Alas, I reflected on these exact same readings a year ago to the day almost. I can't improve on it so here it is again. I hope you will forgive me. It's also a bit long!
Two very wonderful, extraordinary readings are ours today. The renowned story of Naaman in 2Kings and Luke’s amazing story of Jesus visiting his home town of Nazareth after he began his public ministry, both speak of the same thing, namely our expectations.
For having expectations always leads to great disappointment, a lack of awareness and the refusal of acceptance, and ultimately to so much sorrow and even misery for ourselves and the many others our expectations affect. Because what we are really doing when we allow ourselves the spiritual mistake of expecting any outcome or result, no matter what that expectation is, no matter if it even seems like a good or positive expectation or even if we think it is hope, is demanding that we get what we desire, what we want, what we think we know that we need. Expectations can always be boiled down to pride and self-will.
The story of Naaman is the more obvious lesson of expectation. Naaman understood himself as a great man and therefore expected Elisha (a truly great man because he knew it was all from God) to treat him as such. His proud expectations would have kept him from receiving God’s gift of healing if not for the little girl and his slaves (“out of the mouths of babes”) who persuaded him to swallow his pride.
The people of Jesus’ hometown initially welcomed him back, “amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth” and having heard of all the incredible healings and preaching he had done elsewhere, yet still somewhat incredulous nevertheless, “Is this not the carpenter’s son?” They thought they knew all about him. They also thought that they would benefit highly from his fame and his power, expecting Jesus to be the “gravy train” to their own triumph as his hometown neighbors. But Jesus did not hesitate to disabuse them of their fantasies and expectations in no uncertain terms (along with the great wisdom that no one can play the prophet in their own home or among their own people- like trying to enlighten your children, your spouse, your family- just love them instead of preaching to them) which utterly infuriated them. They tried to throw him off the cliff but, in perhaps the earliest and most unnoticed of his miracles, “he passed through them and went his way.” He left them to their vain (and utterly false) expectations.
It bears endless repeating. If we would but seek to reject and deny ourselves any and all expectations and simply, in all humility, accept everything that happens and everyone we meet or know as it and they are, resisting any and all judgements, assumptions (aka expectations) or labels on any of it, resisting even the desire that it or they be in any way something else, we would very soon find immense peace and even joy no matter what happens, no matter who we meet. Practicing this acceptance in everything would free us from our own desires, our own insisting that things go our way, in short, insisting on our own will, an insistence that always ends up spiritually strangling us.
It is finally a simple choice, to choose to embrace everything and everyone exactly as it all is given to us, without asking questions or insisting it be something else, seeking the faith to believe that somehow at the center of everything and everyone we meet, is a great gift of God: the ability to accept, embrace (as Jesus embraced the cross) and find the joy and love at the heart of it all. Because, again, at the heart of it all is God always inviting us to, “Come and see.” But we can never see it as long as we see only what we want, what we think we need. Our expectations. To drop them (always with God’s grace), is to experience something of what the Apostle Paul experienced when, according to Acts, after three days of blindness (the Sign of Jonas), Ananias came to him with good news and “immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored.” Then we will finally be able to see and understand something that was hidden in plain sight all these years. That everything is somehow God’s gift to us if we would only simply accept it all as such and cease to insist that we know. “Those who humble themselves will be exalted!”