Experience the Passion: Experience Ultimate Wholeness

Sunday, April 4, 2004

Rev. Ronald Burcham

Typed from audio transcript

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Ten-year-old Finius was up before the crack of dawn. The year was 1820. Finius couldn't stay in bed any longer because today was the day. This was the day that Finius would be able to see his island. On the day that Finius was born, his grandfather presented to him a deed to an island. A piece of real estate was his. Now not every child was a landowner, but Finius was. His parents never let him forget that. Told him that when they got older, they expected their son would remember them. While other children were dreaming of playing and going out west, not Finius, no, no, no; he was thinking about his island, thinking about the crops that maybe he would raise, or maybe the livestock, the home he would build. He couldn't wait until finally he could see his island, Ivy Island. That was his. He begged his father for years to take him so he could see the island. "Ah, but not yet, Son, not yet."

Finally, today had arrived. He had badgered his father so much. They were going to head off early in the morning to see Ivy Island. They loaded up the wagon. Finius, his father, and the hired hand headed out. Well, every time they came to the top of a hill, Finius would say, "Dad, can I see my island from here? Can we see it from this spot?" "No, Son, just be patient. Just wait." Finally, after what seemed forever to Finius, they got to the top of one hill and he says, "There, Son, across that meadow, do you see that tall strand of trees? Just beyond that is Ivy Island. That's the property your grandfather deeded to you on the day you were born." Finius couldn't take it any longer. He jumped out of the wagon, and he just started at a full sprint across that meadow. He got to the line of trees, he looked out to see his island, he stopped dead in his tracks, and his heart sank. Instead of seeing a choice piece of real estate, he saw five acres of snake-infested marshland.

His grandfather had said it was the most valuable land in all of Connecticut, but it was worthless. His father said it was a generous gift, but it was a joke. So while Finius stood there stunned, staring at the marshland, his father, and the hired hand just roared with laughter. They just couldn't stop. But Finius didn't laugh, and Finius didn't forget. The disappointment of that day shaped his life. The boy who had been deceived would spend his life deceiving others. The child who had been fooled, he'd make a career out of fooling other people. You probably don't know him as Finius. You don't know him as a landowner, but you do know him as a promoter. You might recognize him as P.T. You might recognize him as the one who coined the phrase, "There's a sucker born every minute." You might know him as P.T. Barnum. That was his life shaped by disappointment.

And such is the life of countless other people that go off in search of a promise land and all they find is a swamp. They go off with high dreams and high expectations only to face disappointment after disappointment and a life filled with disappointment is an empty life, an empty life of just disappointments that pile up one on top of the other. Disappointments really come from the fact of unmet expectations. We expect something and then all of a sudden it's not there. Finius had expected that he had a prime piece of real estate and, for ten years, he counted on that, and he had that expectation of owning his own island. He dreamt of wealth and power. He dreamt of the prestige of having his own place. All that was dashed away as he looked out at the swamp. That kind of disappointment goes deep, and it affects a person.

Maybe we gain a little bit of an insight into the people of Jerusalem who welcomed Jesus on Sunday and were thirsty for blood on Friday. They had high expectations of Jesus. All of their dreams and their hopes were laid upon this man. There was talk about how He had raised Lazarus from the dead. There was talk of the other miracles He did. Some of them had sat at His feet in the temple and had listened to Him teach and preach, and they just knew Jesus was the one. He was the Messiah, but what they were expecting out of a Messiah was so much different from what God was delivering. What they expected was that Jesus would come into the city triumphant, that He would kick the Romans out, they would become an independent state once again, and they would return to the glory days of King David and of Solomon and all of the splendor. They had such high expectations of what Jesus would bring to them, but by the end of the week, their great king was a bloodied, beaten, half-alive, ridiculed teacher standing in front of Pilate. All of their expectations had not been met. All of their dreams had been dashed. Disappointment doesn't even seem like a word that fits what they were feeling.

