As Enthusiasm Becomes Disillusionment
Fourteenth Sunday Scripture Readings
Once again, this morning, as we hear about Jesus, his disciples, and the crowds, we’re challenged to find ourselves in the story. I hope we can all relate to what the crowd felt that day because I believe we’ve all felt like that at times. It’s perfectly human and a necessary stage in spiritual growth to fall into that kind of skepticism. We can only pray that none of us gets stuck in the attitudinal rut we find among the good people of Nazareth.
Haven’t we all reveled in the enthusiasm we felt when we were facing something new and exciting? Perhaps it was a first day at school, or the first day on a new job, or the first brilliant hours of a new love. This also happens to us when we get our first heady taste of adult spirituality—that moment when we’re first overcome with a sense of the depth of God’s love for us. These are kairos moments: those critical times after which everything appears different … at least for a while.
Do you remember how Saint Mark described Jesus’s first visit to his hometown after his baptism in the Jordan? “The people were astonished at his teaching for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.” [1:22] As a result, “His fame spread everywhere throughout the whole region of Galilee.” [1:28] He returns only a few months later, but their enthusiasm has soured. What happened? In fact, the people’s reactions were predictable, based on the very nature of their enthusiasm itself. Our enthusiasm is always based on our expectations of something wonderful coming to us in the future, be it the promise of new vistas opening for us at school, or new opportunities for advancement at work, or new levels of intimacy, understanding, and support from our relationships—including our relationship with God. For the Jewish people, it was the fulfillment of the promise of a savior king who would restore them to freedom and greatness as a nation.
Unrealistic expectations of personal fulfillment and deliverance from all our problems are at the root of our disillusionment. There’s an old saying that bears remembering: “Expectations are premeditated resentments.” Why? Because life never matches our expectations. Sometimes, we expect too much, most times, we expect too little, and almost all the time, our expectations blind us to what we do receive. We don’t often get what we want, but we always get what we need, whether we recognize it at the time, or not.
Feelings of enthusiasm and euphoria should raise a red flag for us because they’re almost always based on unreasonable expectations, leading to disappointment and discouragement. Look at the word enthusiasm itself in its Greek roots: en-theos-iasmos, meaning “in the god inspired,” or becoming possessed by the god. In the spiritual life, when we are overtaken by enthusiasm—that ecstatic experience of overwhelming joy—we ultimately find ourselves empty-handed. Like any addiction, the pursuit of so-called spiritual experiences leads to a fruitless chase after those that recreate or exceed our previous ones. They also deflect us from the painful soul-cleansing and soul-strengthening that is so essential to spiritual growth. Sadly, religious enthusiasm leads ultimately to exhaustion, discouragement, and bitterness. Jesus didn’t fulfill the enthusiastic expectations of the people of his hometown. It’s no wonder they turned on him.
There’s another dynamic at play in today’s gospel that’s related to the pursuit of unrealistic expectations: our human tendency to misjudge people. We often—if not always—jump to conclusions about other people based on incomplete if not inaccurate information. We behave as though we’re living in a static world where everything always was as it is, and always will be this way. We want firm and unchangeable facts, and when we believe that we have found that truth, we cling to it for dear life, even in the face of contrary evidence. We resist change and find impermanence threatening. This is especially true concerning our opinions of people we’ve known well or for a long time.
“Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” We know who Jesus is, so whom is he pretending to be? Who does he think he is? What they forgot, and what we have a hard time remembering, is that we can’t ever judge who a person is. We can only say who a person was, and that’s never finished until each person has taken his or her last breath. So, what we have here in today’s gospel is, in effect, a “brain freeze.” The people of Nazareth were frozen in their expectations of whom the Messiah would be, and in their evaluations of whom Jesus had been for them. Their brain freeze locked them into the past and locked them out of the present and the future.
“So he was not able to perform any mighty deeds there…. He was amazed at their lack of faith.” What about those miracles? We were trained to think of miracles as suspensions of the laws of nature. This over-enthusiastic definition derives from certain of our expectations, and how we believe events should play out. When they don’t, that leads to disappointment and disillusionment, as when one prays for a miraculous healing that never comes. “See?” they may say, “God doesn’t answer prayer.” It’s the human expectations that are frustrated, not God’s power. So, when seeking a miracle, we need to shift our expectations because miracles occur all the time, not so much in the physical world, but in our own consciousness. A miracle occurs every time our perspective shifts and we’re able to look at things differently. The miracles that Jesus performed—his mighty deeds—weren’t so much suspensions of the laws of nature as they were radical shifts in perspective among his followers. These followers were those who no longer saw him or their world through the narrow lens of their unrealistic expectations.
What are our expectations of ourselves and our lives? What are our expectations of one another? What are our expectations of God and of this Eucharist? Are our expectations unrealistic and leading us toward disappointment and discouragement? Or does our faith in God allow us to lay aside our prejudices and preconceptions and let the Spirit guide us in paths unknown? Miracles happen only when we abandon our expectations of God, of one another, and of ourselves, and when we open ourselves to the uncomfortable, and sometimes painful—but limitless—possibilities of grace.
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