Have you ever had to live up to someone else’s expectations? At first it can feel daunting, but the strange thing about great expectations, is that very often they have the power to transform us. Living up to raised  expectations can make us into better people.

In today’s gospel, Jesus meets Andrew’s brother Simon. He looks at him and says, “You are Simon son of John; you are to be called Cephas, meaning Rock.” The new name must have filled Peter’s friends with astonishment. “A rock” Peter certainly wasn’t. Peter we know was a bit of a hot head. He was impulsive, rash, sometimes misguided and often   passionate. To describe him as a ‘rock’ was surely inappropriate. Yet slowly and surely, Peter starts to live up to Jesus’ expectations, and slowly but surely, Peter changes from a hot headed fisherman, into a steadfast leader of the Church. As we see so often in the Bible, Jesus’ expectations have the power to transform.

By comparison, we seem to live our lives with fairly banal expectations. Our greatest ambition, as we wake each morning might be to pay a phone bill or get the car through an N.C.T. Are we missing something? Is God calling us to greater things and we simply aren’t listening?

For each of us God has a job to do. Of each of us God has great expectations. How do we hear God’s calling? Do we listen to the world and the people around us? How do we respond to our calling? What are God’s expectations of us? How must we change?