Have you had unmet expectations? I know you have. All of us have unmet expectations. When we're young, the world is ours. We dream of anything and everything. Ask a child what they want to be when they grow up, and each day it will be a different answer because they're all possibilities. Maybe they're going to be a fireman one day, a policeman the next, a doctor, a lawyer. They're going to become anything and everything. They're going to go off and join the circus, or they're going to be a basketball star. The whole world is open to them. They have all kinds of dreams, all kinds of expectations. Ask a college graduate what their life is going to be like. Well, they're going to have a terrific career. They're going to have a wonderful family. They're going to be on the fast track and go further than anyone else in all of their family. The whole world is out there in front of them. You've had those dreams. I've had those dreams, and what happens when life doesn't turn out the way we think it's going to, because it seldom does. It seldom turns out to what we expect it to be. All of a sudden, you realize you're not vice president of the company or maybe you are and it's not what you want at all. You look down and you discover, as you're figuring out your taxes, that you're making less this year than you did two years ago because of all the downsizing that took place. Oh, and the dreams of the family… well, that didn't work out… or it just didn't materialize.

How many expectations have you had in life that haven't been met? How many disappointments have you had to suffer through? Disappointments can shape your life if you let them… if you let them. Finius had been fooled, so he spent the rest of his life fooling other people. He let that disappointment shape the rest of his life. He had been deceived. He would deceive others. The crowd that gathered at Jerusalem: their expectations had not been met. Nothing was going to happen. Nothing was going to work out the way they wanted it to work out. So their shouts of "Hallelujah," and "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord," turn out to, "Crucify Him," "Get rid of Him. What good is He to us anyway? Life is going to remain the same." Their disappointments had turned to bitterness and to anger, and if you and I don't watch it, our disappointments will do the same. We'll let our disappointments, our missed expectations, shape us and determine how we live our life and what we feel about our life. For some people who have gone through disappointment after disappointment, they just don't have expectations anymore. They say to themselves, "I won't expect anything to work out for the good." So they paint the worst possible scenario of every situation. That way, they'll tell you, they're never disappointed. They're always surprised to the positive because it always works out better than what they thought, but is that how you want to go through life -- always expecting the worst, always painting the worst scenario?

Other people have gotten mad at God. "How could God let this happen?" After all that you've done for God, after all the faithfulness that you've been to Him, you've been in church every week, you've gone through confirmation, you've done all the things God has asked you to do, and now how could God do this, when the person over there, who's never been inside of a church building and everything is going well for them. You turn against God, and you shake your fist at God and you say, "So what good are you to me anyway?" Are disappointments going to shape you that way? Is it going to leave you with an empty and incomplete life?

That's not the life God wants for you. That's not the life He intends. God wants you to have a complete life, a fulfilling life, a life that is whole in every way. To have that ultimate wholeness in your life means you need to change your concept of what brings fulfillment to you, what brings completeness in your life.

You see, Finius was caught up in the "if only" game. If only the land would have turned out well, my life would have been different. If only maybe my mother would have told me in secret, so I wouldn't have been so disappointed when I got there. If only my father and the hired hand wouldn't have laughed for so long at me, then maybe I wouldn't have become so bitter. You know the crowd at Jerusalem was living in the land of "if only." If only the Romans were out of Jerusalem, we could be free. If only we were an independent state once again, then life would be better. If only Jesus was the leader, we thought He was supposed to be. If only. But "if onlys" are never satisfied because you never run out of them.

Have you lived in the land of "if only?" If only I had gotten a different boss. If only I could go to a different school, then things would be better. If only I got the promotion. If only I made just a little bit more money. If only I could win the lottery. If only we had a bigger house. If only we could have a child. You live in the land of "if only," but it never ends.

