GREAT EXPECTATIONS John M. Buchanan
Matthew 24:32-44 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
November 30, 1980 Columbus, Ohio

Do you know the feeling of investing a major block of time and emotional energy
in waiting and then discovering that the person for whom you are waiting is not going to
show up? Are you acquainted with the foolishness one feels when it becomes apparent that
an event long anticipated isn't going to happen? The early Christians had a problem. They
fully expected the world to come to an end and Jesus to return. They were wrong, obviously
What they thought was going to happen didn't. The expectation, however, never drifted ver:
far from the surface of Christian consciousness. In every age there have been some who
were convinced that the end was immanent, and that the best thing to do was to sell all
your possessions and wait for it. I saw a bumper sticker recently that announced, ominous!
I thought, that if "it" happened the vehicle in question would be without a driver. It
occurred to me that if you fully expected that to happen, common courtesy ought to keep
you off the streets.

In any event, the early Christian church had to deal with the disparity between
what they thought was going to happen and the fact that history seemed to be continuing
along its merry way.

The text this morning was written out of that situation. Immediate expectation of
the end was evolving into patient waiting. It can be a disturbing, almost frightening
text, if we fall into the two assumptions which have been made most commonly about its
meaning; first, that the account is literal prediction, and the event discussed , the hour,
the thief in the night, a literal affair...second, that the event in question is primarily
judgemental: that when the Son of Man comes we are in trouble.

Let me make two suggestions initially in response to those assumptions. First,
what we have here is a metaphor and it is a mistake to get entangled in the details.
Second, the event in question - the Coming of the Son of Man, is primarily redemptive, not
judgmental: that it is something to anticipate with great joy, not to await with fear and
dread. And may I further suggest that in the midst of all of that is the meaning of this
season of Advent which remembers an event that happened nearly two thousand years ago, but
in a way that expects something to happen again and to go on happening?

What the writer of Matthew was telling the early Christians was this, I believe:
there is great hope in the future. God loves the world. Be prepared to encounter His
love, to be challenged by it. Be prepared to join up with it whenever it appears. No
matter how bad things look for the human condition, God can and will work redemptively and
creatively within it.

That's an important affirmation for us to make at this time. It's too bad, frankly
that we get bogged down in the literalism of how and when the end is coming because
there's an important word here that gets lost in the process. The word is one of love
and hope and possibility. It is the word of Advent and it is a word the world needs to
hear from us and that we need to say to the world.

It's a little difficult, frankly, to be hopeful about the future. Those who have
much to say about it are either totally grim about the prospects, or else so defensive
about the reality of our problems that they cannot discuss them rationally. Near the
end of his life, H,G,Wells said, "It now seems to me that the whole universe is bored by
the whole species of mankind. I can see the human race sweeping along the stream of fate
to defeat, degradation and final defeat."' Even humorist James Thurber had a grim vision
of the future. "It is very hard to sustain humor," he wrote, "in a period where mankind

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seems to be trying, on the one hand, to invent a pill that will cure us of everything,
and on the other hand to invent machines for instant annihilation. (Theology Today,
10/80, p.323).

We are, in fact, a culture made vulnerable by our dependence on petroleum. We
are, in fact, in a world where access to nuclear weapons is becoming ever easier: a
world at the same time, fragmented, fractured, and on edge. No amount of pleasant
rhetoric will make those realities go away. There are many who feel that the old fears
for the end of the world are about to be fulfilled. It is difficult, frankly, to be

hopeful,

I'm helped by the thinking of people who can see the whole picture. People
honest enough to be realistic about the human prospect but at T@ast“dpen to the possibili-
ties over the long haul. One who lifts my spirits is Lewis Thomas, head of the Sloane
Kettering Cancer Research Center and the author of two Fascinating little books of essays
he calls "Notes of a inte Watcher", The titles are Lives of a Cell and The Medusa and
the Snail. Whenever I'm feeling bad about humanity, I find Dr. Thomas therapeutic. He
writes, for instance, in a piece on the place of homo sapiens in the whole realm of
biology..."We are the newest, the youngest and the brightest thing around...I believe fer-
vently in our species...we are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have
language...affection...genes for usefulness. And finally, and perhaps best of all, we
have music. Any species capable of producing, at this earliest, juvenile stage of its
development - the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, cannot be all bad." (The Medusa and

the Snail, p.14).

