Isaiah 11.1-10/Matthew 3.1-12                                                                  9 December 2007

“EXPECTATION AND LONGING”

Does anybody here know where Grover’s Mill, New Jersey is?  It wasn’t in my atlas. Mapquest couldn’t find it.  Do any of our former Jersey residents know it? There is a Grover’s Mills, but there is not much there: a farm supply store, a bend in the road, acres of sod fields, and an old wooden water tank with scattered markings. If you know where it is, you might also know its principal claim to fame.

In a late 1930s radio show, Orson Wells broadcast an updated version of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, the story of Martians invading the land.  Of all places they chose to set this fantastic story, yes, it was little Grover’s Mills where the Martians touched down.  Of course, when the show was broadcast, it was so realistic that people thought it was news, not fiction.  Frightened area farmers seized shotguns and headed into town, scanning the darkness for Martian ships.

Sure enough, aloft in the October sky, they spotted the invader spacecraft and riddled it with buckshot.   It was not until the next morning that they realized they made a direct hit upon…the old water tower.  Word is that the markings left are still visible to this day.  Expectations are powerful, aren’t they?  We expect to see a spaceship, we see a spaceship, even when it’s a water tower. Sometimes our expectations lead us to see things that are not there, and to miss things that are.

Clearly this was at work as John the Baptizer came blazing on to the scene. John quickly became a force with his own following. It wasn’t only that John offered a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin. Every generation is at a loss to deal with its dark side.  It wasn’t only that he was unafraid to speak the hard but vital truths no one else had the guts to say. Every generation lacks real prophets.

It was also that John matched people’s expectations of how a faith hero should look and act. If first century Jews had had plastic Messiah action figures—like the action figures we buy for our grandsons--they would have looked like John the Baptizer. I mean, the guy wore a fur, ate locusts and wild honey, and shunned wine. He was cut from the colorful cloth of Elijah. He was bold and decisive.  He took a frontal approach toward their Roman oppressors and Jewish leaders who collaborated. So rumors filtered that John must be the Messiah. Sometimes our expectations lead us to see things that are not there, and to miss things that are.

I learned that as a pastor in my twenties. People struggle to see you as a pastor at that age. Frankly, being a pastor in my fifties is good, getting these white sidewalls of gray. When I served my first church in Illinois, at age 25, I lived across a brook and beyond the trees in the church parsonage. When strangers knocked on the door seeking the pastor, they looked around me and declared, “Umm, I need to speak to your father.”  My stock answer was, “My father lives in Detroit, and he works in auto parts. I’m the pastor. And I will gladly visit with you.”

Called to Columbus, Ohio as a 29 year-old senior pastor at a downtown Gothic cathedral, it got worse. I ascended the balcony to introduce myself to the 60 year old organist was wailing away on a 3,800 pipe German organ. He took one look at me and said, “Oh my goodness, we are going to have to burp you!” He did later apologize. As I approached my 31^st birthday, I was teaching confirmation one week. One of the confirmands was having her 14^th birthday that same week.  She asked me how old I would be.  When I told her 31, she frowned.  “Why does everyone say you are young? You are already in your 30s!”  “Thanks, Stacy,” I said. “Would you stand up and tell everybody that on Sunday?” Sometimes our expectations lead us to see things that are not there, and to miss things that are.

Because people expected a Messiah who had to look and act a certain way, they overlooked Jesus.  They were looking for a fierce prophet, something on the order of a Jeremiah or an Elijah, somebody severe enough to face down Rome. But instead they got a walkabout preacher who said, “Blessed are the poor, the meek, and the pure. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”

People expected a Messiah who would be sternly spiritual, above baser matters of the flesh, who would keep his distance from the filthy rabble. But what they got was someone who loved dinners and parties—even with undesirables; who once changed 160 gallons of water into wine. What they got was a roving healer who dared to miraculously touch the unclean and tormented, even upon the Sabbath.

People expected an imposing judge who would pitchfork the mixed and tainted stubble of humankind into the Lord’s fire and burn away every enemy of the faith. People got someone who broke down social barriers and lifted up the despised, pagan, unholy Samaritans as heroes of his parables on more than one occasion.

People expected a conquering military hero like David, who would be no more than a Jewish version of Caesar, restoring national supremacy.  What they got instead was someone who wept over Jerusalem, who lamented the evil his foes were about to do to him, before riding into town on a donkey. Sometimes our expectations lead us to see things that are not there, and to miss things that are.

Several years ago a family was interviewed for the television show 60 Minutes.  The family was a religiously devout mother in her thirties, a somewhat older and painfully shy father, and their teenage daughter bound to a wheelchair by spina bifida. Annually, they made a religious pilgrimage to Lourdes in search of healing.

