#Unexpected

'The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

In days to come

the mountain of the Lord’s house

shall be established as the highest of the mountains,

and shall be raised above the hills;

all the nations shall stream to it.

Many peoples shall come and say,

‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

to the house of the God of Jacob;

that he may teach us his ways

and that we may walk in his paths.’

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,

and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between the nations,

and shall arbitrate for many peoples;

they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,

and their spears into pruning-hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war any more.

O house of Jacob,

come, let us walk

in the light of the Lord!'

--Isaiah 2: 1-5

Unexpected.  Is there anything that causes us greater stress, greater worry and fear that that which is unexpected and uncertain?  A great many of us live in a constant state of concern for the future, not knowing what will happen and unable to make reasonable expectations.  Many of us live with the concerns raised by unexpected curveballs thrown at us by life: the loss of a job, the death of a loved one, a sudden illness.  It is difficult to be a hopeful, expectant people when there are so many pieces of our lives that unexpectedly throw us off course, leaving us with a feeling of uneasiness about what the future will hold.  

If ever there were a time in the life of the Church for us to sit with those unexpected, uncertain aspects of our own lives it is Advent, a season of expectation, hopeful waiting and, watching.  For most of my life I thought of Advent as merely the season before Christmas, a time when we read more from the prophets of the Old Testament foretelling Jesus’ birth, and a time when we prepared our hearts and minds for Jesus to be born anew in us.  Truthfully, though, Advent is more than this.  For centuries Christians did not see Advent as a season to prepare for Christ’s birth; after all, that had already happened.  Instead, what they were preparing for was his return, his Second Advent, if you will, and it is that Advent for which we ourselves wait in hopeful expectation even now, even as we wrestle with burdens of the present and fears for the future.  We cling to an old, old hope. 

Not long before the Israelite people were taken into exile, the prophet Isaiah had a vision.  In that vision he saw the kind of world that God had always dreamed of for God’s people.  In this world the people walk in the way of the Lord, the way of love.  In this world the people take their weapons of violence—swords and 
spears—and beat them into life-giving tools—plowshares and pruning hooks.  In this world the people never again lift up a weapon against one another, and just like in the old spiritual Down By the Riverside, "ain’t gonna study war no more."  The vision is concluded with a rallying cry, “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”  But this is not just a vision, it is a promise, the promise for which God’s people have always hoped. 

It is a sure promise, as sure as the intent of God, though Isaiah does not know exactly when it will occur.  It’s unexpected, you see.  The opening phrase, “In days to come” refers neither to the end of time nor to a period beyond time, but rather a moment within time..  Yet this day is not something that we can mark on our calendars.  It’s not a day we can predict, but rather it is a promise, and it is in the nature of a faithful promise to trust the one who promises, and therefore not to need a timetable.  God has made the promise, and like the people of ancient Israel who heard of Isaiah’s vision, we need only to walk in the light of the Lord in our own time, to know that while this world is uncertain and the promised day is unexpected, it shall indeed come to pass.  We know this most of all because of Jesus.

'Jesus said to the disciples, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”'

--Matthew 24: 36-44

What Isaiah first gives voice to, Jesus embodies, which is probably why Isaiah is the piece of the Hebrew Scriptures that is most quoted by Jesus and the writers of the Christian New Testament.  In a moment taken from Holy Week, we find Jesus speaking of that same promised day.  Like Isaiah, Jesus admits that he does not know when such a day will come, so with all due respect to our brothers and sisters who have tried to accurately predict that day’s arrival, that ain’t the point!  Jesus reminds us that we are not to live as spectators guessing about the future, but as those to whom a promise has been given, the same promise as Isaiah, the promise of a reality where the injustice and pains of this world are transformed into something life-giving.  This promise frees us to live in the here and now, and trusting in it allows us to let go of our fears, both of the present moment and of the future.

Jesus uses the example of Noah to get the point across.  While others were going about the days as normal, believing their business as usual would continue forever, Noah was building a boat and remembering God’s promise, not out of fear but out of trust in the One making the promise. Sure enough, God broke through, washing away the "business as usual,"and in the same way, those hallmarks of our lives that we have come to expect as business as usual, that we begin to believe will continue forever—debt, war, hunger, injustice, disaster—these and all others will be cast aside by that promised, yet unexpected hour when God breaks through once again.  Our season of Advent is about hoping for that day’s arrival, expecting the unexpected.  As the German theologian Karl Barth once put it, we live between the times.  We live between Creation and Re-Creation, looking backward at what God has done, assured of God’s presence with us in the current moment, and looking ahead at what God is about to do in the culminating of the Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.

Nevertheless, it’s scary to hope for something that we cannot see, something that we cannot fully comprehend, something that we are told has already come once in Jesus ministry here on earth and at the same time has not yet been fully realized.  Especially when we are dealing with the mountain of problems that each of us faces, the future can be extremely fearful.  I wonder, then, as we stand on the precipice of this Advent season, what is it that you most fear right now?  What is it about an unexpected, uncertain future that fills you with concern, anxiety, and worry?  As we begin this journey of Advent, I want to remind you of the promise that whether or not those immediate fears are realized, we have all been created for far more than fear.  And Jesus, the Son of Man and Incarnate God, whose coming birth we celebrate in just under four weeks’ time, has promised to come always to be both with us and for us.  The future is fearful, but the only thing that is set about it is the promise of God once again breaking through!  And even when the future looks dark, we Christians still light candles.  It’s what we do because while we know not the details of the future, nor do we know exactly how dark it may get, we do know that the light of a single candle can cast the darkness of fear aside and remind us of the hope that Jesus gave us once still gives us today. 

No matter how unexpected the darkness, we still light candles.

Like Paul said in his letter to the Church in Rome, you know what time it is.  It is time to put on the Lord Jesus, to wear him like a garment around us, putting on his love and hope, even in the face of fear and uncertainty.  The day promised by Isaiah and Jesus may come at an unexpected hour, but it IS coming, and so long as we hold on to the love Christ has put in our hearts, so long as we light candles in the midst of the darkness, so long as we hold to a hope that is greater than anything in this world, then we can be assured, in the words of Julian of Norwich, that all manner of things shall be well.  My sisters and brothers, welcome to Advent!