“If John Were Here” – a sermon presented in the character of John the Baptist
December 8, 2013Advent Lessons & Carols
December 22, 201315
Dec.
2013
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
As you have seen from the gifts that have been gathered here these weeks, we provide alternative giving opportunities at Bradley Hills. Outside this sanctuary you’ll see our Angel Gift Tree. We honor people by giving a gift in their name to someone or some group or cause that needs support. We make a contribution in their name for the good of the world.
Our lesson for today is about an angel gift. The angel Gabriel comes to the Virgin Mary and tells her that God has chosen to make a contribution to the world in her name. That God would be giving the world an amazing gift of Godself in an alternative way. Rather than coming as an adult in Jerusalem, Jesus comes as a baby to be born of a human. Gabriel tells Mary that she is to be honored and will give birth to a son who would be the messiah Israel had been looking for and whose kingdom would have no end. Our lesson explains that all the world will know Mary’s name.
At first Mary isn’t so sure she wants to receive the gift. When she is told she would give birth soon, she is understandably perplexed and afraid. What would her parents think? What would her finance do? How would society act? How would she cope and care for the child? When she found out she would give birth to a child, Mary had to think “what kind of blessing is this?”
There is a fictional account of the birth narrative on YouTube about what the story would be like if Jesus had been born in the digital age. Joseph would have gotten on Travelocity to try and find room in the Inn. The wise men would have used Amazon.com to access Mary’s gift registry to send the gold, frankincense and myrrh. And the whole thing would have started with Mary sending a text to Joseph that read in all capital letters, “WE NEED TO TALK!”
Gabriel also tells Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, who was beyond child bearing age, that she will soon bear a son, John the Baptist. The unexpected news does not come at a perfect time for Mary or Elizabeth. Both of them had plans and those plans did not involve having children at that time. Mary was thinking about planning her wedding, not giving birth to a baby. Elizabeth was preparing for her husband’s, Zechariah’s, retirement, not chasing a young John the Baptist around the house. For them that first Christmas was all about their having their plans changed.
Mary asks, “How will this be?” She was expecting a different future.
When it comes to our expectations of the Christmas season, we should expect the unexpected. That is the way the Christmas gift has always arrived.
Many of us are making lists this time of year. One of my children produced and handed me a twenty –six point Christmas wish list recently. Often our Christmas challenge is dealing with our own expectations about the season. About what the tree will look like or how the parties will proceed. About how we will feel.
Many of our negative feelings of the season come from unfilled expectations. I find that when I am so focused on my expectations of what the Christmas dinner looks like I am unable to experience the celebration when I meet it. So we try and control Christmas. We try to control the Christmas schedule so that our expectations are met. We try to control the interactions so that we can stay on top of the activities and the emotions.
Our faith cautions us about expecting too much, however. We don’t know what the future will look like. The Bible tells us the long term will be wonderful but we can’t be sure exactly what it will look like. Expectations can be ways in which we seek to control the future. But we can’t control it. What we are called to do is have faith. Faith that God is working in the world. That God has our best interests at heart. That God is involved with our lives. Faith is believing that the one who creates us will look out for us.
The Christmas message of Mary, Elizabeth and Joseph is that anything can happen. To have faith is to look with wonder towards the future, believing that there may be something for us to receive. To have faith is to affirm the angel’s advice to Mary, that “nothing will be impossible with God.”
I remember when we were pregnant with our first child, there was so much for us to do. Bridget became very much a nester and our home was transformed with crib and changing table. My wife ran a store for maternity and baby things as well. She did maternity professionally too so we really stocked up with stuff. We were expecting. And then the baby came and it was all different. There was nothing anyone could or did say to us that prepared us adequately for being parents. Either emotionally or logistically or physically or spiritually. But there was great joy in that.
All new parents revel in the unexpected miracles of life, but then we soon transfer our expectations to our children. How do we help support and motivate our children without setting expectations so high that the pressure creates challenges? I am learning as a now and future Montgomery County schools’ parent that the issues of children dealing with parental expectations in this area of the country is no small matter. (Can I get an Amen?) And with all that pressure of expectations as children shaping us, we too often end up approaching Christmas as another battle to fight, challenge to conquer, mountain to climb, success to achieve.
