As of this moment, if my math is correct, there are exactly seven and one half days until Christmas, seven and a half shopping days. The annual yuletide countdown of our gift giving is on. As I though about this Christmas Shopping Countdown this week, I asked myself a simple question. Why is it that this Christmas Shopping Countdown is important for me in some years and in other years I couldn’t really care less? Why is that? I was puzzled, so I thought back to my heroes of the Christmas shopping season, my mother and my father. My mom was and is a Christmas shopping maximalist. The Christmas shopping season opens on December 26th. Mom is always about the business of expecting Christmas. So for her, the Christmas shopping countdown is a reality that she deals with all year long. I know this only because, without fail, my mom will call me with Christmas questions in the middle of the summer. She’ll call me from the mall in July and ask me what type of sweaters I like. So this expecting of hers leads her to create expectations about Christmas. It’s her expecting that makes the countdown real and it’s her expectations that make Christmas so stressful.
My father on the other hand is the quintessential Christmas Shopping minimalist. Dad shops on Christmas Eve, it’s a tradition. That means there is only one day in the Christmas shopping season and this makes any sort of countdown useless. The Christmas Shopping Countdown is never real for my father. Dad’s expecting creates a whole other set of Christmas realities. His expecting makes Christmas real for a much shorter time, leaving him with a lot fewer expectations and a lot less stress.
When I realize, between these two different ideas, I realized something. The shopping countdown only becomes real for me when I begin to expect Christmas. When I begin expecting Christmas, it’s only then that Christmas is real and out of the expecting I create my Christmas expectations, out of my expecting come my expectations. Sometimes they stress me out and sometimes they don’t because they’re not there in the first place. If Advent is the time we set aside to expect the coming of Jesus, then with only seven and a half days to go, I think it’s very important that we look at the difference between expecting and how it relates to expectation. Because it’s between these two that some type of real Christmas will begin to appear.
When I think of expecting, I think of that raw emotional energy that I experience when I learn that something new is coming down the road. Think about the times that you’ve been expecting something. Maybe it was something wonderful like the birth of a new child or the purchase of a new home. Or maybe it was something troubling, like unemployment or the illness of a close friend. Expecting happens when we open ourselves up to the limitless possibility of something new for the first time. In expecting, that something new can become our infinite joy or our bottomless sorrow. The future is unwritten and full of possibility and so this “something new” is very real to us because it’s on the way.
As time passes we realize that it’s not very east to live in a world of infinite possibilities. Our practical sides take over and we think to ourselves, my life doesn’t need any more possibilities, it needs probabilities. So we begin to limit the limitless and we create expectations. Expectations are our attempt to reign in the chaos of not knowing, the not knowing of the thing that will take place when that “something new” comes our way.
I think about the expectations my wife and I created when we were the expecting the purchase of our first puppy. When we thought about the puppy we had an idyllic imagination of what the puppy would be like. Those long picturesque strolls through the woods in snow; those fantastic romps together before the fire; and finally everyone settling down for the long winter nap, together. But, then we got the puppy. Not only was the life of the puppy a reality that came crashing in, but what made it all come together was the time we journeyed to one of those warehouse pet stores. Have you seen these? Lines and lines of different dog foods and toys and limitless possibilities and that’s where our practical side stepped in. We had to decide, we had to choose and we had to create our expectations of what our dog might really like and not like. In our expecting, in those idyllic moments, we were expecting our new puppy and that was the puppy of limitless possibility. When reality came in our expectations limited it and our puppy became the limited puppy, the puppy of limited possibilities.
This morning we mark the third Sunday in Advent. Advent is a four-week season that the Church sets aside for expecting and expectations. The “something new” for us is the yearly arrival of Jesus on December 25th. And so we begin the season of Advent, the season of expecting, the season of our expectations, by reading passages of scripture about those who have gone before us in the faith. So I’d like to share with you for a moment, some of my discoveries over the course of the last week, as I read through our readings.
The people of Israel were at the center of these readings. For about 500 years before the birth of this Jesus we are waiting for, the Jews were a people hoping for “something new.” I’d like to, very simplistically, relate to you their history. It can be broken into two periods; their Golden Age and their Age of Exile. Their Golden Age were successful years. They were the years of King David and King Solomon. The treasures and wealth and clout of Israel grew to unknown proportions, but upon Solomon’s death the country began to fragment and tear apart until finally, it devolved into a civil war and chaos. And it was into that chaos that invading armies came and laid waste to the land and carried off many, many people into captivity. The survivors were exiled through out the world. It was at this point of national tragedy that Israel’s faith was tested. Israel needed to hear the answer to this question. Were they still the people of God? After all of the trials and tribulations and the sorrow and the suffering, was Israel still the people of God? Was the God that allowed this to happen the same God who had brought them up out of Egypt, who had made them great with King David and King Solomon? Could they trust this God who had brought so much pain? Or was this God somehow abandoning them in their exile. And through their collective prayers and the prophets, they began to hear the Word of God. They began to hear the answer to their question. And the Word of God told them to be expecting “something new.” God began to promise them a new way of being God’s people.
