I.N.I.
A sermon to be preached at St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Columbia, Pennsylvania on Wednesday 9 December 2009 and based on the assigned Gospel text for the evening: St. Luke 1:12-15a, 18, 24-25, 57 to carry the theme of Elizabeth personifying Advent Expectation.
Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord.
[text]
Dear Friends in Christ,
“Elizabeth is expecting.” That news flashed through a certain Judean town years ago, we can be sure. But Elizabeth was expecting long before she became pregnant. We can guess at some of Elizabeth's expectations, and be fairly certain of others.
I. Elizabeth's Expectations (Known and Conjectured)
For example, while her husband Zechariah had been off in Jerusalem, we can guess that she was expecting him to come home brimming with news and stories. She was also likely expecting that she would spend her remaining years as a doting aunt or as a babysitting substitute grandmother for children in her village. Maybe she was even expecting that God would actually answer her prayers over the years and somehow send her a child of her own despite her advanced years.
And like other faithful believers over the years, Elizabeth had been expecting the Lord to fulfill His ancient promises and to send a Messiah to Israel.
There's a good chance that Elizabeth expected something from the Lord in response to the way she had been “righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord” (Lk. 1:6). That would really only be natural, wouldn't it? She was keeping up her side of the relationship. When was God going to step in and do something for her in return? It wasn't as if Elizabeth was a 'nobody' after all. She was a descendant of Aaron, the brother of Moses of old and the progenitor of Israel's priests. She had married a priest. Her family connections, in other words, were pretty solid.
And despite the fact that there were so very many laws to keep, she and her husband had really exercised a great deal of piety and even holiness by keeping a very kosher household, by strictly maintaining the Sabbath, by observing the festivals like Passover. They had sacrificed the required sacrifices. They had prayed the necessary prayers. They had worshiped. They had loved the Lord with all their heart, soul, and mind. They had loved their neighbors, too.
Yet while Elizabeth had rejoiced in the Lord, and again I say rejoiced, there was that one thing missing. So much of her people's culture focused on the promise of children, and she had none. At one level, children were the Social Security system of their world – much like they are in poor cultures of today's world: when people aged beyond being able to work for their living, then they expected that their children would care for them as they had for their own parents. But at another level, children were viewed as a blessing from the Lord, as kind of tangible evidence of His love, and certainly as a way that the faith of Israel could grow.
There were examples in the Scriptures that Elizabeth knew, examples of women whose aged or barren wombs had finally been blessed by children of promise. Just two are included in our lessons this evening. Out Old Testament lesson recalls Rachel giving birth to Joseph who would later save his whole family by gathering them into his household in Egypt during a terrible famine. Our New Testament lesson recalls Sarah, Rachel's grandmother-in-law, who gave birth to her son Isaac when she and Abraham were “as good as dead,” both being in the neighborhood of 100 years old. I wouldn't be surprised if Elizabeth knew their stories by heart and included them in her prayers. She and Zechariah had prayed for a child. She knew that being able to pass on her faith in God to her own children would be a way of making her own contribution to the growth of the Lord's family.
Well, all that about children was true. But Elizabeth was mistaken if she ever expected that her obedience to the Law of God was going to get her the child she wanted. As right as she was, Elizabeth was wrong if she ever thought that living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord would somehow prove her worthiness to God, as if she could really be perfect and 100% blameless.
Elizabeth's expectations while Zechariah was serving at the Temple in Jerusalem – if they were realistic – were defined by the boundaries of her imperfection, her sin before the Lord, that meant she would never be able to keep God's Law completely.
II. Our Expectations Before We Know Christ
You and I can and do have our own expectations, don't we? Our expectations can be all over the map, too. We can expect that if we out in an honest day's work, we will get a a full day's pay. We can expect that when we do achieve retirement age, we will be somewhat taken care of. We can expect that when we are sick or injured that we can get help from doctors and the health care system.
