Zephaniah 3: 14-20; Luke 1: 56-67

Advent is about anticipation, but what we anticipate is not always what we get.  Two weeks ago we talked about nervous anticipation, last week it was urgent anticipation. Today we close off with Misdirected anticipation. We sang a hymn last week called “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus.”   That hymn makes sense to us.  Jesus’ birth is expected all through the year.  Advent is our warming up party. When we look at the Bible we see that in the number of the prophets there is this deep desire and longing for the Messiah.  This longing becomes deeply imbedded in the DNA of the people of Israel. They become a longing people, an anticipating people who live out a culture of anticipation.  The Jewish people are always waiting for something.  But as we saw earlier, what they expect may not be what they get.  It may be something totally different.

All of chapter 1 in Luke is brimming with anticipation.  We could call it confused anticipation or misplaced anticipation.  Elisabeth does not anticipate that she will carry John the Baptist.  Zechariah her husband does not expect that he will lose his voice around the time of the pregnancy. The couple does not expect that their son will not be called after his father, but be called John instead. Mary does not expect to be giving birth to God’s Son.  She certainly does not expect what will come next.  The life her Son will lead, the lives He will change and the suffering He will have to endure is beyond her wildest anticipation.

There is an anecdote of a man who works in an office. In fact he runs the office. In that office there are neon lights all along the ceiling.  One of the long neon lamps is no longer working and not wanting to pay the service fee, he gets on a chair and then on the table, takes off the lid and removes the light. He then inserts a new light, closes the lid and climbs down.  He puts on his coat and proceeds to the elevator. Five minutes later he finds himself in a subway car heading for home.  He does not want to pay the disposal fee, but he has a plan. Instead of holding the pole in the subway cart, he steadies himself and holds on to his neon light only. As the car reaches our office man’s stop, he lets go of the neon bar and walks out, leaving three strangers holding on to his burnt out neon light which they assumed was a subway car pole all along.  Friends, I guess that’s not what these unsuspecting subway riders were expecting, was it?

Forrest Gump never forgets what he mother told him:  “that life is a box of chocolates.” The reason why life is a box of chocolates is because you never know what you are going to get. You bite into that white chocolate candy and there is a cherry inside. Or you bite into the dark brown chocolate and there is a big piece of walnut inside. What is so funny and moving that Forrest Gump lives his life like that: nothing is unexpected, it just is.  And he is part of the all the events in a decade, from Elvis learning to dance funny, to a visit to the white house, to the running craze, to the smile T-shirt, to ping pong diplomacy, Forrest Gump takes that whole surprising life and accepts it as matter of fact.  But, friends, you and I aren’t like that.  We have certain expectation, we anticipate.  We have been conditioned to anticipate.  The entire Bible is about anticipating something great.  So is our childhood, so are our early adulthood years, do are our pre-retirement years.  But with expectation comes the unexpected.  So in many cases our expectation is misdirected.  We are actually not anticipating what is actually going to happen. A lot of times things go a lot better than we expect, a lot of time somewhat worse, but seldom are they fantastic or traumatic beyond our wildest imaginings.  Our thoughts go to that elementary school in Connecticut today.  Friends, we cannot live in a world where those things can happen and at the same not have the God Who brings us that brings us the surprising unexpected Jesus.  That world would be just too bleak and too hopeless. And yet it is the world so many of us live in. We need that Christ Who calls us to protect the innocent, to bring social justice, to heal, to serve the poor, to forgive and to love.  We need that Christ Who isn’t at all like we expect Him to be, Who will never be exactly like we want Him to be.   By definition the unexpected is what we don’t expect. Are we ready to be surprised by Jesus? To have Him do what we don’t expect.  To have Him call us where we do not expect to be called? May our hearts be open. Thanks be to God.