For This Reason 10

[HKHaugan]

When I was interviewing possible clergy assistants and the subject of pastoring came up, one of them told me a story about a woman in his last congregation. She sat up front almost directly beneath the pulpit. He had been preaching several Sundays and noticed she was visibly annoyed every service. What bothered her was that he had a cup of water that he drank from occasionally during his preaching. One Sunday as he lifted the cup to sip she darted out of the pew and angrily made for the door. That one action was not in her window of acceptance. It points to three things, our expectations, our strongholds and our need to resolve them. What do we expect from others, what are the things we’ve been conditioned to react to and how do we resolve them, how do we become one when these bipolar situations arise? What do citizens of Heaven do when there is conflict? All of this reveals our bipolar condition, the one pole being God and the other our playing God.

Conflict reveals bipolarity in self and others. You may be surrounded by ‘But-that’s-the-way-we’ve-always-done-it’ people or the passive/aggressive person who is emotionally bipolar, maybe not neurotically so, but like the elder brother and the prodigal son in their relationship with their father. We are all bipolar when it comes to conflict. We avoid it as much as possible. This avoidance is an internal faith vs. fear issue. It can take over a group who doesn’t want to face the elephant in the room. For instance, it could be the fear of offending a person of reputation and wealth in a congregation. It can be a behavior that many know about but no one wants to deal with. This is where both individual and group sin quenches the Holy Spirit and bipolar avoidance rules instead of the Lord. Yes, everyone is obeying the law of worship, being nice to one another, smiling at the coffee hour and carrying on the business of ‘the church’ but the pall of avoidance hangs over everyone, even those who don’t know what’s going on.

So let’s look at the three, expectations first. When you have been a member of a denomination, like it or not, you develop certain expectations as to how people should behave. One church I served after I retired was in a tough neighborhood. After the service started the usher would close the door so as to make sure the ‘unacceptable’ (drunks, beggars or drifters) wouldn’t disturb the liturgy. Now that isn’t just in liturgical churches. It could be in any denomination where proper dress, quiet demeanor, orderly worship and gentility are the order of the day. The ‘frozen chosen’ is not just a phrase for the sophisticated. It could mean I don’t want to be in a place where things are not in control, proper and disturbance free. That condition carries over into the rest of life if we are not careful. “When I go to church I expect it to be a place different than the world out there.” I wonder if our edifice complexes haven’t conditioned us to expect the buildings to be castles around which the moat of expectations written and unwritten become our attitudinal we/they approach in the world.

Babies crying in church, kids talking to each other during the service, why aren’t their parents disciplining them? Other distractions can occur. Then you’ve got the hard worker who is always there when the door opens but resents and complains about other members not stepping in and helping when needed in the hard work of set-up, clean-up and other tasks. So what do we do with any expectation? The issue is not the expectation itself but flexibility and the awareness of who we really serve. Like the time Jesus was teaching and the disciples were concerned about who was the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus called a little child to Him and told them to change and become like children or they wouldn’t enter the Kingdom. What Jesus was counseling was to be spiritually attuned and respond spiritually to the demands of the moment and open to the Holy Spirit’s leading.

Expectations can become our personal religion of comfort and security, which we want others to join, not the faith that brings them salvation, but undisturbed personal calm in our own personal pew. Of course there is a place for order, respect and awe when worshiping the Savior and Lord whose death on the Cross opened eternity to us when He rose from the dead. That’s obvious but the real issue is my initial reaction when things don’t go the way I expect them to. This brings us to our next distraction, strongholds.

Strongholds are the emotional, mental and spiritual platforms we develop apart from God to control identity, self-protection and find sanctuary (2Cor.10:4-6). They are the conclusions we draw as the result of conflicts, pains and unpleasantness that we have faced in our past. One year in a former parish we started a Footwashing service on Maundy Thursday. One woman was particularly vocal about her objections to it and tried to get it stopped. When we went to visit her to understand why she was so vehemently opposed we also enjoyed meeting her elderly mother who was living with her. After some conversation we left still not understanding. Later at church one day she thanked us for the visit and shared that she was living with a good deal of resentment because every day she had to wash her mother’s feet and hated it. Then we understood. Her reaction to footwashing in church grew out of her resentment.

There are many strongholds built on those kinds of conclusions. They go to make up our secular belief system, our personal religion, borne out of sin. They are internal idols. We may have many that are shaped by ethnic background, child rearing practices, teen angst, professional disappointments, family conflict and on and on. Most people have far more than one. Strongholds have no Scriptural foundation and are evidence of how sin has infected our lives to separate us from God. There is one exception. The Bible tells us any number of times that God alone is our stronghold. I’ll leave you to look that up.

Strongholds are our inhibitions, the fear-laced techniques we use to give an external identity covering an internal insecurity. They are the impressions we want to make that send a ‘this-is-who-I-am’ message. Some are intended to turn people off so that one doesn’t have to work to be accepted and set themselves up for rejection so they can have an excuse to say the world is against them. Others over extend themselves to gain acceptance even to the degree of obviousness which turns people off just as much. There are all kinds of adjustments on a continuum from self-isolation to the seeking of world popularity.

Strongholds are also the judgments we use to screen out unwanted people and situations. Instead of enumerating them here all we have to do is visit our own experience of being among people we know and don’t know and revisit our thoughts and reactions. Just for a moment, consider how we act in a group we know and then when we are alone in the same place with people we don’t know.

Now the resolution of expectations and strongholds can only happen when we face the origin of our needs which are really our gropings to understand our reason for being and what it means to be human. They arise because sin separated us from our source---our Father, our Savior and the Holy Spirit who is our contact with Him. Sin is the bipolarizing factor in our hearts. Sin is the real issue behind the fact that we have needs at all. Since all our needs are ultimately and finally spiritual and personal the only person who can take on expectations and strongholds is the Lord Jesus. That’s the relationship that not only uncovers the flaw in us that builds them but also heals them through forgiveness and restores us to our true Father in Heaven. In other words in Jesus the need for strongholds slowly loses its grip as He becomes our source for honest spiritual and personal interchange. It’s being with brothers and sisters worshiping in the faith, sharing our ups and downs, our relational and spiritual struggles in ongoing small groups in the context of Scripture and prayer. That’s how we grow and mature. It’s the shift from fear to faith, self to Jesus, needs to praise and letting Him be our identity in every next moment.