Sermon 12/17/06
The Promise: Expecting - Luke 3:7-18
(view lectionary notes for this text)
Some of you may know that this is our District Superintendent Carl Johnson’s last year in the position before he will retire from the ministry. I was meeting with him and a group of pastors recently and he was sharing with us about the process of the committee on superintendency for suggesting what the district is looking for in a new DS. The process in much like the process for the local congregation who will be receiving a new pastor. The committee gathers information and tries to articulate what kind of pastor – what kind of DS in this case – would best meet the needs of the district. What would make for a good DS? Carl shared that so much input was gathered that the description of the ideal DS was quite lengthy by the time they were done. It would be impossible, he said, for anyone to meet all of the different qualifications, the different expectations. The committee was apparently aware that they were setting standards high – they concluded their report jokingly – “and since Jesus Christ himself is not available to take the position, an ordinary human being will have to do.”
We all have expectations – ideas about what will happen, what people will be like, how the day, the month, the year will unfold. Expectations help us plan, help us prepare. We have expectations, for example, that it will generally be colder in the winter than in the summer, though perhaps that’s hardly true this winter. Our expectations help us plan our budgets, plan our wardrobes, plan our activities. We must have expectations in order to function day to day. But our expectations are sometimes a double-edged sword. They can help us be ready, but they can also build us up, only to turn out to be completely unfounded, or they can make it impossible for us to be satisfied with anything that doesn’t happen according to our expectations. In the case of the committee looking for a DS, they realized there was a danger that their expectations were impossible to meet, making it very hard for a new person filling the role to be anything but less than what was expected.
What kind of expectations are a part of your life? We all have expectations placed on us. What is expected of you? Who expects something of you? What do you expect of yourself? Our scripture lesson from Luke today is about expectations. We continue where we left off last week, with John the Baptist. Now, we hear him speaking to the crowds, preaching with passion. He calls the crowd a brood of vipers – a sure way to win over his congregation. He showers them with warnings, saying that they should bear fruit worthy of repentance. He tells them they can’t just rely on being in the line of Abraham to get them by - they will be held accountable for bearing good fruit. The crowd seems to take him quite seriously – “what then should we do?” they ask. And he answers, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors asked him what to do, who were considered shady characters at best, and he advised them not to collect more than their due. Solider asked what to do, and John advised them not to exhort money, or falsely accuse others. All of John’s teaching, we read, resulted in the people being filled with expectation. They wondered if John might be the Messiah. But John told them about someone else they should be expecting, and gave them an image of a Messiah who would come with winnowing fork in hand, ready to clear the threshing floor and gather the wheat. And so in this strange way, John proclaimed the good news to the people.
We learn about a lot of expectations in this story. The people were expecting John to have something interesting to say. Somehow, they’d heard about him, and had gathered to see him. What were they expecting? Jesus himself later questions people about what they expected to see when they went to see John, wondering if they expected to see nothing much at all, instead of the strong person they found. Perhaps they were expecting a possible Messiah, or just an entertaining way to spend a few hours. We find out that the crowds were probably expecting, as they had learned to be able to expect, that their bloodline, their claim of being part of God’s chosen people, would get them somewhere – that they could rely on that alone. When John began saying things that made them uncomfortable, he suspected that they would quickly called on their ancestry, their relation to Abraham, to help them, or to somehow exempt them from doing what John was talking about. John quickly shatters this expectation. He lets them know that even for those who are part of the line of Abraham, even those who are part of the covenant already, God is still expecting something of them.
I’m surprised by how the crowds respond. I would think they’d be angered by John’s words. But they are intrigued enough to ask more questions. Are they really ready to respond to his challenging words? They want to know what to do – what does it mean for them to bear good fruit? They want John to lay out more specifically what is expected of them, and he does just that. John tells them that what is expected of them is an attitude of giving and sharing and ethical living that goes beyond what they thought was expected, beyond what others expect. The people, in turn, we read, were filled with expectation about John because of how he was teaching. Was he the Messiah? Everyone had expectations about what the Messiah would be like, and John’s tough, straight talk sounded to them like the strong leader they would need. John dashes their hopes, and paints an image of what he expect the Messiah to be, and he makes it clear that he isn’t it.
Advent is about expecting. But what are we expecting this Advent? I can see ourselves and our expectations in this passage. We gather for worship each week, and we probably come with different expectations of what we’ll find here. Perhaps you come with expectations that the sermon will be good, or that the sermon will be boring – sometimes I have similar wonders and expectations. Perhaps you are expecting to be amused during children’s time, or expecting that I’ve picked weird songs again. Are you expecting to hear God’s voice? Perhaps we’re also like the crowds, expecting rights because of the ‘ancestry’ we claim. Maybe we’re expecting that because we call ourselves Christian, or because we are active in church, or because we believe in God – we expect that nothing else will be expected of us, that we have the claim we need. Or perhaps, like the crowds who responded to John’s challenge, we’re ready to have someone lay out more clearly what God expects of us, and ready to try to do it. Perhaps some of us are full of anticipation and energy and just looking for a little direction so that we can meet these expectations that call us out of our comfort zones. Perhaps we’re like John, feeling like we are laying the groundwork for something so much greater than ourselves, imagining that something will finally come to shake up the world and set things to right. What are you expecting this Advent?
Sometimes, our expectations can get us so locked into something that we can’t see the good in something else when it comes, or we’re just caught completely off-guard. As things turned out, even John the Baptist didn’t quite have the right expectation about the Messiah. He pictured a more aggressive, threatening image of the Messiah than Jesus ever turned out to be. But I think John was satisfied – Jesus hadn’t failed to live up to John’s expectations – he’d just gone beyond them, exceeded them, and transformed them.
Advent isn’t just about expectations. It’s about realizing that sometimes our expectations off what God will do for us and in us are a little off the mark – because God will go beyond our expectations, exceed our expectations, and hopefully transform our expectations. And Advent is about realizing that indeed, God does expect something of us too – a response to God’s call, a commitment to discipleship. God expects more of us than we usually expect of ourselves. I don’t think we’re always just trying to let ourselves off the hook so easily – I think sometimes we just don’t realize how wonderfully God has made us, how much God has put into us, and how much we’re really able to pour out of ourselves for God and for others. Advent is about learning that we can even exceed our own expectations of ourselves, and in God’s care, be transformed beyond what we expected we could be on our own.
I hope that we are expecting this Advent the giving, the receiving, the fulfilling of a promise from God. God promises to love us and to be with us. God doesn’t always come to us how we expected. And I’m thankful for that, because sometimes we don’t expect enough of ourselves or even of God. I pray for you and God promises to you that God will exceed our greatest expectations. Christmas is coming, and we are filled with expectation. Thanks be to God!
Amen.