The Power of Expectation

November 29, 1992

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Scripture: Isaiah 2:1-5, Matthew 24:36-44

Talk about two different views of the future... talk about black and white---what a contrast in our readings for today. Both are Biblical; both are legitimate; both are looking ahead to what may be out there... but what a divergence in what they see.... Old Testament----New Testament, Isaiah----------Matthew; Promise-------Threat; Hope-------Warning; Anticipation----Apprehension... you might almost characterize it Good News/Bad News... a sharply, vividly drawn contrast. Both have to do with what is to come, yet what a difference in perspective.

Do they cancel each other out? Are they contradictory? Are they potentially compatible? Could both in some way be right, do you suppose? Could there be some middle ground of meeting here somewhere? Could each passage from each Testament, in its own way, have something pertinent and timely to say to us in this season of expectancy?

These are Advent readings, the lectionary readings for November 29, 1992. TODAY is the first Sunday of Advent, the start of a brand new liturgical year. Advent has to do with the “coming”... and you can tell—we’re getting ready. The Christmas tree, the wreaths on the door outside, the full calendar of events --- they all invite us to look toward the future and to anticipate what lies ahead.

We’ve changed the color of the robes we’re wearing, Gary and I; we’re using purple paraments and stoles now instead of the red ones we’ve been using all summer and fall. We lit the first Advent candle this morning---3 to go---All these symbols of the new season entice us to dream dreams, and to look expectantly for what is to come... CLEARLY, SOMETHING IS IN THE AIR.

Frederick Buechner, who writes so imaginatively about these things, says in his little book, Whistling in the Dark, “The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in the darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit the violin bows are raised. The conductor has lifted his baton....

In the silence of a midwinter dusk there is far off in the deep of it, somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen.... The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.”

Both of our passages today are about that moment... expectancy. Both reflect that mood, but from vastly different perspectives.

Isaiah, way back there, 700 years before the birth of Jesus, had a dream, a bold, daring dream. If you don’t want to call it inspired, you don’t have to, but you won’t get any sympathy from me. It was a dream about the future, about a day that ought to be, and that could be, he thought. He wrote about it in as lovely a series of images as you’ll find in any literature---“Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that God may teach us His way, and that we may walk in His paths.” Then he ends with the well-known and geographically expressed prayer that people “shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” And he adds, “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore.” WHAT A DREAM!

In a dark and bloody time, when the whole known world was cowering before the dreaded Assyrian hordes, he envisioned an end to war forever, and the dawn of an age of earthly peace.

Listening with sensitivity to the expression of Isaiah’s dream moves us deeply. Matthew reports that Jesus also had a dream about the future. How much is Matthew and how much is Jesus is hard to know, but what a different dream. what contrasting, conflicting images. Jesus’ dream sounds almost like a nightmare. It starts in the verses just before our passage.

They asked Him about what was to come, what lay ahead. He told them in words that even now pound on he ears with ominous intensity, The Temple you see before you, He said, the very center of Jewish life and worship, will be reduced to rubble. “Not a stone will be left standing on another.”

THAT’S WHAT LIES AHEAD. Then in words the exact mirror opposite of Isaiah’s, he adds, “Nation will rise up against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famine and earthquake.... All this is but the beginning of the birthpangs.... There will be suffering such as has not been seen from the beginning of the world until now”.... AND NO ONE KNOWS WHEN IT WILL HAPPEN.

“But when you see these things, you know that He is near, at the very gates. Therefore...you must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” THAT’S PRETTY HEAVY STUFF. If listening to Isaiah moves us deeply, listening with sensitivity to the expression of the Matthean vision alarms us deeply.

Two sharply divergent dreams about the future... hope and apprehension, promise and warning, gladness and gloom. Now juxtapose them, and don’t they evoke dreams of our own? Put them together, and doesn’t it begin to sound modern? Don’t we, too, have dreams that reflect that contrast, that reflect both the idealistic anticipations of Isaiah AND the dark forebodings of Matthew?

We like to dream of a promising future, don’t we? AND THERE’S EVIDENCE FOR IT. We can look out and point to things going in the world around us that greatly boost our confidence in what lies ahead.... Who would have thought, who would have predicted two years ago the changes that have taken place in Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union... an astonishing turnaround. The whole world breathes a little easier today. Maybe we are seeing swords, nuclear swords, being beaten into plowshares. Maybe we are in our day witnessing somehow, a kind of worldwide renewal of faith. Could it be?

I read recently a quote attributed to Boris Yeltsin. He was being interviewed by Izvestia and he said that one of the mistakes of the late Soviet Union was its notion that religious faith was not a necessity. The reporter asked him why so many political leaders now seemed to be “turning to God”, and Yeltsin made this revealing comment: “I will speak for myself.... My grandparents were believers, as were my father and mother until we left the country for the city. Later, in the course of disproportionately ideological formation at college and university, I constantly heard, read, and—why hide it---felt and shared the mostly insulting opinions regarding the Church and religion.”

