"Filled with expectation"
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Epiphany 1, Year C
Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come. Take my lips and speak with them. Take our minds and think with them. Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you. In Christ’s name, we ask it. Amen.
Our Gospel reading today from Luke that tells the story of Jesus’ Baptism begins with the words, “[T]he people were filled with expectation.” The people in Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside were filled with expectation…expectation that God was indeed about to do something altogether new, something altogether wonderful in their midst. And as we come to the beginning of a new year…I began to think about expectation. And I think we often look to a new year as a time of looking forward to something altogether new…expecting new experiences and challenges…that hopefully are indeed altogether wonderful. Expectation is a powerful intuition…a powerful feeling. It can create in and for us a bounce in our step…an excitement for something to come…whether an experience or a thing or a person. I think of my children on Christmas Eve…expectantly looking forward to Christmas morning…the wonder of what there might be discovered with St. Nicholas’ imminent arrival and boxes neatly wrapped containing treasures untold. Sleep is hard to come by…and wake up time always comes earlier than usual on Christmas morn. I find myself each year almost as giddy as the children…expectantly looking forward to their own joy…sleep elusive even for me at 42…my own expectation all wrapped up in sharing in their delight and joy…the family gathered around the tree…lost in the moment together…no place to be…cell phones left at the bedside…reveling in the moment. We all barrel down the stairs together. It would be hard to tell, from the outside looking in, who was more excited to see what wonders await…dad or kiddos. There is indeed so much in life to joyfully expect and anticipate. Not unlike a kid at Christmas, I can find sleep elusive the night before I am expectantly looking forward to the beginning of a vacation, a day of fishing on a hill country river with friends, or even preaching a sermon I am particularly excited about. Expectation is indeed a powerful intuition…a powerful feeling…filling us with hope…for good…for peace…for meaning and growth…for an altogether new experience…for an altogether wonderful and undiscovered future.
But…and here is that great theological word again…but…expectation can also be a powerful intuition…a powerful feeling…akin to dread. I admit this is super ironic with the work I now find myself in…but in college we called it the Sunday blues. The weekend is coming to and end and Monday is fast approaching. I would often gather with friends for lunch on Sundays and we would almost brag about how much we dreaded the quickly approaching Monday. One person would say something like…I got to finish a ten page paper I haven’t started and have two tests this week…and all would murmur in a “feeling your pain” sort of way. Then someone else would speak up and say…well I’ve got a 15 page paper due tomorrow and also two tests this week and I got my car towed this weekend and haven’t told my parents yet…the consoling murmuring continued…only to be followed by someone else up-ing the stakes…well I spent all my money in the first week of the month and have to ask my parents for help with my rent and I haven’t started looking for a job that I as supposed to find at the beginning of the semester and I got three tests this week…oh…and that same 15 page paper to begin and complete by 8 AM tomorrow. Eventually someone would win the Sunday blues game…not that winning that game felt particularly victorious…and we would all leave lunch thoroughly dejected. Not a healthy habit…I don’t recommend that weekly discipline. Priest or not, hear me say, church is indeed a better Sunday option.
In her book “Daring Greatly”, Brené Brown talks about something somewhat similar…an attitude that she calls foreboding joy. That is when our expectations are directed toward failure or fear or loss or scarcity or shame or unworthiness…we begin to expect dreadful things to happen and unhappy experiences to follow. Simply said, our unhappy expectations rob us of our joy...rob us of our joy in the moment…and rob us of the joy of looking expectantly forward to something altogether new and altogether wonderful. For we all know the truth…it’s a dog eat dog world and I am wearing milk bone shorts. We are all always at least as aware of our shortcoming and inadequacies as we are of our gifts and blessings. We all know how little is left in the bank account as Christmas and all of its gift giving and parties and travel comes to a close. Speaking for myself, it is like clock work, in other words you can count on it, that I am going to be in a funk on the last three days of vacation dreading its end…and I love my work…rather than reveling in the gift of a few more days off in the company of those I love. It’s like the mother or father peering in the crib at the sleeping baby…who after a moment of delighting in the gift of this life…get lost in much darker thoughts about how fragile this life is…how easily it can be lost…wondering what sort of parent will I be…wondering how I will pay for all that is required to keep him or her fed and clothed and educated and happy and healthy. And indeed all of life is fragile and everything I said about our shortcoming and inadequacies is true…we are not perfect…failure, fear, loss, scarcity, shame, unworthiness can leave our sense of expectation shipwrecked on the shores of dread and despair. Expectation, for good or ill, is indeed a powerful intuition…a powerful feeling.
