If there is anything more humbling than being a preacher, I don’t know what it is.  Last Sunday, after calling Travis McHenry by his father’s name in the baptistry, I nearly dropped Mike De Los Santos during his baptism.  I was able to collect enough sense to tell him that, though I might have let him down, Jesus never would.  Then, after leaving out an entire section of my sermon which, frightening to me, no one even noticed, we went to lunch with some friends who were in town for the Gideon’s convention and had stopped by to worship with us.  It was at lunch that the lessons on humility continued in spades over cheese enchiladas. 

These folks were members of one of my first full time churches out of seminary some twenty years ago.  We got to telling stories and before long the conversation turned in the direction of one particular woman in that church who was, in my experience, one of the meanest, most unforgiving and most judgmental people I’ve ever known who also claimed to be a Christian.  (This morning, names have been eliminated to protect the unforgiven.)  Needless to say, my friends confirmed for Nancy that the stories I had told were all true.  That the mean things I said this woman had done, in the name of Jesus, she had in fact done.  I was having a good time (isn’t it always fun to rejoice over someone else’s failings?) until my friend told me the rest of the story.  That years ago the mean woman had told her how, from her earliest childhood, her mother had told her every single day how she did not love her and wished she’d never been born. 

The Holy Spirit must enjoy moments like this.  I know that I felt a tap on my shoulder, a still small voice in my heart’s ear.  “Schmucker, aren’t you the one who just finished preaching a whole sermon series on forgiveness?  Aren’t you the one who just finished saying to your folks that we never ever have the right to judge because we never know the whole story behind anyone else’s behavior?  When are you going to let go of a twenty-year-old prejudice against this woman you never did have the right to judge?”

By the time the Spirit finished tap-dancing on my shoulder, pile-driving the truth about forgiveness deep into my conscience, I felt about six inches tall.  I now know what I should have at least suspected twenty years ago.  This woman’s meanness was about far more than would ever meet the eye.  It certainly wasn’t about me, the king of what-if-they-don’t-like-me-paranoia.  She’d never known love from at least one of the two people in this world most responsible for impressing unconditional love on her tender young heart before it hardened into white-hot anger, an anger she would deny, at nearly everyone, and left her shoving and pushing people away, even people who wanted to love her, even some of her own family.  She was only giving what she’d been given.  All the Spirit wanted to know was when I was going to let her off the hook for being the broken-hearted little girl she still is, even in her seventies.  People aren’t like wine; we don’t necessarily get better with age.

Please believe me, I spent many a sleepless night wondering how this woman could even claim to be a Christian and behave the way she did.  Only to be reminded twenty years later that, if I’m going to claim Christ as my Lord, there are some things I must turn loose as well.  That is what Jesus said, isn’t it?  “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).  You can’t plow forward looking back.  It’s common sense.  It’s also Spirit sense.

Whatever else it is, the Christian life is about letting go.  If we won’t let go, we’ll have the Spirit tap-dancing on our hearts to remind us what a terrible price we pay not to.  That’s how we become a Christian in the first place, isn’t it?  We let go of sin, of the choice to walk our own indifferent way away from God, so that we can take hold of what he has laid hold of us for.  We let go of death so that life can embrace us.  Or, we don’t.  And, we really pay for it.  In my opinion, people who say no to God’s grace are already in their own hell.  And, I only say that from experience, believe me.  If you are not a follower of Christ today, what are you holding onto that is keeping you from life?  Why won’t you let go?  What’s it costing you to hold on to what is keeping you from God?  And, if you are a Christian, if you claim to have apprenticed yourself to Jesus, is there anything you’re holding onto, something you can actually name, that is keeping you from being fully Christian?  Is it worth what it’s costing you?

Last week’s message was the last in a four-part series on promises God never made.  The whole point of that mini-series was to ask us to think very carefully about whether or not some we are holding onto some unrealistic expectation of God that is actually robbing us of Life, something we expect that God never promised. 

Nothing ruins any relationship, with your wife or husband, or parents, or brother or sister, or close friend, or fellow churchman, or even God, more than unmet expectations, realistic or not.  You know, you get married and you expect unconditional love, even if you never got it while dating.  Because some mystical fog swamps people at the altar, right?  Even if they were unfaithful during your engagement, they’ll change just because they marry you, right?  Even if they never kept their own house clean, they’ll help you keep your house clean, when it belongs to both of you, just because they stood in that mystical fog at the altar and in the steam of romantic bliss said, “I do.”  Even though they never could keep track of money, they’ll become responsible with it just because they put a ring on your finger, even though they charged it to your credit card, right?  Even though they never even so much as went to a funeral, they’ll go to church with you, maybe even be the spiritual “head” of your household and pray with your children at night just because, well, you know, they stood in the fog. 

Nothing does more harm than unmet expectations.  Especially with God.  Most people I have known who were so angry at God they’d given up on him were angry at him for not keeping a promise, that, as it turns out, he never even made. 

