What Did You Expect?

I know that all of us, at some point, have found ourselves in the situation I’m about to describe, or at least a similar one.

Let’s say you have an idea for something you want to do--maybe a home project, maybe a big purchase you’d like to make, maybe just a simple change like a new hairstyle or piece of clothing.

So you go to someone who knows you really well, a friend, a parent, a spouse, and ask them about whether or not you should go through with it.

And, almost as quickly as you ask, the person responds “no! Of course you shouldn’t do that. What are you thinking?”

Maybe you argue. Maybe you push back. Most likely, you come away from this exchange deflated, disappointed, and dejected. But then the person asks, “So why did you seek out my opinion if you didn’t really want it? Hadn’t you already made up your mind?”

You pause. Isn’t this a legitimate question? In fact, isn’t this a really good question?

Why do we seek out the approval of others if we have already decided in advance what we’re going to do?

Our Gospel passage this morning wakes us up with some harsh words from John the Baptist. The Pharisees and Sadducees were both Jewish groups who had theological disagreements with each other, but they were not evil people. They were God-fearing people, each with legitimate arguments about their beliefs, and each with a passion for the things of God. Yet John seems to see right through their pretense, confronting them directly, calling them names and warning them of God’s wrath to come.

I imagine their reactions were equally as strong as John’s passion, though the text doesn’t record them. Maybe the key to understanding this difficult passage is to remember what it feels like to be called out for already having made up our mind, of merely seeking the approval of those close to us instead of legitimately valuing their feedback.

In fact, this seems to be the way that Jesus will interpret John the Baptist’s confrontational and prophetic message in our Gospel reading for next week, when Jesus asks the crowds, “what did you expect to see when you went out into the wilderness to confront the prophet John? . . .

Did you expect to see someone who would just bend to your own expectations?

Did you expect to see someone just like you, a mirror image of your self?

If you were going to get a glimpse of a prophet of God, you got one. What do you think?”

In some ways, the season of Advent is so very different from Christmas, isn’t it? I mean, Santa would never call us a brood of vipers! Rudolph would never yell at us to repent! We imagine baby Jesus in the manger, and we know deep down that maybe we prefer that baby because he can’t talk yet. He can’t peer into our souls, he can’t convict us of our sins, he can’t perplex and confuse us with his probing, searching, infinite love.

But John, the one who prepares the way for Zion, the one who believes in the coming King Jesus and his vision of shalom, of enduring, communal peace--John knows that God’s shalom depends on us, on our response to God’s inbreaking into our lives. John knows that we must become God’s construction workers, helping to carve out the royal road that will usher in the king’s coming.

That road does not always bring us to God by a path we expect. Perhaps the Pharisees and Sadducees were coming to John because, as The Message translation puts it, it was becoming the popular thing to do. Or the religious thing to do. They were going to show up, pay their dues, get dunked in the water, be seen doing the righteous thing, the holy thing, parade and trumpet their holiness before everyone, and then go back to the city, hopefully with a few extra God-points on their tally sheet.

John says, be careful what you wish for. If you’re really seeking God, be ready. God’s grace will turn your life inside out.

Be careful, because you may see, not what you want to see, but the very parts of yourself you don’t want to see.

Be careful, because Jesus wants to transform your life so that you can help transform the world into something that looks more and more like God’s dream for it.

Last week, Jesus was a thief, breaking into our homes at an hour we did not expect. This week, Jesus stands with a winnowing fork in his hand--a pitchfork! Both images are meant not to frighten us, but to remind us that advent, the season of waiting, is also a season about response.

The scriptures associated with this season of the church year do not only picture the coming of Christ, but his unexpected coming, both the first time as the baby in the manger and the second time as the righteous judge of the world. There was not much about the Christmas story that was expected, routine, according to plan. In fact, virtually every aspect of it was not planned out in advance, but unfolded in ways that were surprising, from the angel’s visitation to Mary to the holy family not being able to find a room, to their flight to Egypt because of the edict of cruel King Herod.

God’s grace in our lives is often unexpected. God’s time is not our time. God’s ways are not our ways. God’s grace is a gift, but not one that comes in the way we expect it to, not in the way we believe it should come, but in the way that God’s love wills it to come.

Advent reminds us, in other words, that Jesus is a truth-teller! When we go to him with our questions and our problems and our anxieties, he doesn’t tell us what we want to hear.

And then, if we get frustrated, we hear his voice saying, “what did you come to me for? Approval or grace? A rubber stamp for whatever you already wanted to do, or did you come to me for something truly transformative, something truly life-changing, my very self, my very life, living in you?”

Fr. Michael Marsh, an Episcopal priest in Texas, points out something very important about the order of things in this passage. John isn’t telling his followers to repent so that God’s kingdom will come; he’s telling them to repent because God’s kingdom has come.

Listen to the difference. In the first, incorrect, order, we have to get our lives straight before grace can come. In the second, we are awakened by God’s grace when we weren’t even paying attention, and then, when it does come--we listen. We respond. We repent, which means allowing the intense, radiant love of God to penetrate our defenses and show us where we need to change. Repentance means saying yes to the One we know is more powerful, more wise, more gracious, more loving than we are. It means that we let God in. It means trust that God’s ways are better than our ways.

Growing in God’s unexpected grace is a process. It takes time. It takes the spiritual disciplines of prayer, of watching and waiting. It takes our willingness to allow God to show us the things about ourselves we might not otherwise like to see.

Ultimately, allowing God to reform us into the image of Christ means not that we lose ourselves, but that we become the truest version of our selves. But such a process, as John knew, is risky and a little frightening. It takes a step of faith, just a step, to walk into the river, allow our old life to be buried with Christ in baptism, and be raised to the newness of life that awaits each one of us.

Yes, we will let the baby Jesus into our hearts at Christmas, but remember, the baby grows up. The baby becomes a man, and the man asks us to repent, as Fr. Marsh says, not because we are bad, or defective, or deficient, but because we are infinitely worth it, because we have been created in the image and likeness of God; because God loves us, and because God is coming. When we least expect him, and when we need him the most.

AMEN.