Lewis Thomas, although he does not use the language of theology, nevertheless,
speaks a part of the Advent word with his broad and perceptive overview. The future is
not only threatening, it is also full of hope and possibility. Technology may poison our
air, pollute our streams, render us impotent when the oil runs out - but it may also lead
us out of the wilderness. It may also feed us and save us from our own destructive impulse
The future is, at least, full of possibility.

But beyond the general hopefulness we bring to the future, Advent speaks a word
about God's will and a vision of where that will is leading. The season invites us to
prepare to celebrate an event that is the beginning of a process which continues in

\,history; namely, God's reconciliation of all people to himself and to one another.

Isaiah got rather specific, after all. Centuries before the birth, he told the
people what the day of the Lord will be like...
"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." (Isaiah 2:4).

Do we dare that hope? Do we dare include that ancient vision in our Advent
observance? Is the prophet's vision intended for real human history or is it, in one
commentator's words, a "utopian nea shot devoid of substantial historical fistieaen hope?"
——_ ”

The worst we can do, we 1980 tuetattome, I believe, is render our vision and our
hope ineffectual because we have concluded that in our wisdom it is unrealistic. That's
precisely what Advent is about - an event and a process moving against the tide, a force
working in history to bind up wounds instead of inflicting them; a power bringing people

| and races and classes and nations together instead of driving them apart.

a & =

We must hold on to that for dear life. Of course, it isn't self-evident. Of
course God's will in history is not as dramatic as the will of the President of the
United States. Of course God's redemptive work is not as conspicuous as the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan, for instance. Advent reminds us that the birth itself wasn't
dramatic by anyone's standards, or even very noticeable. God's son came into history
through the back door, as it were, and God, it seems, wants it that way.

So in Advent, we are reminded to wait and watch because His coming will be a
surprise and will happen in ways even we don't expect. In fact, the one thing you can
count on is that when God does something, it will be subtle, planted in the soil of
human ambiguity.

The point is to be waiting in expectation. As Halford Luckock put it once, to
"live on tip toe", watching for the signs of His kingdom,

Ranier Maria Rilke in "Letters to a Young Poet", put it beautifully...
"Why do you think of Christ as the Coming One, immanent from all
eternity?...What keeps you from projecting his birth into times
that are in the process of becoming, and living your life like a
painful and beautiful day in the history of a great gestation?"
(Proclamation 2, Advent, p.14).

I like that...your life and mine, like a "painful but beautiful day in the
history of a great gestation". We will celebrate the event, the birth. The season of
Advent invites us beyond the festivities of Nativity, to see the gestation, the gradual,
gentle coming of God's Kingdom. Advent invites you to participate in it, to feel tugging
at your heart, not only the sentiment and nostalgia which surround the holiday, but the
impulse to join it: to make peace in your own relationships, to become honest about your
own life, to give love and forgiveness and acceptance to someone who needs it, to gather
someone's loneliness or grief into your arms, to give someone a gift who does not expect
or deserve it. Because what will be tugging at your heart is not just sentiment but
God's love - working through you - using your humanity, your faith and love and strength
to make real His Kingdom.

Expect it. Count on it. Rejoice in it.
Amen.

Our Father, as we begin our journey through Advent, help us to perceive Your
Presence in the world. As we celebrate love and generosity, family and affection and
friendship, help us to perceive and celebrate Your Will at work. God Eternal, we are
grateful for Your love. Come among us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.