We may be expecting all sorts of other things. We may be expecting things from our families. We may be expecting things from our friends, from our neighbors, even from strangers.
And maybe we expect things from God. There are a lot of people in today's world who have some sort of vague expectation that 'God helps those who help themselves.' This is not a phrase from the Bible, though, and does not express our Christian faith. But we hear a lot about people – and maybe you are or were one of them – who expect that if we treat other people well, and do our best, and generally try to be nice to others, well then God will pretty much have to let us into Heaven after we die. You've all seen the cartoon image of St. Peter guarding the gate of Heaven with a long list of who has been naughty and nice. The world before Jesus Christ sees things this way, as if God were a grandfatherly Santa Claus, always genial, always eager to overlook slips by his grandchildren, and always dropping eternal presents on everybody because – despite the talk – nobody ever really expects Santa to skip a house where children misbehave.
So we expect God to play fair. We do our best. We come as close as we can to “ living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord” and surely the Lord will bless us. Won't He?
Well, if we're really honest with ourselves, we know He won't. God wants perfection. And perfection means not slipping even once. It means scoring a perfect “10” every time. It means getting straight A's every semester every year for the rest of our lives. And that's just not going to happen.
That means that what we really should expect from God is His disappointment with us, His correction, and His hand of punishment. THAT is only fair. Those have always been the rules of the game. Everybody, deep in their hearts, realizes that, too.
III. Our Expectations Once We Know Christ
Here's where Elizabeth of old – old Elizabeth of old – can continue to teach you and me about the Lord. What Elizabeth was expecting can be what we are expecting, too.
Because Elizabeth was expecting her Savior. Her expectation was met when Mary visited six months later. Part of what she said to Mary was to ask “why has this happened to me that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” She could tell because her unborn son, John the Baptiser, “leaped for joy” in her womb when Mary greeted her. John was beginning his own ministry of announcing the coming of the Savior. And Elizabeth rejoiced.
So, too, do we rejoice at the coming of our Savior. With eager expectation we look forward to celebrating Christmas once again. On December 25th we start our annual 12 day celebration of Jesus' birth. We always expect the best of this time of year. And it's all tied up in the coming of Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem, born our King, and born our Redeemer.
And that is precisely why you and I look forward to the Second Coming with the same eager expectation. People who have no Savior have no hope for the future. They have no way to save themselves from the punishment for their sins. They have no assurance that things will be all right for them when they die. Maybe they hope so. But they don't know.
We who are followers of Jesus, however, have a sure and certain promise that we have a good future before us. We don't have to wonder whether we've done enough good deeds to get past the gatekeeper of Heaven. We don't need to tremble because maybe some of the things we've done were just bad enough to keep out of everlasting joy. You and I know we haven't done enough good, and that we've done way too much bad. But we also know this: we know that Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, did absolutely everything to satisfy God on our behalves. So we look forward to the Second Coming of Jesus, we look forward to judgment day, we look forward to our deaths because they are the door that takes us into our eternal rest, our eternal peace, our eternal joy.
We should expect nothing if we rely on our own merits or worthiness. But God's gracious gifts exceed our human expectations. Instead of anger, we find grace. Instead of rejection, we find love and acceptance. Instead of punishment, we receive Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God. This God-with-us, this Immanuel, becomes our Savior. He took our sin and suffering and death, aced them all in our place before we were even born, and gave us his life and holiness to cover us.
This Advent we all have expectations. We may be expecting presents. We may be expecting greeting cards. We may be expecting family get-togethers or visits from friends. We could be expecting special meals and cookies and fruit cake. I can't promise that any of those expectations will be fulfilled.
This Advent, we who have been made one with Jesus through our Baptism into his death and resurrection have other expectations as well. We are expecting God's forgiveness. We are expecting eternal joy. We are expecting to be welcomed into Heaven where the open arms of our loving God will wrap us up in the warmest hug ever. And those expectations we can be absolutely sure will be fulfilled.
May the peace of God that surpasses all human understanding and expectation keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
S.D.G.