First Monday in Advent

Amos 2:6-16; 2 Peter 1:1-11; Matthew 21:1-11

Advent means “coming to.”  How fitting, then, that we begin by reading of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, a reading usually read on Palm Sunday.  If this is fitting, though, it’s not what we expect in Advent.  But isn’t that how it should be?  

Advent is not a time to expect what we already know.  As we count the days and hum the familiar tunes, we already know what’s coming - or so we think.  Parties.  Shopping.  Maybe Lessons and Carols.  A pageant.  A tree.  We know how it goes.

Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “We persist in saying that we keep vigil in expectation of the Master.  But in reality we should have to admit, if we were sincere, that we no longer expect anything.”  And in this, he says, we lose what is “perhaps the supreme Christian function and the most distinctive characteristic of our religion” - expectation for what we cannot know.

To expect to be surprised - to expect God to do more than we can ask or imagine: this is our wild hope.  

The crowds who welcomed Jesus included many who knew what they expected in a Messiah.  They could only shrug at this clown on a donkey.  Later, they joined the crowd in turning on Jesus.  They knew what was coming: the Empire would win.  But they were wrong.  Long after Rome crumbled, in an age when we study Rome as an artifact, people’s lives continue to be transformed by encountering this surprising Human One.  The kingdom of God continues to break into our lives, if we will but look.

What do you expect this season?  What seems likely, given your circumstances and hopes?

Let it go.

Expect miracles.  Expect to be surprised, and to be a surprise.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.