WHAT DO YOU EXPECT?
Mark 1:1-8
A friend of mine phoned me one time around this time of year to tell me that another friend of his had just died. He wasn’t sure as to whether death was due to a brain cancer or whether it was suicide. Whatever the cause it was a devastating blow to him. He said, “These tragedies always seems to be worse at this time of the year as we get close to Christmas”. We talked about why this was so and concluded that it had a lot to do with the expectations that we have for the season. In our minds we expect this to be a happy time, when people are full of good will toward others. We expect it to be a joyous season with little trouble intruding into our lives. In reality it is no different that any other time and so this reality often conflicts with our expectation.
Just think of how often our expectations are different than reality.
One little boy’s favorite character in the whole world was Superman. He had Superman pajamas and a Superman plate and cup. He had the action figures. And for his third birthday, Little David received a Superman cape. He was ecstatic, he put on the cape and ran as fast as he could around the backyard. It wasn’t too long though, before returned to the house, out of breath, with the cape in his hand. In disgust, he threw it on the floor and said, “This thing doesn’t work.”
Sometimes other people don’t act as we expect. You know how everyone in elevators face the door and watch the lights come on indicating which floor you are on? No one interacts. They don’t make eye contact. They just stand there looking in one direction waiting for their floor to come up. That is expected behavior.
I heard the other day of one person who likes to get into the elevator and stands looking in the opposite direction facing the rest of the people making eye contact and smiling. It freaks them out every time. Sometimes he will do something else. He will get in the elevator face the people, smile, freak them out, then get out on the 2nd floor. He then will he will run up the stairs as fast as he can so he can be on the 4th floor when the same elevator arrives. The door opens and the people seeing him standing there with a big smile on his face. He says, “You were talking about me weren’t you?” He is not doing what is expected ! It’s disturbing.
Have you ever been at a surprise party, hearing someone say, “Shhhhh, I think she’s coming!”? Everybody gets ready. The door opens. And in walks the wrong person. It’s like cold water in the face of our excitement and expectation.
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I think that a character like John the Baptist announcing the coming of the Messiah must have been a blow to the expectations many people had at the time. It must have been like cold water in the face of their expectations. Many of people, I’m sure, thought that the announcement of the coming of the messiah would be made by messengers from the royal court broadcasting that a new king was expected – a king like David of old who would rescue them from a bad situation.
John the Baptist was the wrong person at their surprise party.
Just think of John! He came as a surprise out of the wilderness where he subsisted on a starvation diet of honey and wild locusts. If anyone had asked him the question “Will there be fries with that?” I’m certain that he would have thrown them out of his presence. His clothes were so rough that they wouldn’t have even handled them at the rummage sale. He preached that a new age was here and it was time for everyone, even the piously religious ones, to change their ways and clean up their act. I’m sure that many of these people didn’t think they needed to clean up their act. It is even said by some writers that he called the religious leaders “a brood of vipers.” The truth shall set us free but in John the Baptist’s case, it first made a lot of people damned mad. Do you think they expected this? And Yet he did point out that he was just the messenger and someone was coming after him who was the Messiah. But then, the Messiah was different than what was expected wasn’t he? Everything that was happening here wasn’t according to expectations.
The Reverend Billy Strayhorn, a United Methodist minister in one of his Advent sermons points how reality of the Coming of Christ was so different that the reality:
They expected a king, they got a baby.
They expected a royal mansion, they got a stable.
They expected a royal nursery, they got a manger.
They expected robes, they got swaddling clothes.
They expected courtiers, they got shepherds and wisemen.
They expected a royal birth, they got an unwed mother on a donkey.
They expected a mover and a shaker, they got a carpenter.
They expected a King on a white charger claiming his throne, they got a Messiah riding into Jerusalem on a lowly donkey.
They expected a throne, they got a cross.
They expected riches, they got parables.
They expected glory and honor, they got a crucifixion.
They expected a Savior, but not like this.
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The important thing for me is that even though God did not act as the people expected, God did act. If we are to find God acting in our lives I believe that you always have to look for the unexpected. We have to be open to God coming to us in new ways.
I was interested in seeing and hearing on video an interview with Hueng Cheung Chung, a Korean woman who had become Christian through the efforts of Western Missionaries. In the beginning of her Christian Journey she saw God as a white Caucasian, with blue eyes, white hair, more European than oriental, larger nose. She said that she saw God kind of like Moses in the movie The Ten Commandments, sort of like Charelton Heston. Because she saw God in these ways, God was never close to her. God was always far away, afar off, unapproachable. But as she grew in her understanding of God and her understanding of life in general, there was a change in her image of God. She began to see God more as a middle aged oriental woman, something like her mother, warm, approachable, understanding. All of sudden God became personal to her became a warm being, one she could relate to, one who was interested in her. At that point it was like God saying to her, “welcome home, I have been waiting for you for a long time” By that change in her understanding of God, she became open to new experiences of God which she had been missing.
She didn’t get stuck on one way of seeing God. Only when she was able to move beyond her expectations of God and was opened to new ways of seeing God that she experienced the reality of God. It made all he difference in the world to her.
The coming of Christ into your life this Christmas may not be what you expect.
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