“This education was gravely wrong, as was the classification of persons into believers and non-believers. I now have the greatest respect for the Church, for its history, for its contribution to Russian spiritual life, for its moral teaching, its tradition of mercy and charity.” “When I am in a church, I take a candle...A religious service of even 4 hours bores neither me nor my wife”.... (How about that!).... And then this interesting statement: “And often when I leave Church, I feel that something new, something luminous has come into me.”

Imagine a Russian leader saying something like that at any time over the past three-fourths of a century. MAYBE WE ARE EDGING TOWARD ISAIAH’S VISION....There are things happening to give us hope.

Well, there are things happening right here. Look around. Look at the influx of babies we have in this church.... You talk about the power of expectancy. If that doesn’t thrill you, though, you’re probably beyond redemption. And when you see the burgeoning education program, the growing number of children who come down for the Children’s Moment, the explosion of Kid’s Klub attendance.... And when you see the expanded mission outreach, and more and more youth engaged in service... doesn’t it give you confidence that we’ll have a stronger Church tomorrow than we have today? Dreaming those dreams leaves us deeply moved.

AND YET.... AND YET...there are other dreams, aren’t there? The other side. You have to be realistic. Isaiah’s beautiful vision isn’t all there is.

What about the flip side of the newfound freedom in Eastern Europe, the dark side, the problems created by the collapse of communism? What does that portend? How will they eat in Russia this winter? How will they keep warm? How will they survive in the midst of administrative chaos?

And what about the hell that exists in the former Yugoslavia? Where does that fit in? And the misery, the absolute horror of hunger in Somalia? How about the bitter legacy of terrorism in El Salvador, the violence in Peru, the volatile tension between Arab and Jew in the Middle East? Spears into pruning hooks? Are you kidding? Not by a long shot...not yet.

And we might as well be honest while we’re looking at the other side, the non-rosy colored glasses side.... What really awaits these children of whom we’re so proud...our children? What future do they have realistically? Is it true what they say, that for the first time in American history, children growing up in this country can no longer expect to enjoy as high a standard of living as their parents? Will it get worse? How will they fare having to deal with our fiscal irresponsibility?

Maybe ol’ Isaiah is just naïve. It’s not all that hard to flesh out a gloomy picture, is it? Some of us have seriously ill parents, or precarious health ourselves.... Some of us are on the bubble with respect to employment...and some no longer have a job. Some of us are dissatisfied in our marriages, or in our family relationships. Some of us feel trapped...or dangling at the end of a rope. DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT A PROMISING FUTURE, we say. I don’t believe it.

Even in the Church, despite some good things, we know it’s not all success. We see missed opportunities, we see lapsed interest here and there, we see people going out the back door, we see sinfully untapped potential. How do we know next year will be any better?

THIS IS THE OTHER SIDE, the dark dream. PONDERING THAT DREAM LEAVES US DEEPLY ALARMED. So here are the two dreams, side by side...the positive...the negative the optimistic...the frightening, the bright...the gloomy, Isaiah...Matthew. What DO we face? Or is that even the proper question? Is something missing here? Does it have to be either/or? Is there maybe some common point from which light can be shed on both perspectives?

PROBABLY MOST OF US FIND OURSELVES SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE 2 EXTREMES, and in our outlook combine elements of both. We see good things and are encouraged; we see negative things that give us pause. We are both hopeful about the future, and nervous at the same time.

We are Isaiah one moment and Matthew the next. DO THE TWO PERSPECTIVES TOUCH EACH OTHER ANYWHERE? They DO, I think, right in the middle, which is precisely what ties it into Advent.

Regardless of how hopeful or how despondent we feel as we look toward tomorrow, Advent in general and these passages in particular proclaim at least this common theme—GOD HAS A GIFT FOR US...the PRESENT, the IMMEDIATE MOMENT, the NOW.

Look at the passages again. Isaiah was confident about what was to be. He believed in it. BUT HE DIDN’T TELL THE PEOPLE JUST TO SIT AROUND AND WAIT FOR IT. Even as he paints his lovely picture of what is to be, he sticks in a word of command for THIS moment of expectancy: “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.” NOW! Better things are coming. A new day will dawn. But there’s something you can do in the PRESENT to claim that coming reality. We can walk in the light NOW, so that when the total glory appears we’ll already be at home.

And while Jesus through Matthew lamented the future He envisioned for Jerusalem, while He saw dark clouds on the horizon, He didn’t advise people to resign themselves to disappointments to come.... The burden of His message is on the present.

Only God knows the future, He told them. That’s not our province. So don’t engage in the fruitless business of trying to predict what might occur. It may well be harsh. Your assignment is to watch and be ready NOW.... YOU LIVE IN THE PRESENT AS IF ETERNAL REALITIES MIGHT BREAK THROUGH THE VERY NEXT MOMENT...because, indeed, they just MIGHT.

