassador.
You are a witness to him in everything you say and
do.
Now, before you start squirming uncomfortably,
and thinking “Oh dear, I’m not a very good
one, am I?”,
don’t forget that Jesus said that when the Holy
Spirit came,
we would be his witnesses throughout the known
world.
Not that we should be,
or ought to be,
but that we would be.
We are.
You are an ambassador for Christ,
and whether you like it or not,
whether you know it or not,
this is what you are, through the power of the
Holy Spirit who dwells within you.
When God calls you to do something,
whether it is some well-defined job like cleaning
the church,
or running a prayer group,
or speaking forth his word,
or simply praying quietly at home,
or whether you’re called to be God’s person
where you work, or where you live, God will enable you to do it, just
as he enabled Jeremiah.
---oo0oo---
And so to my second question for this morning:
What do you expect of God’s people?
When someone says he or she is a Christian,
what do you reckon they’re going to be like?
The leader of the synagogue was confounded when
Jesus didn’t conform to his expectation of what a good Jewish man
did or didn’t do on the Sabbath.
Healing people?
Seriously?
No, no, that counted as work!
And sometimes we are confounded when we come
across Christians whose standards of acceptable behaviour might
differ from ours.
Could they possibly be Christians at all?
Do real Christians behave like that?
Some churches have felt so strongly about some of
these issues that they have even split up,
causing enormous hurt and upset in their various
denominations.
Yet who are we to judge another’s behaviour?
In fact, you might remember that St Paul suggests
that if your brother is offended by something you
do or don’t do,
you should do it, or not do it, as the case may
be,
so as not to upset them, or, worse,
to let them think it’s all right for them to do
it,
when it might not be at all all right,
and might lead them away from God.
We need to be sensitive to one another,
and to refrain from judging one another.
We probably have our rules that we live by,
but we don’t have the right to force those rules
on to other people,
not even on to other Christians.
I suppose the thing is, we shouldn’t really
expect other Christians to be like us!
Many, of course, will be –
that’s why you go to this church, here,
because you find people you are comfortable with,
people whose vision of what God’s people are
like resonates with yours.
But there will be others whose views you are less
comfortable with;
who perhaps strike you as rather puritanical, or
rather lax.
Of course, when we know someone, we know what they
are like,
whether they are reliable,
whether you can trust them.
And we accept them, normally, for who they are.
Just as God does with us.
But we mustn’t be judgemental.
Maybe they hold views that we find strange, or
even unpleasant.
Maybe they feel free to behave in ways we’ve
been taught that Christians don’t do,
or ways that we feel would be sinful for us.
But it is not for us to judge.
Our Lord points out, in that collection of His
teachings known as the Sermon on the Mount,
that we very often have socking great logs in our
own eyes,
so how can we see clearly to remove the speck in
someone else’s?
In other words, keep your eyes on what’s wrong
with you,
not on what’s wrong with other people!
See to it that you obey your rules, and leave
other people to obey theirs.
That’s something, I think, that the leader of
the synagogue would have been wise to keep in mind,
rather than criticising Jesus for healing someone
on the Sabbath,
to say nothing of criticising the congregation for
coming to be healed that day.
He had rules he needed to keep,
and he needed other people to keep them, too.
But Jesus had other ideas.
For him, healing someone on the Sabbath was as
normal and as natural as making sure your livestock were fed, or your
cow was milked.
---oo0oo---
So, then, God is free to expect anything from us;
we should not, though, expect other Christians to
be just like us.
But what do we expect from God?
Jeremiah didn’t expect anything from God.
When told that he was to proclaim God’s word,
his first reaction was to panic:
“I can’t possibly! I’m a lousy public
speaker and much too young!”
But God gave him the gifts he needed to fulfil his
task,
and sometimes Jeremiah had to actively act out
God’s word, not just speak it!
The woman who was all twisted and bent over didn’t
expect anything from God, either.
She presumably went to the synagogue each week to
worship,
not really expecting anything to happen.
But that particular Sabbath day, Jesus was there –
and that made all the difference.
After eighteen years she was finally free of her
illness,
able to stand up straight,
able to walk normally and talk to people face to
face once more.
What did you expect from God this morning?
Let’s be honest, we come to church week after
week,
and on most Sundays nothing much happens!
We worship God, we spend some time with our
friends,
and then we go home again.
And that’s okay.
But some weeks are different, aren’t they?
Not often, but just sometimes we come away from
Church
knowing that God was there, and present, and real.
I wonder why these occasions are so rare?
Partly, of course, because mountain-top
experiences like that are rare,
that’s why we remember them.
There’s an old story of two men coming out of Church one Sunday morning
when the preacher had been rather more boring even than usual.
The first man said, “Honestly, what’s the
point?
I’ve been going to Church more or less every
Sunday for the past 30 years,
and I must have heard hundreds of sermons,
yet I hardly remember any of them!”
To which the second man replied, “Hmm, well;
I’ve been married for 30 years and my wife has
cooked me a meal more or less every night,
and I don’t really remember many of them,
either.
But where would I be without them?”
Church, mostly, is about providing daily bread for
daily needs.
We don’t expect to see miracles each Sunday,
or healings such as took place in the synagogue
that day.
But what do we expect when we come to Church?
Do we expect to meet God in some way?
What do we expect from God?
We know that our sins have been forgiven, right?
And that God is gradually making us into the
people he designed us to be.
But do we expect more?
Should we expect more?
Neither Jeremiah nor the woman in the synagogue
expected anything from God –
yet God gave, bountifully, to both of them in very
different ways.
---oo0oo---
Who was it who said “Expect great things from
God.
Attempt great things for God”?
I can’t remember right now,
but it’s really what I want to leave with you
this morning.
What does God expect from you?
Are you trying not to hear something you think God
might be trying to say?
What do you expect from other Christians?
Are you requiring a higher standard from them than
from yourself?
And what are you expecting God to do for you
today?
Amen.
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