Rats! Frank said he’d be here, and now it’s late. I knew it. Well, what can I expect? “This year, Charlie Brown, I won’t pull the football away; I promise!” Well, what did he expect? The Nevada cattle-baron abuses his grazing-rights, and the state government backs him! Well, what did we expect? The regressive Supreme Court kills Affirmative Action and interracial rights, pandering to once-sleeping Jim Crow….Yeah, what could we expect?
So this Second Sunday of Easter is an in-your-face to our meager expectations by affirming the world-changing news that God continues to defeat the tarnished and the tawdry! Eastertide is a 50-day campaign to pull the skeptic back into active belief: Peter rallied those on the doorstep of faith by saying of Jesus, “But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.” (Acts 2:24) Our jaded expectations may be prevalent, but not permanent!
We continue to explore Peter’s understanding, as he writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…” (I Peter 1:3) Just in time: most of us had almost given up. Roland McGregor opines, “What God did in the resurrection of Jesus is change the expectations of everyone who hopes and believes…. The resurrection is not a manifestation of wishful thinking on the part of first-century Mediterranean people but rather a new hope that was created by the creator.”
Sunday’s Gospel is the famous story of “Doubting” Thomas, my hero who asked the silly questions that everyone else wanted to… He appears in John’s Gospel as the foil, the one who HAD to feed our questions to Jesus in order to elicit a teaching response. None of the disciples really expected Jesus to show, on that first Easter: the doors were locked. Thomas, speaking for me, didn’t expect a physical presence. Then as now, John’s readers themselves had low expectations of a God and Risen Savior who had to break in… We enlightened ones through the years have limited our hopes to “reasonable” expectations. We grieve over society’s abuses, yet won’t expect anything to change…
And so, on this Sunday just after the brass and majesty of the announced Resurrection, we expect a horde of newly -revived Believers to pour through our sanctuary doors! As Easter People, we expect our brothers and sisters in Christ to be in the halls of government and the corridors of commerce, busily changing the prevalent ethic! Touched by the Resurrection, I expect to be kinder, more forgiving, less prejudiced than I have been! So what do YOU expect??
God Bless Us, Every One….. Horace Brown King
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