Advent Perspective: What Are You Expecting?

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

What Are You Expecting?

By the tender mercy of our God,

the dawn from on high will break upon us,

to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,

to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Luke 1:78-79 (NRSV)

O come, thou Wisdom from on high

And order all things far and nigh

To us the path of knowledge show

And cause us in her ways to go

From "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel"

as translated by Henry Sloane Coffin

About six months before the birth of Jesus, a child named John was born.  The child's father Zechariah had been told by an angel that the child would grow up to carry out a special purpose.  Upon naming the child, Zechariah prophesied that something big was afoot, specifically the coming of the Messiah, the long-awaited leader who would save the Jewish people from their oppressors and usher in an age of peace.  He prophesied that his newborn son would somehow be involved with the Messiah's arrival, that he would someday be "the prophet of the Most High" who "go before the Lord to prepare His ways."  Zechariah believed that dawn would finally break upon a people who had been long trapped in darkness.¹

John grew up to become a prophet, just as his father had predicted.  He lived in the wilderness, challenging people to change their ways and baptizing people in the river as a sign of repentance and forgiveness.  To borrow a phrase from one ancient prophet, John was the prophetic voice "crying out in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'"²  John believed that Jesus, a relative of his, was the Messiah who would soon set things right in the land and that such changes would require people to change their hearts and lives.

John and those who followed him had certain expectations about the Messiah.  The Jewish people had spent years suffering under the boot of the Roman Empire, and they expected a Messiah who would defeat the Romans and restore Israel to its former glory.

When Jesus' public ministry had begun, John and his disciples began to expect that things were finally going to get better... until they didn't get any better.  As prophets are wont to do, John angered the wrong people and landed himself in prison.  Sitting in his cell, he begins to second guess himself, wondering if the one he had been supporting is actually going to do what He is supposed to do.  John calls for two of his disciples and sends them to Jesus to make an inquiry.  They asked Him, "Are You the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"

Jesus has already done a lot of wonderful things in His ministry thus far.  He says to the messengers, "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 good news brought to them."³

Notice that, when John's messengers ask Jesus whether or not He is the one they are expecting, Jesus doesn't say yes or no.  He simply tells them to report what is going on because of Him.  It is as if Jesus is saying, "That depends on whom you are expecting.  Tell John what you've seen.  I am who I am."  Even though John was the one destined to prepare the way for the Messiah, perhaps he and his followers did not fully understand who the Messiah would be or what the Messiah would do.

After the two messengers leave, Jesus says to the crowd, "I tell you, among those born of women no one is greater than John; yet the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he."⁴  If even the person Jesus considered the greatest to walk the face of the earth didn't quite understand the Messiah or the Kingdom He came to establish, what does that say about everybody else?  What does that say about us, for that matter?  Though we might have information that Jesus' original audience didn't have at the time, are we really any more advanced in our thinking than they were?  If so, then why do we keep imposing the same kinds of expectations on God and God's Kingdom?

Like John, Jesus also rubbed certain people the wrong way.  One day, His detractors begin lobbing at Him one loaded question after another.  A religious scholar hears how well Jesus answers these questions, so he approaches Jesus with a difficult question of his own.  Unlike the others who are questioning Jesus, this scholar is sincerely searching for something.  He asks Jesus which rule in the Jewish Law is the most important.  Jesus replies, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.'  The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

The scholar says - and I paraphrase - "Wow!  That makes a lot of sense.  I think You're right."  Jesus then says to him, "You are not far from the Kingdom of God."  Jesus says that the scholar is "not far" from the Kingdom, meaning that, like everybody else, he wasn't quite "there" yet, but Jesus commends him for being on the right track.⁵

This is the season of Advent, a time of longing and expectation.  Though we look with hopeful expectation toward the time when the Kingdom of God is a reality on Earth as it is in Heaven, I don't think we fully know what to expect, like the people of Jesus' day.  Whatever the Kingdom of God is, it is a reality in which love is of primary importance.  It is something that will require us to reconsider our beliefs and our actions, as John called people to do.  It will even require us to rethink our expectations of God.  As Kent Dobson recently said, "To really, truly anticipate something that you don't yet know means whatever you have needs to go."⁶

God might not always meet our expectations, but God is always good.


Notes:

1. Luke 1:8-20,57-80 (NRSV)
2. Luke 3:1-17 (NRSV)
3. Luke 7:18-23 (NRSV)
4. Luke 7:24-28 (NRSV)
5. Mark 12:28-34 (NRSV)
6. Kent Dobson.  "Metamorphei: Week Ten."  Mars Hill Bible Church, 12/06/2015.

St. John the Baptist Preaching was painted by Mattia Preti in the 17th century.