Ed Bradley was mildly chiding the family for being so gullible about miracle healings.  At one point, he turned to the little girl and asked, “When you pray, what do you pray for?”  She replied, “I pray that my father won’t be so shy.  It makes him terribly lonely.” That stopped Bradley in his tracks for a few moments.

After recovering, Mr. 60 Minutes pressed on.  He questioned the family’s wisdom, saying that they spend thousands of dollars every year traveling to Lourdes and they still have no miracle. The mother answered, “Or, Mr. Bradley, you don’t get it. We already have our miracle.” Then mom glowed, smiling at her daughter.   Ed Bradley had his expectations.  The only miracle that counted was that girl getting up out of that chair and walking. He was blinded to the miracle of the daughter’s growing love, the miracle of a family held together by their faith. Sometimes our expectations lead us to see things that are not there, and to miss things that are.

Where do your expectations around Christmas take you and what do you see?  I urge you to bask in the rich fullness of this season.  Place lights in the window to shine in the darkness. Buy roasted chestnuts in the decorated city. Fasten the fullest aromatic tree you can find to the roof of your car.  Hang the homely, charming ornaments your children fashioned in kindergarten.  Pick up silly and homespun gifts for the stockings. Sing a carol loudly, even if you sing off-key. 

But maybe we need to go beyond expectations to a place of deep, deep longing.  Do you know that word longing? I like it a lot. It’s a good word at this time of year.  Expectations are pretty much human generated.  We expect that life should be a certain way.  And do you know what? Life seldom turns our as we would expect. Expectations are all right, but don’t be too surprised if life isn’t what you planned.

Longing springs from deeper wells. Not just how we anticipate life should be, but life as God meant it to be, life as what the Creator created us for, life as what our Redeemer intends not just for us, but for all of God’s children.  Last week in her sermon Kathy spoke of Advent’s third promise as the coming of the reign of God.  She said that we don’t really know what to do with that promise. But if we willingly enter that mystery, we leave behind cut and dried expectations and enter a realm of deep longing. Its a place of God’s holy longing for all the earth and for all of us.

We sketched this realm out in our Isaiah lesson today. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard with the baby goat, the calf and the lion and the fatling dwell in peace. And a little child shall lead them. The text is a manifesto of deep longing for this earth, a different place than how we expect others should look and speak. Sometimes human expectations won’t suffice so we enter a place of holy longing.

I like the Spanish word for longing—anhelo. It evokes our yearning, craving, aching, pining, hungering for more than we can expect. It was the Indian child-ren in the mountains of Guatemala who literally took us by the hand and led us, just as Isaiah foresaw.  They taught us all about longing.  I am talking about boys and teens whose fathers took off years ago who long to be around healthy adult men so they can learn what it is to be a man.  I am talking about children who feel left behind by the world and who long to be noticed by someone important and feel like somebody. (Please don’t tell those poor Indians we aren’t important; it might break their hearts) I’m talking about a woman who longed that her sister, caring for eighteen people in the extended family, might have a home of her own.  Her deep longing made both those sisters cry at our party the last day. Brief snapshots will have to do for now; you’ll hear more of our stories after Christmas.

Go to places like this, see faces like these, and you will understand longing, and you will see the face of Jesus.  He will be born as infant king to rule this earth. This Christmas dig beneath plausible, cheerful surface trappings till you notice the humble stall in a lowly place where a young street couple comforts their baby. I challenge you to go to a place deeper than expectations, to the place of longing. Otherwise, we will end up like most people, who missed him completely. Longing is what matters in Advent.  Finding it, nurturing it, stoking it before Jesus comes. Amen.

God of holy peace, sometimes we feel far away from you, even in these holy seasons, because we expect you should be a certain kind of God.  You should come to us in a certain way. You should establish now certain basic things—justice, wholeness, trust, respect—and banish other things—exploitation, broken-ness, lies, abusiveness. We expect the world should be a certain way and it isn’t.

So today, Lord, we put our expectations aside.  We throw ourselves in that deep well of pure and clean water that is your longing for all the children of the earth. We desist from judging you and we put away our disappointments over why life isn’t different than it is.  And we join our hearts like a wreath of candles to live in the light of your longing that all of us will know ourselves as your beloved children We throw ourselves before the mystery of what you shall accomplish and how it all begins anew with the birth of a nobody baby in the backwoods of an imperial power.  And we trust that longing more than all the power, money, and glamour of the earth.  We pray for families close to us, like our foster family.  We pray for families far from us, like Teresa’s and Cornelio’s.  We pray for the families of this church, for Howard Chesley recovering from surgery, for Gertrude Bothner hospitalized last week, for Virginia Esau recovering from broken bones.  We pray for Charlie S. in Providence who faces the fight of his life with pancreatic cancer.