And surely this was true for those many people, probably more like us than different, in Luke’s gospel, who gathered at the banks of the River Jordan, filled with expectation. And yet…as I read Luke’s gospel…the sort of expectation that those gathered were feeling was not one full of dread or despair…it was not foreboding joy…but full of hope…hope for the gifts of forgiveness and repentance…that John the Baptizer offered in his baptism…forgiveness for the mistakes of the past…so that we can begin our future…that is always before us and always fresh and new…cleansed and whole…ready to begin again…full of expectant hope for a different sort of future…that is indeed altogether new and altogether wonderful…if never easy…if never perfect. And similarly the gift of repentance is simply to move in a new direction…for repentance means turn…to turn in a new direction…to take a new path forward…that again offers joy and hope for a different sort of future…that is indeed altogether new, altogether wonderful…if never easy…if never perfect. This hopeful expectation is the very thing we were to discover and indeed did discover in our own baptisms…just as Jesus did in his. For in Jesus’ own baptism, he found a life dramatically turned in a new direction from carpentry to healer and love spreader. He discovered an altogether new and wonderful path that led to the cross indeed…but his path didn’t end there…it led on to the wonder of Easter…the promise of a new and eternal life for him and for all…all of us…even you…even me. And surely his path was not easy…and not perfect…at least in our understanding of perfection…but it was…altogether new and altogether wonderful.
I mentioned that a discipline of spending Sunday mornings in church, here altogether, is a better option than recounting the depths our Sunday blues. And in large part that is because we come here each week to give thanks. We call this service, this Divine Office we share in, the Holy Eucharist…and Eucharist means giving thanks. We gather to give thanks to God for our gifts and blessings…to give thanks that we indeed have and are enough. We give thanks to God for his faithful presence with us…his Holy Spirit…just as it descended on Jesus at his own baptism…so the Spirit indeed has descended upon us and is never, not ever, going to let us go. We give thanks to God for the gifts of forgiveness and repentance gracefully poured upon us…this day and forever more…through the death and resurrection of Jesus. There is so much for which to indeed be grateful…to say thanks to God for. And Brene Brown says gratitude is the antidote to foreboding joy…and I agree. We practice gratitude in this place each and every week so that it forms in us a habit, an attitude and disposition toward gratitude in each moment, each place we find ourselves, each day. For gratitude is what fuels our expectations. A grateful heart that counts our blessings and gives thanks for our gifts…that recognizes that we have so much to offer and so many resources at our fingertips…that knows we are indeed enough…and hear me say you are enough…this gratitude fueled heart is always expecting to be surprised by joy…always expecting to discover God, the lover of our souls, in our midst…always joyfully expecting something for good and for God in this moment and each that follows in this new year and beyond…expecting something that is altogether new and altogether wonderful.
Like those at the banks of the River Jordan, I begin this year filled with Great Expectations…expectations that we will grow in love and friendship one with another. Expectations that the love we share will indeed overflow to love well all those around us, particularly those who are hurting or in need. Expectations that we will indeed fall more and more intimately in love with God in Christ. Expectations for new and wonderful experiences flowing from a place of deep gratitude for the life I have…for the life we share, altogether, in this place, our family of faith. Amen.