Third Sunday of Advent

Lectionary 9

Now the people were filled with expectation,
and all were asking in their hearts
whether John might be the Christ.

Knowing that our good God often intervenes in our life, when we have trouble we look for help. We are “filled with expectation.”

It is good to be expectant; we cannot be satisfied unless we have known both disappointment and expectation. Or perhaps I should say, we cannot be satisfied unless we have known the right kind of expectation.

People thought John the Baptist might be the Messiah. Others went beyond thinking to demanding, “This must be the messiah!” They were disappointed when he insisted he was not. Saving people, even pretending to save people were two things he could not do. He may have been tempted but, being a good man and compelled by the Holy Spirit, he would not try it.

Sometimes people want from others what cannot be given. I have known adult children who desperately wanted to please their aging parents. But the older people were chronically depressed and their children were endlessly frustrated. I have known parents who wanted their children to be settled in life, prospering and producing grandchildren. But, for whatever reason, the younger adults could not do it.

In his poem East Coker, T.S. Eliot wrote:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Can we live with naked expectation, without fixing our desires on any specific outcome? Can we expect without knowing what to expect? Can we wait for God to surprise us?

It’s easy, during the Christmas season, to become sated with dissatisfying things: food, drink, visiting, travel, gifts and so forth. It’s easy to set ourselves up for disappointment.

Advent is a time for waiting without knowing what to expect. Like piety and reverence, waiting is a learned skill; it takes practice. Let’s not waste the opportunity. 

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.