As they began expecting this new way of being God’s people, it became real for them, in their prayers and in their songs and in their life. At times it filled them with joy that this new way of being God’s people was coming. And at other times it brought sorrow for the life they were leaving behind. But God, through God’s Word, was offering Israel a real and infinite possibility. So Israel entertained the limitless possibility of “something new.” But like us, Israel realized the limitless possibility is really, really difficult to live into. So they began forming their expectations about this new way of being God’s people. What would this “something new” look like? Would God send someone like Moses, who had brought the people out of Egypt? Would God come and walk among them, as God had in the Garden of Eden? Their friend, hand in hand. Some thought God would bring a giant army and punish all the nations that brought pain and suffering to Israel. And even others believed that God would bring a new David and restore that Golden Age to the way it was. Expectations were being created. And for better or worse, people began to limit the possibilities of God.
Even John the Baptist, who we just heard about in the Gospel, had expectations that limited the possibilities of God. John preached a baptism of repentance, this is true, and he believed that someone would come who would separate the good people from the bad people. And the good people would be saved and the bad people would be cast aside into unquenchable fire, as our Gospel read this morning. We hear his expectations in our Gospel. One is coming who is more powerful than I and He will baptize with Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear the threshing floor and to gather the wheat into His granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. John built his whole life, his whole ministry in the wilderness around this expectation of the One who was to come. And then something interesting happened. The one John was expecting, arrived. Jesus arrived. And not with any army or a flaming sword, but in a manger with cows and migrant laborers. He came as a carpenter and He healed. And He welcomed good people and bad people, just the same. Jesus didn’t fit John’s expectations. In fact Jesus was so different from what John was expecting, that only four chapters later, in Luke Chapter 7; we read that John doesn’t know who Jesus is. Jesus doesn’t fit his expectations and so he sends his friends as he is languishing in jail, to ask Jesus, are you the Messiah? Are you the One we are waiting for? John had his doubts. And when they asked this question of Jesus, are you the One? Are you the One? Jesus said this, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have been brought Good News and blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me. Even John the Baptist had created expectations that limited the possibilities of God. After expecting “something new”, it became real, but on account of his expectations, John almost missed the real thing when it was right in front of him.
The Church celebrates Advent every year. And like the people of Israel, we ask this question. Are we still God’s people? Maybe it was a year of joy, or maybe it was a year of sorrow, but we still ask the question. And we still ask that question, can this God be trusted? As our lives and the lives of those we know and love have fallen apart around them. Can this God who brought this be trusted? And every year, God calls out for us to prepare for the coming of “something new.” God calls us to be expecting the coming of Jesus. God calls each and every one of us to entertain the limitless possibility of “something new.” But like John, we’ve built expectations around this coming. Some of our expectations are Holy and some of them are not. And like John, our expectations are shaped by the world around us, by those who held expectations before us and as we hold up expectations for those who will come after.
The world points to the holiday of Christmas, that cannot be denied. With it’s Christmas Shopping Countdown and whatnot. But that, but that pointing doesn’t entertain that limitless possibility that this season offers. Oh, we might sense it for a moment in the joy of children that see their first snowfall or that quiet and hurried expectation that’s bottled in as they wait for Santa. But our expectations tell us that the real world is going to return no later than December 26th. The generosity and good will we experience on December 25th will come flat against its tax deductibility on December 31st. And so Jesus’ coming will be packed away for next year, with all the tinsel and the Paper Mache angels. Christmas will come and it will go away, just like we’ve expected. But what if this is our chance? What if this is our chance to put away our expectations and learn again, what it means to be expecting? That raw emotion of not knowing what’s to come. What if this Advent and Christmas, you and I look out beyond December 25th and look into the New Year for that “something new” that God is sending our way. What if we’re being offered a world where the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised. What would happen if we were to open ourselves to the limitless possibility of God? And feel the joy and love we are being offered without reservations and without any prior expectation. Would it change us? Could it change the world? I think it can. Amen. |
