Sometimes our expectations get in the way. Our expectations handicap our imagination. The way we think of God limits and boxes in what we believe God can do in the world. Sometimes what we think we know can get in the way of what we have yet to learn. The six least favorite words of a pastor are, “We’ve never done it that way.” That phrase has been recited for centuries to prevent the Church from changing. What was it that kept us from ordaining women for centuries? I promise you it wasn’t Scripture, no matter how much opponents of women’s ordination liked to quote Paul. It wasn’t women’s abilities that prevented the Church from ordaining them. Clearly women clergy rank among the most effective and inspired pastors in the Church today. At its heart, what prevented us from ordaining women for centuries were those cursed six words, “We’ve never done it that way.” We used to think, “God doesn’t call women to ministry,” and that expectation put blinders on our eyes that prevented us from recognizing all that God could do. “Don’t remember the former things,” God tells us. Leave room for God to do a new thing. Jesus himself fell victim to the power of limited expectations. He could heal the sick, give sight to the blind, preach liberation to the oppressed and even raise the dead. But many people in his day simply said, “Surely nothing good can come from Galilee.” Galilee was the sticks. In the past no one had ever come from Galilee with anything important to say, they believed. Many people in Jesus’ day couldn’t see the power of God at work in his ministry, because they expected so little. No great teachers ever came from Galilee, they believed. But God said, “Don’t consider the things of old.” Leave room for God to do a new thing. I heard an interview with Israelis and Palestinians recorded just few months ago. Even the most liberal Israelis condemned the Palestinians without qualification. “They’ve bombed our children in shopping malls and on buses,” the Israelis explained. There’s no negotiating with those people. They’re violent and barbaric, and they can never be trusted. To be expected, the Palestinians condemned the Israelis with equal fierceness. “They’ve stolen our land. They’ve shot our children and destroyed our homes and crippled our ability to make a living,” the Palestinians insisted. We can never trust those people ever again. Past experience has taught them to expect only violence and treachery from each other. Past experience has taught them that there’s no hope of achieving a rational, just peace. Past experience has taught them to be hopeless. Yet God instructs Israel and the nations, “Stop remembering the former things.” Don’t consider the things of old. For God’s about to do something new, and your limited expectations will only get in the way. Open up, and allow the work of God to take you totally by surprise.

Humility is the key to holding in balance our faith and our doubt. Humility is what allows us to be bold in our faith without being self-righteous. God’s given us the gift of humility so that we can learn from the past while being open for God to do something entirely new and unexpected in the future. Last week several of us went to the Reconciling Conference in Des Moines, where we heard Pastor Ignacio Castuera from Southern California speak. Pastor Castuera suggested that in his study of religion, he sees two strands of faith that cross the religious divide. He said that in Islam, in Judaism, and Christianity, people of faith divide into two camps. One camp is comprised of those who “know the truth” and who see their faith as a calling to defend the truth. The other camp is comprised of those who’re always seeking the truth, to discover more and more all the time. The first camp of the faithful who “know the truth” see themselves as protectors of that truth, defenders of the faith, prosecutors and persecutors of diversity, divergence and dissension. The Spanish Inquisition, the Taliban, these are examples of those who claim to know the truth and thus must protect it aggressively. The second camp of the faithful are those who embrace humility in their faith. They recognize the limits of their own understanding, and they seek always to learn something new. They anticipate that there’s always more to learn, so at no point should we ever cut ourselves off irrevocably from those with whom we disagree. Because it’s in the midst of disagreement that we’re most likely to recognize some new truth, to see with new eyes from a new perspective, and to grow in our faith and love of God. Humility is what separates the faithful from the faithful. Those who lack humility and insist on their own way find themselves most at odds with people within their own faith community who embrace humility and welcome challenge and diversity. Humility is the key that God offers us to share the good news without making it sound like bad news. Humility is our tool for remembering the lessons of the past without being stuck, unable to imagine a new future.

What we think we know can sometimes get in the way of what we have yet to learn. Of course we cannot ignore the past. We cannot turn our backs on the lessons that took hard work and struggle and sacrifice to learn. But perhaps there’s a difference between remembering the lessons of the past and allowing the past to control us. Perhaps there’s a difference between learning from history and being defenders of history. We’ve got to be open to recognizing that God’s doing something new. We’ve got to let go of our desire to know and control and bind God by past performance, and instead leave room in our lives for God to do a new thing. It’s impossible to prepare for the unexpected, but God’s given us the gift of humility to be open to discover the unexpected surprises that God has in store for us. Amen.