Way back in my memory, we’d stopped one day at a little roadside café for lunch.  I guess we were on vacation or something because we’d never been there before and never went back again.  We sat down, my mom and dad and sisters, and waited and waited and waited.  No one waited on us, though.  No water, no menus, no nothing.  Finally, my dad reached the limit of his patience, which was not a long flight for him, and he said, “let’s go.”  So, we left.  It made a real impression on me for some reason.  I can still feel the emotion of the moment, a little embarrassment at leaving without speaking.  And, still just a little “how dare they ignore us?” indignation.  Isn’t it amazing how we can still feel the emotion of unmet childhood expectations decades later?  Nonetheless, the café was open for business.  There were tables and chairs and waitresses and a kitchen.  Just no service.  Come to think of it, there was no sign on the door, as I recall, that read, “No shoes, no shirt, not even any service here.”  But, on the other hand, they didn’t actually promise us that, if we sat at one of their tables, we’d be able to eat our fill.  It just looked like a café and we just expected it. 

There is nothing more disappointing than leaving the table of unmet expectations hungrier than when you sat down.  And, that’s the sermon I almost forgot.  The one I almost forgot last week when I turned two pages at once and left out a whole section.  Then, I went to lunch and the Spirit did his tap dance.  So, I had to come back and tell you what I almost forgot. 

You see, it’s important to talk about promises God never made in order to help keep our expectations, well, God-centered, instead of us-centered.  Nothing is more vital to any relationship than realistic and truthful expectations.  Nothing is more vital to faith than keeping the horse of God’s true promises before the cart of our expectations.  Which is what makes the apostle’s words so very crucial.  Crucial enough to push the rewind button and read them again this Sunday.  “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.”

Do you see it?  The Christian life is about releasing long before it is about acquiring.  About letting go not holding on, in order to live.  Primarily, it is about letting go of our expectation that our life is about us first and everyone else second.  The worst decisions I’ve ever made were made when my heart and head were clouded with the self-romantic fog of entitlement.  That I had a right to this or that, even to happiness.  The gospel comes to tell us that everything we truly need, even joy, comes to us in God’s already fulfilled promise in Christ, on the other side of letting go of what we can control and create in order to receive what only God can give.

It cuts against every human grain in us.  But, the command of scripture could not be clearer.  It is even modeled for us in the person of Christ.  That we are to think about ourselves, God’s world, God’s people and our relationship to all of it just like Christ did.  That’s what it means to have the mind of Christ in us.  It means to do more than make a promise at the altar to follow him.  It means to turn from the altar at which made our promise to him and actually walk with him, to apprentice ourselves every waking moment and even in the dreams that become our prayers to his way of thinking so that we might be able to see and believe and love the way he did.  By his own example, Jesus turns our expectations on their heads, or puts the holy horse back in front of the carnal cart, by showing us what it looks like to expect nothing of God except the grace he’s already given, which is far more than we could ever measure, and to expect of ourselves only the privilege of letting go of whatever power we have for the sake of empowering others who have none.

So, to be Christian means to turn loose, to let go, to release, before it can mean or does mean anything else.  Maybe to let go of a sin you can name.  Like a judgmental or narrow, unloving, and critically uninformed attitude toward someone who hurt you twenty years ago.  Or, prejudice toward someone who never has hurt you but you are afraid might hurt you.  Or, someone you’re afraid you might become. Maybe, just maybe, letting go might mean letting go of someone you love dearly.

Where did these eighteen minutes we call years go anyway?  How so quickly?  Just yesterday, Griffin’s little head was bobbing around about knee high to me.  He was like a little puppy, following me everywhere I went and mimicking everything I did.  Then, one day I took a nap.  That’s all I did.  Just a quick nap.  And, when I woke up, he was standing over me, even though I was standing up.  Now, he’s about to leave.  Don’t think there isn’t a big part of me that wants to chain him down and keep him close, where I can see him and talk to him anytime I want, without roaming charges. 

Somewhere in all of this, to the tune of my grief’s heartbeat, the Spirit did another tap dance and reminded me of Jesus’ words, many decades ago, before I was knee high to a molecule.  “Whoever comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).  Hate?  Did Jesus say “hate”?  My children? 

We know what he meant, don’t we?  He didn’t mean hate like you want to kill someone hate.  He didn’t mean hate like you’d at least like to put the holy hurt of some mean Christianity on them.  What Jesus meant was, if I’m going to love him, I can’t love anyone more than I love him.  He’s kind of jealous that way.  He doesn’t have much truck with folks who make promises at the altar and then disappear in the fog.  He’s big into loyalty and faithfulness.  Into keeping promises, no matter how long ago we made them.

And, he’s big into loving us and those we love, too.  And, he knows that it is only in letting go of Griffin that I can let him discover all that God has for him, because what God has for him is so much more than I could ever even dream for him.  You see, it’s in letting go that I love God and Griffin and even myself.  What I hold onto eventually dies.  Only what I release into the clean wind of the Spirit is free to sail into whatever eternity God created.  Even my son.  Even me.

I came to church last Sunday.  I nearly drowned someone in the baptistry and then I preached a sermon, or part of a sermon.  Then, I went to lunch and was laughing about some mean lady until the Holy Spirit did a tap dance on the shoulder of my conscience.  Then, I tried to hold onto my son this week and the Spirit danced again.  Then, he asked me to dance with him.  Somewhere in all of that, I did some letting go I’d never done before and today, I’m actually feeling a little like dancing myself.