In a world where much has gone wrong, we can expect that God will fix it. We even say what we expect him to do, and we expect it on our timeframe. That is to misunderstand God.
On Good Friday Christians recalled the death of Jesus of Nazareth, who was expected by many to be the one to free Israel from its Roman occupation. Instead, he was captured and cruelly crucified. Expectations were dashed. If not Jesus, then who would it be? After all, Jesus had healed many diseases, he had opened the eyes of the blind and made the lame walk. He had fed crowds with a few fish and some small loaves of bread. Nobody else had ever done anything like this. No wonder they expected him to free Israel from the Romans. He had spoken of the coming of the kingdom of God, which many thought meant freeing Israel, and some even tried to make him king (according to their view of what a king should be). All that finished with his death at the hands of the Romans.
But then there came the startling news that he had appeared to his disciples, alive once more. This was surely too good to be true. Those whom Jesus had raised from the dead eventually died again, but Jesus was claiming that now he had been raised from the dead, he would never again die. Then just when the disciples thought that Jesus was back to stay again, he departed, raised up to heaven, but only after promising that he would be with them until the end of the age.
So his death, resurrection and lifting up to heaven were not what the disciples expected. We too can have our expectations of God saving us from our troubles. We complain that God should not allow this or that terrible thing to happen. Jesus promised that his kingdom would come. Well, where is it? Has anything he promised come true? Will it ever come true?
While this kind of disappointment is understandable, it misses the point of what Jesus said. It turns out that God’s plans completely confound us. God does not do what we want him to do, when we want him to do it. But despite that we ignore the things he does tell us to do, to help make the world a better place.
This is why Jesus calls his disciples to have faith. That is, we need to trust that God has a plan to remedy all that has gone wrong with the world. We cannot expect that God will do what we want, when we want it. His ways are laid out for us in the Bible. God’s kingdom is coming, but it will not be what we expect. Jesus told many stories which often started "The kingdom of God is like ... " and then spoke of people and events in a way that was easily understood. But often these stories turned expectations upside down. The coming of the kingdom of God was a reality, but it is not what we might expect. God is indeed planning to make everything right again, but not the way we want, and not when we want it. Indeed, one reason to drop our own expectations is that God has promised that his future will be greater than anything we can imagine for ourselves.
That is the meaning of Christian faith — trusting that God will indeed bring renewal and healing to a world gone astray — while also trusting that God will do this in his way and his time, not ours. The central message of the Easter story is that God upended everyone’s expectations in raising Jesus from the dead. Death was not the end, but the means by which he would achieve his plan — by destroying the power of death through raising Jesus. He promises that we too will share in that resurrection which is to come. All God’s people will be raised from the dead to share new life forever in a world made new. Our expectations will be met, but beyond what we can possibly imagine, and it will happen in God’s time, not ours. God call us to trust him and have faith that this is so. We know that God will fulfil his promises to save the world from the grip of death since he has already begun to do this in Jesus.
What do we want? God’s kingdom of justice and peace.
When do we want it? It will surely come, but in God’s time. Lord, grant us patience.
- Chris Gousmett is a Mosgiel author.
