An Advent Sermon - What do you Expect?

Isaiah 2:1-5
Matthew 24:36-44
A couple years ago the Washington Post decided to do an experiment. They placed hidden cameras in the D.C. metro station during the morning rush hour. For 43 minutes one of the nation’s greatest violinist performed six classical pieces while 1,097 people passed by. Joshua Bell had just played a concert the night before where the cheap seats had sold for $100. However, only seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money while on the run for a total of $32 and change. That leaves 1,070 people who hurried, oblivious to the event. There is a video on you-tube of the experiment set in fast motion. It is eerie how people rush by, yet Joshua Bell’s movements remain fluid and graceful. The Washington post wrote, “You think he is a ghost. Then you see it: He is the one who is real. They are the ghosts.”
The conclusion of the experiment was that people don’t recognize beauty if they haven’t been trained to see it. Do we recognize God where we haven’t been trained to see God? Where is God that you don’t expect God to be? When have we been like ghosts in a God moment?
I was raised in the church. I remember having children’s Bible stories read to me, going to Boys & Girls Fellowship on Sunday nights, singing in the church choir, acting in the Carpenter’s Tools drama group, and going to Bible camp. I grew up a church geek. I’ve been trained well to find God where I’m supposed to find God.
We live in an age of information overload where compartmentalizing life is a basic form of survival. Nonetheless, with the new age of social networking, our work and family and school and social lives are co-mingling. The lines are blurring. God is not just a church thing. God has blurred the lines for centuries. God does not compartmentalize well. God is not where God is supposed to be when we expect God to be there. God is not what we expect more often than what we expect. Where is God that you don’t expect God to be? Would we even know how to recognize those moments?
FILM CLIP – Stethoscope
Today begins the church’s New Year. It is Advent which is four weeks of traveling forward, a season of anticipation and expectation. What do you expect? Or maybe what do you not expect? The text this morning tells us to keep awake, be alert. That Christ comes again like a thief in the night and we do not know the hour or the time. This is not a call to insomnia, but to spiritual awakening. Jesus is telling this to a community of sleepy people, caught up in the mundane routines of life and unaware of the extraordinary in the ordinary. Sleepy people no longer believe that anything will change, that today and tomorrow look exactly the same and so they sleepwalk through their lives.
Meister Eckhart was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic in the 14th century who said, “What good is it if Mary was full of grace unless I am full of grace? And what good is it if Christ was born a long time ago, if he is not born in me, in my time, and in my culture?” This Advent season Spirit Garage is expecting Christ to be born in our hearts, our time, and our culture. We are expecting a God that rarely comes the way that we predict. No one expected a teenaged single mom would bear God? Who expected the kicks in her belly would inspire dreams of no more hunger, the lifting of the lowly and not learning war any more. Where is God kicking about in and among you? Where have you found God that you didn’t expect God to be?
Sadly, it sometimes takes monumental moments to wake us up. Think of 9/11 and how many people were awakened to the preciousness of life, to the shortness of time and the urgency of the moment. Our scripture today is saying, don’t get caught up in the ho-hum in life that it takes a tragedy to wake you up. Don’t get so caught up in the business-as-usual of life that you get robbed of life’s simple beauty and pleasures.
Theologian David Bartlett writes, “One day Jesus may appear in the clouds, suddenly, like a thief in the night. But before that – as [the book of] Matthew reminds us – Jesus will appear just around the corner, suddenly, like a hungry person, or a neighbor ill-clothed, or someone sick or imprisoned.” Matthew 25 tells us how we can encounter Jesus everyday in every person we speak to. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
Think of it, where is God that you don’t expect God to be? The hallmark of grace is that it is unexpected. Witness or participate in unexpected grace and mercy and you will see God where you least expected. God lives in those places we don’t want to go. Are there places or future circumstances that are so filled with unknowns and frightening possibilities that you just can’t go there? Consider putting your stethoscope in those places and you could hear mercy, forgiveness, reconciliation, love, joy, gratitude, justice, hope, beauty, and creative energy there because they are the character of our God who is living there and everywhere already. So step out with hope into the unknowns of our financially struggling, war torn, weary world with eyes wide-open & awake for God. Your pace may slow down and you may feel more real than a ghost in life. You may notice beauty where you once walked by. You may recognize hope where you only saw trouble. You may create an entirely new life from the rubble of who you once were. That’s God-stuff for you. It blurs the lines of our neat compartments and like a world-class musician panning for dollars in a subway, may surprise us when we least expect.