Here’s a question for you
today, beloved: what do you expect of
church? Is this a place where you gather
to sing old favourite hymns, see old friends, and have old perceptions
affirmed; is this is place where you come to hear the word of God proclaimed,
to be challenged, stirred up, and sent out; or do you not know what to
expect when you walk through these doors – what do you expect of God?
I sometimes wonder what I
even expect. I heard this past week of a
shooting at a school in Connecticut
this past week that left 27 people dead, 20 of whom were children. I’m at a loss. Even I want to wander through
Advent and shout at God: what are you
doing about this??!! I don’t believe
that events like that can possibly have anything to do with God’s will, or
God’s way; they are pure human evil. But
surely, we can expect God to do something about that. It’s unspeakable.
There’s a long tradition in
Christianity, at least in the western church, that really discourages believers
from expecting anything from
God. There’s a firm foundation of
teaching for that, that suggest the only thing to expect from God is a bolt of
well-aimed lightning, or hellfire for our sins (though that’s a greek god kind
of thing…). But to think of 40 parents
who will remember this coming Christmas as the time when they buried their
murdered child should be enough to make just about everyone lose their minds
with rage. And many people will. Already, some internet forums that I see are
full of comments about the non-existence of God (if God can exist, how can
things like this happen?), and people are listening.
Yet there’s another side to
think about, as well; the side that forces us to confront our own sense of
entitlement and worthiness as Christians in North America. We get used to thinking that because we’re
good, then only good should happen to us.
It’s a formula I see all the time: why did something bad happen, when
people are good? What happened in Connecticut is
unspeakable. Yet, far more than 18
children have died in Syria,
die in a single African country each and every day, and yet we remained
untouched by that. Even I fall for that
line of thinking; why shouldn’t God do more for the rest of us? Maybe that’s too selfish a question to
ask. Maybe it’s something I only ask
myself.
Though maybe, at Advent,
surrounded by commercials that urge us to ‘think of that person we love at
Christmas, and what they mean to you, and buy accordingly’ it’s the time we need to ask questions that confront our
own expectations. And maybe we need to
ask those questions so that our faith can move beyond materialistic expectation
to enable us to become the people we were created and redeemed to be.
Maybe, on this Sunday in
advent, we’re called to put those feelings of expectation and wanting aside and
focus more inward: what does God expect
of us? John the Baptizer stands on the
shores of the River Jordan, surrounded by people who are coming to him for
baptism. It seems they’re not coming out
of a genuine desire or expression of faith – who knows why they’re coming, or
what they expect. John is suspicious of
their motives: you brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to
come?
Realize, beloved, that he’s
talking to the congregation. This is not
a good pastoral tactic. But John does
know that he’s beginning to get some pushback from the group. They’re reminding John that his job is to
splash some water on the people; to tell them “God loves you!” and let them get
back to their important lives. After
all, they say, they’re children of Abraham, members of God’s chosen nation; God
is for them.
Yet John doesn’t seem to buy
that line. In fact, he gets pretty
irritated at it, and reminds the people that God is able to raise up children
from anywhere – or anything – and he reminds them that if they are children of
Abraham, then God has certain expectations of them – but those are not moral
codes, so to speak, but rather rules for living together in community. Don’t take advantage of each other. Care for each other. Model the community of God so that others can
see your light.
But that not always
easy. It’s not ever easy. Because we live
in a land of deep darkness; darkness that covers like the shadow of death; it
is easier to see the darkness than to see, or seek, the light.
In the birth stories of the
Saviour, there are many, many stories.
There are angels, shepherds, magi, people singing, and a choir of the
heavenly host. Things like these are the
fodder for the falsity that pervades our culure – that instead of searching for
the light in darkness we can cover, paint over, build a façade around a rotten
structure and still pretend that every is all right; that we can market well,
ignore, or spin our own shame and nobody will notice – until it all comes
crashing down.
In those birth stories are
details that you cannot miss, though they are not part of the dainty manger
scenes. There is the scene of a young
pregnant woman having to tell her much-older fiancé that she is pregnant, and
her expanding belly growing obvious to the stares of gossip-mongers in her own
home town. The scene of two peope
travelling across the barren desert by donkey; the scene of a birth that takes
place away from her kith and kin.
And later, hidden away in the
gospel of Matthew, is the massacre of the innocents, when Herod orders the
death of every child under two so that he may stamp out the birth of the
promised Messiah. This week, this has
been played out in our hearts and minds, the a fabric of an imagined Christmas
has been torn.
It turns out there is
darkness that no bright coloured lights can twinkle away; that no decoration
can make acceptable; darkness that is so complete that the only possible course
of action is to beg God for a light that will conquer and drive it away.
Into that darkness are spoken
the words of the prophet Zephaniah:
I will remove disaster from you, so that
you will not bear reproach for it. I
will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the
outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the
earth. At that time I will bring you
home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised
among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your
eyes.
THAT is the promised of
Advent; that God will bring us home, that the massacre of the innocents and its
great reproach will be cast away from us because we will rejoice in the
presence of our Saviour.
Our response to our own
shattered expectations is to shift those expectations where they are necessary
and needed: to expect of ourselves a greater and stronger community; to reach
out to those in our midst affected by grief and anguish with a hope and a
healing touch when words are empty, and cold; that we should seek to reach out
to those who are in darkness before their darkness consumes us; that we should
seek the light of Christ that shines in the world and hold it for all to see.
John speaks of a Messiah who
holds a winnowing fork in his hand; that he will separate the wheat from the
chaff, and the chaff will be destroyed.
Realize this, though – he’s not talking about individual people. Separating wheat from chaff is God at work in
you; creating and forming and restoring you.
Today is classically referred
to as gaudete Sunday – the Sunday of
joy; though as I have seen and heard from others joy may seem fleeting. There is a still a cause for deep-rooted joy;
the sense of God’s promise made to us, of God’s promised delivered. I am ever mindful of a story told to me of
the accompanist at a congregation I served: on September 11, 2001 she came into
the sanctuary and those in the building heard the swelling crescendo of Joy to the World as the world they had
known came crashing down around them.
When asked, all she could respond was ‘what else could I play?’ Indeed, it did seem them as if the Lord had
come down.
And beloved, God does, when
we least expect it. But it remains; that
God’s expectation for us is that we would listen to the Baptizer when he stands
on the bank and cries: prepare the way of
the Lord! That the way of the Lord
is not on a neat, tree-lined boulevard, but through the desert and the
wilderness; that we are go out into the wilderness and point towards the
life-giving spring that runs through its midst.
That we are together to be the people of God, to set aside selfish
interest and demands; to show the kingdom, to live in hope through fear and
darkness, to proclaim the coming light into our midst; finally, a light that
shines in the darkness -- and the darkness cannot overcome it.
Amen.
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