John 12:20-33
The city of Nassau in the Bahamas was a haven for pirates in the 17th century. Some of this history has remained, including “the Pirates and Dungeons tour.” Expectations of secret passages and chambers hidden beneath the city, still full of instruments of torture and pain. Caverns and caves along the coast where trunks full of stolen treasure had been hidden and perhaps forgotten for centuries. I was envisioning scenes from “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
I got instead a two hour tour of the city featuring stops at several touristy knick-knack stands all selling the same t-shirts and shell necklaces, and 20 minutes in a dilapidated makeshift museum. This museum featured fake cells and tape recorded sound effects to help you envision the chipped and faded pirate mannequins having an actual swordfight. It looked to be hugely disappointing.
Reality often doesn’t measure up to our expectations. Is it the fault of reality or the fault of our expectations? I wonder what the Greeks were expecting to see when they told Philip they wanted to see Jesus.
Probably witnessed the big Palm Sunday parade which had just occurred where Jesus entered Jerusalem like royalty. Everyone shouting praises and waving palm branches and hailing him king. They’d most likely heard about all the healings and miracles. Certainly Jesus’ fame had spread pretty far by this time – who knows what stories people were hearing?
So we’ll never know what these Greeks were expecting. But chances are that it was not what they expected. Probably looked to be hugely disappointing, because what they got was a man ready to die – a grain of wheat falling to the earth. And this is his glorious moment – the moment he came for.
So I’m wondering what your expectations are here. Did you come to see Jesus? Did you come with expectations of what Jesus should be like, or what he should be doing, or what a difference he should be making in your life? Or did you come to see friends? Did you come expecting to be entertained, or to be bored? Did you expect the same ol’ thing, or something new and exciting? What do you expect from your time here? What do you expect from Jesus? Are your expectations in line with the reality? And if not, how do you deal with failed expectations?
We don’t know what the Greeks in this text did, but some people, when they don’t experience what they expect to experience, simply walk away from God. They drop out of sight, give up. God didn’t do what I expected. Jesus wasn’t there for me.
If the Greeks who approached Philip expected signs, healings, parades, they were going to be disappointed.
If Jesus didn’t meet their expectations, it’s because their expectations weren’t high enough!
If they were expecting signs, Jesus was bringing the kingdom of God. If they were expecting healings, Jesus was bringing new life. If they were expecting power, Jesus was bringing forgiveness and hope and renewal. And the sign is a man preparing for death. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
Our expectations are unreliable at best; they are broken, human, and quite honestly, usually pretty selfish. We expect Jesus to clean up our mess, to give forgiveness without making any changes in us, to bring us to the kingdom of heaven when we die without living in the kingdom while we’re here.
We expect the fruit while still remaining an unchanged grain. But the reality is that Jesus reveals real life, full life, kingdom life coming when that seed is no longer a seed.
Usually our expectations revolve around remaining a seed – “change my circumstances, so that I can remain a seed,” “make them act differently so I can remain a seed,” “do you know what those people did to me?” “look how wrong they are.” And Jesus doesn’t usually meet those expectations. The reality of Jesus is way far removed from our meager, broken, selfish expectations. The reality is hugely more life-giving than our expectations can ever be.
The reality is that Jesus died so we could live. That Jesus brings newness so we can be changed. That Jesus leads the way so we can know the road to life. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
The reality is that in Jesus we die to our expectations, and we live to the reality of the kingdom of God.
What I learned in Nassau, Bahamas is that the museum depicted the reality of pirate life much more accurately than my expectations. And the reality is that I enjoyed it much more than I expected to.