I don't know if you caught the article in the Des Moines Register this past week, I think it was Monday. It had a big section about happiness and all these researchers and scientists trying to figure out the key ingredients to happiness. And all the things we usually think of were thrown out the window. For instance, it says that people usually think if they win the lottery that it's going to make them happy. Other people want to paint the worst possible scenario and say no it would make their life miserable. Do you know what they concluded? It didn't do either. It didn't make any difference at all. It didn't make them happy. It didn't make them sad. It just didn't have any affect on their life. Many people think, "Well, if only I can get married and I settle down and have a family, that will make me happy." They found out that's not true. People weren't any happier after two years of marriage. It was pretty much back to the same. People think if they get a promotion or if they live in a different location, all these external things were cited but none of them brought wholeness or completeness to a person. They were fleeting, maybe momentary happiness, but certainly not being content with life.

We need to change our concept of what makes our life complete. It is not anything external; it's everything internal. What's going on in our hearts, and what's happening in our minds? It means we have to change our expectations… change our expectations of what we think should happen and what we really should expect to happen. You all probably know my favorite author is Max Lucado. Max Lucado, talking about the crowds at Jerusalem, put it this way: "People wanted Him," that is Jesus, "to redeem Israel but He knew better. He would rather His people be temporarily oppressed than eternally lost. When forced to choose between battling Pilate and battling Satan, he chose to battle the one that we couldn't win. He said no to what they wanted and yes to what they needed." And aren't you glad He did? Aren't you glad Jesus said, "No," to what they wanted and yes to what they needed?

We change our expectations, happy that Jesus says yes, to what we need and not always, to what we want. Do we like it when Jesus says no, to what we want? No, we don't always like that. We're disappointed. It's hard to take it when God says no, when He closes the door that we thought for sure we were supposed to walk through, but that's when faith kicks in. That's when our faith tells us that God knows more about this life than we do. That's when faith tells us that God is going to get us through, that God is going to lead us and we just need to relax. Put ourselves into His arms. We need to change our expectations.

Change our expectations, maybe like the man who is living alone. A man is living alone, and he's tired of it being quiet in his apartment. He just doesn't like it anymore, so he heads off to the pet store. He figures that maybe a pet will help him out. Some of you are smiling; you've heard this one. Okay. Well, he goes into the pet store and he says, "I want something that's going to keep me company." The pet storeowner says, "I have the perfect thing for you. It's a parakeet. He sings beautifully." He says, "Tomorrow tonight, when you come home from work, your whole apartment is going to be filled with singing." So the man buys it. Sure enough, the next night, he comes home; the place is just filled with singing. It's beautiful noise coming out. He goes in to admire his new purchase, to look at his parakeet, and he looks down and he notices that the bird only has one leg. The man is outraged. He sold him a parakeet with only one leg, so he gets on the phone, and he calls the owner of the pet store. He says, "What's the deal here? You sold me a parakeet with only one leg." And the owner says, "Well, you have to decide what you want. Do you want a bird who can sing or one who can dance?"

You have to change your expectations. What is it you really want? Do you want a God who's just going to give you anything and everything you want and let you sort through the mess and figure it out, or do you want a God who's going to give you exactly what you need and sometimes say no, to what you want?

The passion of Jesus proves beyond a doubt that God is going to give us what we need. In fact, no matter what the cost, God is going to give us what we need. Jesus was willing to go through the beatings. He was willing to go through the humiliation. He was willing to go through death on the cross and suffer hell itself because that's what we needed. Isaiah says that through His death, peace has been made with God. We needed that from Jesus, His sacrifice so our sins could be forgiven, so we could live in harmony with God once again. It may not be what the people wanted, but it's what they needed, and it's what you and I needed. Aren't you glad that God does what we need, not always what we want? When we change our expectations, when we expect that God is going to do exactly the right thing, that's when we can relax. That's when we can know our life has meaning, that we can have a fulfilled life, that we can have a complete life, because we have a Father who has promised us nothing but the best.

Unlike Finius' father, this is no joke because you won't be disappointed. We have a Father who's willing to do anything so what you need has been done, and we have a Father who makes sure that you trust in Him and you expect the best from Him, and you'll never be disappointed. Amen.

Copyright 2004 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church