Whatever You're Expecting, Expect a Surprise
One of the many reasons I enjoy reading the story of the ascension of Christ is because the disciples were clueless. After years of living with Jesus, they still didn’t understand why he came to earth in the first place, or what would come next. Some days I can derive a tremendous amount of solidarity from that one, tiny detail because some days I feel as clueless as they were.
There they were, standing on a hillside, talking to a man who was supposed to be dead, who was dead for 36 hours, who had been tortured and executed by the Roman empire until all of the blood had been drained out of his body. People don’t recover from those kinds of injuries. And yet, there he was, living and breathing in a way that seemed even more alive than he was the first time!
If Christ would have made only one appearance after being raised from the dead, even if he were to show himself to every one of his followers at once, they might have dismissed the experience. It could have been labeled as a mass hallucination, or merely a vision. But Jesus made more than a dozen appearances during the six weeks that passed between his resurrection and his ascension.
He surprises one of his most devoted disciples, a woman named Mary, while she is frantically looking for the person responsible for raiding his tomb and stealing his corpse.
He appears out of thin air to a bunch of terrified disciples who were hiding behind locked windows and doors, hoping to avoid being captured and killed by the same people who killed Jesus.
He shows up in a crowd of five hundred people, many of them his friends and family members, as if nothing had changed, even though everything had changed.
He even holds a fish barbecue on the beach for a few of the disciples who were in the middle of an attempt to return to their pre-Jesus vocation: fishing.
And yet, after dedicating his ministry to the disenfranchised, to the “worthless” people, after allowing himself to be subjected to countless injustices with no complaining, after blatantly displaying his lack of earthly authority, they were still wondering when Jesus would overthrow the Roman rule of Israel and take the kingship for himself.
When I was a kid, I watched a lot of commercials on TV. Everyone did because we didn’t have much of a choice. If you wanted G.I. Joe or Transformers or Thundercats, you had to wait through commercial breaks (or go pee, or grab a snack).
Every once in a while, the melody or lyrics from one of those old ads will float to the forefront of my consciousness, and I’ll find myself whistling or humming along with my brain for a few minutes. I kind of like it, actually, because, almost invariably, someone close by also remembers the jingle and we end up laughing about it.
There’s one commercial, however, that never strays far away, never fully retreats back into the dark recesses of my subconscious. It’s from a McDonald’s ad featuring a song by their clown mascot, Ronald, called, “Do You Believe in Magic?” And it’s really only a couple of lines.
Anything can happen right before your eyes.
Whatever you’re expecting, expect a surprise.
From the very beginning of his life on earth, even before he was born, Jesus was substandard, not living up to the centuries-old expectations of an entire nation of people desperate to see him become the ultimate prophet, priest, and king of the Jews.
Conceived out of wedlock, birthed among the livestock, hunted by the government as a toddler, and raised by working-class parents, he was unremarkable in most of the ways we would normally look for. Just like the prophet, Isaiah spoke: “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”
He undermined the authority of the religious leaders, he frequently broke the law, and he almost never gave a straight answer to any of the serious questions asked of him. He was a blasphemer, a drunkard and glutton, and most likely in league with demons.
At least, this was the image painted by those with the most influence. Instead of defending himself, however, Jesus answered these kinds of challenges with a little bit of laughter, a lot of compassion, and with even more determination to continue doing exactly and only what he saw his Father doing..
“He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” Even with centuries of prophecies about the Messiah, and centuries of analysis and debate concerning who and what he would be, they got it all wrong. They never saw the coming of the Christ. The nation of Israel was clueless.
There are hundreds of differing beliefs in Christendom about the second coming of Christ, about the end of the world, about what happens to people after they die, some of them in diametric opposition to one another. There have been centuries of prophecies about all of these things, and centuries of analysis and debate concerning the when and where and how Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead” (or if it will happen at all).
When Christ came to earth the first time, his life and ministry were never predictable. Like I said, even his disciples were clueless.
And sometimes we still are.
So, whether you’re expecting resurrection and rapture or kingdom dominion, whether your views about the end of the world are dispensational or allegorical—whatever your theology, you should leave plenty of room for the very real, very distinct possibility that you are wrong about some things, that we all are, and that the Holy Spirit would say to all of the churches that our hope is firmly rooted in the mercy and grace of God through Christ Jesus, and not, in any way, dependent on our finite minds being able to wrap themselves around the secret future planned for us by an infinitely loving Creator.
During some moments, I find myself waiting in the middle of Advent, actively waiting, and watching for Christ to come. During other moments, I find myself simply waiting for Advent to be over, wanting to rush headlong into opening gifts and Christmas dinner and tidings of comfort and joy. I want nice, easy, predictable surprises, not a surprise visit to the most intimate places of my heart from someone who is carrying so many gifts and blessings, so much healing and wholeness, he needs me to open the door for him. Some days my flesh screams out the same, childish complaints Jesus lamented about hearing from those around him:
We played the pipe for you,
and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge,
and you did not mourn.
But the biggest surprise of all is that, only a few verses later in that same chapter (Matthew 11), after indicting his generation for their unbelief and lack of trust, in a moment in the narrative when one might expect him to walk away in disgust, he pleads, he begs…
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
You may think you have seen and heard it all when it comes to God. You may believe your heart is beyond healing, beyond hope. You might think you are unlovable, unworthy, unsalvageable. Or, it could be that anger and contempt–which are often disguised as doubt and unbelief–fill up your heart completely. You may have walked away in disgust. (I felt and thought all of these things, for years.)
If any of those things sound familiar, I challenge you, I dare you to pray a single prayer from the heart, a prayer of two words, directly to God:
Surprise me.
To those who have ears to hear… Expect a surprise.
Very good, thought provoking, and encouraging.
wonderful