Perhaps our Christmas reflections can help us in this matter. The best feelings of Christmas have less to do with our asking and getting, than with our openness to the surprises that God has in store for us.
Because when we learn that meeting our expectations is not the recipe for joy at Christmas, that God’s revelation of grace shattered everyone’s expectations, that Mary, Elizabeth and Joseph found joy in the unexpected gift of family, then perhaps we can learn to appreciate the surprises that arrive in our families and other parts of life.
One of the great challenges of the season is that our expectations can be so plentiful that there is no room left for anything else. If you have planned every evening with parties or a sense of exactly what should be done in what order on Christmas then there can be little room for surprises of the season.
That has always been the issue at Christmas. Most of the people around Jesus didn’t make room for him. We know from Luke that when Mary and Joseph arrived there was no room in the Inn. Jesus would later say as an adult, “The son of man has no place to lay his head.”
But the message of our lesson is about being open. Joseph was able to make room in his mind and his family for a birth that came in a way that no one expected. Mary and Elizabeth made room in their hearts for a totally new experience of life. All of them made room for the biggest surprise of all, which is God coming to humanity at Christmas as a baby. They put their faith in the angel’s promises and in God’s word. It was not the Christmas they had planned, but they found something special in the Christmas they experienced.
They experienced events they did not expect and experienced an emotion they did not anticipate either. Joy. As Mary proclaimed, “My spirit rejoices in God my savior.” Joy is a positive feeling when our deepest selves come forward; a feeling that raises our spirits to their highest level. It’s the feeling that is most closely related to God and the Holy Spirit. It’s the feeling we celebrate each third Sunday of Advent with a special rose candle. Joy is not something we can control. We can be happy when we get what we want, but joy comes in receiving what God has in store for us. The joy is in entering this time of Christmas believing that somehow, someway, God’s love will come.
This past Thursday I called St. Columba’s church mid-day to check to make sure they had their shortbread. That church near Tenley makes really great shortbread. My mother, who lives in Ohio, loves their shortbread. And I try to get it for her each year. I called St. Columba’s first in mid-November and they had made some but as I told them it was for a Christmas present, they suggested I call back after Thanksgiving to get a fresh tin. I marked my calendar and called back Thanksgiving week. Trouble is they make shortbread on Thursdays and since Thanksgiving falls on a Thursday they didn’t that Thursday and recommended I call back in December. This past Thursday I called mid-day on my way down to St. Columba’s to get a tin of shortbread. The person on the phone told me that this past Thursday was the final day of making shortbread and they had just sold the last tin right before I called and won’t be making any more until next year. Oh no. To make matters worse my mother had told me last week that when my uncle from California was in town for Thanksgiving he had brought Walker’s shortbread and she had declined to eat any thinking, as she put it, she’d “save room”…. hint hint.
My attempts to get the perfect tin of shortbread, fresh before Christmas, kept me waiting until it was too late. And now my expectations for my great holiday gift for my mother are gone. She arrives a week from today, so if you see her don’t tell yet there is no shortbread coming for Christmas. However, as I was sitting this weekend sulking, I realized that this is a year for something different. That I have often gotten her shortbread, that next year will come and they’ll make it again and that this is a time for an alternative gift. She is expecting something that can’t happen, so let me surprise her this year. I went out and found something for her that I think she’ll love, I’ll tell you after Christmas what it is. I wouldn’t have thought to get it except for a change in my expectations.
One of the most important favors you can do for yourself this season is to be open to the different ways things might unfold this Christmas. We know the routines; we know the activities of Christmas. But knowing the Christmas routine does not guarantee that we will experience Christmas joy. In the words of Frederick Beuchner, “Happiness turns up more or less where you’d expect it to—a good marriage, a rewarding job, a pleasant vacation. Joy, on the other hand, is as notoriously unpredictable as the one who bequeaths it.” No one achieves joy. We just receive it.
It’s rarely the fulfillment of what we already expect to get that brings us joy. It’s our receiving something special we didn’t expect that brings us to it. Fortunately, that is the nature of God’s gifts. We should expect them at Christmas. May it be so. Amen.