These are Advent readings, both of them.  One says, good things are coming, DO YOUR JOB NOW.... The other says, bad things are coming, DO YOUR JOB NOW. EITHER WAY, SAME ASSIGNMENT.

We don’t know the content of the future. Probably that’s best. What we DO know is that the opportunity for faithfulness, for openness, for readiness...vigilant expectancy, is ever at hand.

Maybe we need to hear the Word saying to us in this season of the year, Don’t run too fast and head long toward the Manger as if that alone were the whole story. Enjoy the journey along the way. Advent is more than a season of preliminaries. It’s a season in itself, with its own integrity, and its own announcement. Advent proclaims the coming of the Lord, but that’s not quite the same as saying Christmas is coming... To look for Him only up ahead somewhere, or only as future promise is to miss the even greater wonder of His presence NOW.

Advent turns our eyes to the future. Hush, it says, something is about to happen, something BIG, but maybe its most demanding challenge, and its most exciting promise is to remind us that in the midst of life, in the present, in the NOW, God is already HERE. The One who is to come is already with us. WATCH, says Advent, BE READY. Don’t miss Him when He reaches out to you in power.

Two of my sons are here this morning. Maybe they’ll remember, though they were very young at the time.... Several summers ago... gosh, how long ago was it... the family made a trip up to Virginia, the state of Virginia.... We got off the expressway and passed right smack through the middle of the peach belt there in South Carolina. You could smell those peaches. I can smell them now in my imagination. People were out on both sides of the road selling peaches to those passing by...beautiful, red and yellow, succulent peaches. It makes my mouth water just to think about it.

Anyway, we decided to stop and buy some. We wanted those peaches. But we couldn’t

agree on where to stop.

Tom said, “Those look kind of small over there....”

 Nancy said, “I bet they’re cheaper a farther on....”

You’re way ahead of me, aren’t you. That’s right. We rode and rode and rode, looking for the best place to stop and buy peaches, until before we knew it, we were out of the peach growing section, and our baskets were still empty. WE’D MISSED IT.

It’s an Advent parable. Don’t just sit around waiting for the best to come, OR resigning yourself to the worst. You can miss more than peaches. CLAIM THE PACKED DOWN AND RUNNING OVER BASKET GOD OFFERS, the gift of His presence in the present, the breaking in of the Timeless upon the timely, the overflowing of the Eternal into the NOW.

We can’t control the future. We don’t know what’s out there. Isaiah saw sunlight ahead. Matthew saw doom. Maybe the truth is somewhere in between. But both agree, indeed, the whole thrust of the Scripture is EVERY MOMENT IS LADEN WITH INCARNATIONAL POSSIBILITY.

That’s the message of Advent. You never know. WATCH, therefore. BE READY. For your moment, at any time, may be there for the grasping.

It has been 34 years now since I first saw the movie Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I know it’s been that long. I called the research department of the Orlando Public Library to check the date. 1958 was when it was released and I saw it right way, I remember, not because I knew the play on which the movie was based was a Tennessee Williams classic, but because Elizabeth Taylor was in it... the young Elizabeth Taylor.

She and I were born the same year, you know...and Willie Mays, too. It was a good year.

Elizabeth Taylor was about the only thing I noticed when I saw Cat on a Hot Tin Roof the first time in 1958, but I saw it again more recently on a video cassette, and this time I paid more attention to the story. I wonder if you remember....

One of the main characters is Big Daddy, the Burl Ives role in the movie. Big Daddy nears the end of his life with his world in shambles. He has become wealthy, lots of land, lots of material goods, but he’s accomplished what he has at the expense of his family life. He has never truly loved his wife, or his children, in any deep sense, and thus has estranged himself from her, reduced his older son to cold detachment, and driven his younger son to alcoholism. He himself

has been the show.

At the end of the movie he discovers he has a terminal disease and soon will die. In the midst of the violent argument with the younger son, he begins talking about his plans for the future, only to realize that he’s not going to live to fulfill them. ETERNAL REALITIES BREAK INTO HIS PRESENT.

It hits him. How embarrassingly slow it was to come, but it finally did. He embraces his younger son, begins making amends with the older son...and then, for the first time in years, maybe ever, he calls his wife by her name, offers her his arm, and they take a walk together around the farm. The film ends with Big Daddy living each moment as if it were eternally significant.

IT IS, of course. That’s the message of Advent. God is not only the God of the future, out there, nor only the God of the past...back there. He’s with us NOW, right here, how does the old Thomas Cranmer prayer put it, “nearer to us than breathing, closer than hands and feet....” He’s HERE, inviting us to live in the present in expectation and awareness that eternal realities can and do break into it at any given moment. You never know. Amos Wilder has a little poem in his book Grace Confounding:

“He came when he wasn’t expected as He always does, though a few on the night shift had the release early. He came where he wasn’t expected as he always does, though a few Magi were tipped off ...he is always one step ahead of us.” YOU NEVER KNOW. Advent season is here.... HUSH! Something is in the air.

Watch! Be ready! Maybe your moment is at hand.