Revelation 22:20 * Dec 20, 2006* Advent III * Chaplain Steve Stern

Advent = Expectations

I went to a lot of cowboy movies when I was a child. All of those movies would end with Roy Rogers bringing things to a good conclusion. The bad guys were in jail. The runaway stage had been stopped short of the cliff. Dale Evans would look adoringly at Roy as he modestly looked down and said, “Aw shucks, tweren’t nothing. Just doing my job.” As I grew up westerns gave way to movies about sad subjects where the good guy would die at the end and I went out realizing life doesn’t always turn out as I had hoped it would. And now there are the movies where the end is left up in the air. It’s sort of you can write your own ending. If you want to believe that the bad guy will get his due you can but the door is left open to think he just might have gotten away with it and I’m left thinking, “I paid eight dollars and I don’t know what the end is?”

There is no doubt that movies, books, stories can have lots of different endings. The text we have from the Revelation of John is the end to the book we call the Bible. It is a book God inspired His prophets and apostles to write over a period of time covering twelve to thirteen hundred years. It covers history from the dawn to time to the end of time. And if you were God how would you want to end such a book? What would be the last message that you would want to give to your people? What should we expect that message to be?

Expectations are running pretty high right now for many people. Some are wondering if they will get all the things they have been hoping for? Some are wondering if things will go well when the family gets together. Some are wondering if they will get all the tasks done that need to get done. And here we are gathered in this place because we believe that the most important expectations of this season center around our God. So I am going to ask all of you in this quiet moment in this quiet sanctuary to put aside all of those other expectations you have about Christmas and let’s use John’s words to focus on Jesus and the subject of expectations. What first of all can we expect of Him? What secondly does He expect of us?

I’m coming. I’ll be right there. What do those words mean to you? Are those words of warning? Are they words of comfort? When my kids were little and they would be laughing and giggling and horsing around in their beds at night instead of settling down and getting to sleep I would open the stair door and I would yell up the stairs, “I’m coming up there soon if you don’t settle down.” My children learned those were words of warning. They came to understand that they didn’t really want me to come up those stairs. So the tone of the words in this second last verse of the Bible is extremely important for us so we know what to expect of our Lord when He says that He is coming soon.

The tone of these words becomes clear as we look at the setting that prompted this book and the message that God wanted to give to His people. This book came to people who were living at the end of the first century after Jesus’ coming in the flesh. While there were people who didn’t

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like Christianity from the very beginning and many Christians suffered scorn and ridicule and harassment the time had now come when things had gotten much worse. It is now the state itself that has decided that this religion called Christianity must be stamped out. Now it is arrests. Now it is trials. Now it is torture and execution. The whole book of Revelation tells Christians who are under immense pressures that often it will look very grim but God will not forget His people. They will ultimately prevail. God will rescue and redeem His people. So how beautiful it is to hear these last words as Jesus sums up all that has been said and in a clear tone of hope and comfort He says, “Yes, I am coming soon.”

Since we are in Advent I thought it would be beneficial to take these words of comfort and see how they spoke to Mary as she gave birth in Bethlehem because she too was in a hard place. Can you imagine how Mary felt when Joseph came to her and said, “We have to go to Bethlehem to get registered for the census.” I can see her looking at Joseph and saying, “Look at me. I’m in my ninth month. This baby can come any day. We can’t go now.” And Joseph said, “Well we have to go. We can’t ignore this decree and get in trouble with the Romans. It’ll be fine. It will only take a couple of days and we’ll get back home in plenty of time.”

And then they get to Bethlehem and Mary knows she is going into labor and her nesting instinct kicks in big time and Joseph is frantically trying to find a room where she can deliver and they have to settle for a room with the animals. Now Mary is lying on the ground with whatever hay and straw Joseph can pile together. It’s cold. It’s dirty. Mary’s team of mother and sisters and aunts are not there to support her and assist her. Is Mary afraid? Is she upset? Is she panicking? I would have to believe that Mary is thinking, “ Oh, God, not here. Not now. This isn’t right for me. Surely it isn’t right for you?” In spite of her fears and her pain and her loneliness. In spite of Joseph’s ineptness and helplessness the baby was born. Luke tells us that Mary treasured all these things and pondered them. When did that happen? Was it after the shepherds came and things settled down a bit? Was it when Joseph placed the baby on her stomach and cut the cord and she saw that child and held that child and knew that what the angel Gabriel said was really true. God was coming. God was with her in her hard place.

I think we have a lot of expectations of God. We would expect him to be born in a palace. We would expect him to come with great pomp and glory. We would expect him to straighten out the mess this world is in. Advent and Christmas and John’s Revelation remind us that God does not tie Himself to human expectations. He commits to His own expectations. He will pay any price, go to any lengths, appear in the least likely place, so that He can save His people. It was Mary’s fears, her doubts, her frailties, her sinfulness that Jesus needed to touch and heal and take away.

And our Jesus who came and comes and is coming again expects the power of this and the wonder of this will give rise to a response within the hearts of His people. John captures that response with the words, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” If the tone of Jesus’s words is that of comfort and love, what do you think is the tone of John as he says, “Oh, My Lord, come to me?”

Picture a child who has climbed up on a chair and as he is pulling himself up to get at what he is

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after the chair falls over and he is just hanging there. He yells for help. I mean he really yells for help and he hears his mother calling to him, “Just hang on. Don’t let go. I coming. I’ll catch you. I’ll help you.” “Come, mom”, he calls. “Hurray. I can’t hold on much longer.” Do you hear the urgency in that voice? Do you hear the longing? Do you hear that little voice saying, “If you just get hear quick I know I’ll be all right?”

Jesus wants to hear our voices raised in urgency and longing too. Are you aware of the longing in your heart for God to come and save and touch your heart with peace? I think the way life is in this time and place is that the longing of the heart gets pushed way down deep inside of us. We are so busy. We have so much to do. We are so preoccupied. We are so overwhelmed by responsibilities and so much is going on all around us we don’t have time to think or ponder or wonder. The longing of our hearts is so far down on the list of things we pay attention to that the voice of our longing can’t be heard. It is drowned out by all those other voices that clamor for our attention.

I would like all of you to do one thing in these last five days before Christmas. Take twenty to thirty minutes and go to a quiet place. Your bedroom. Your basement. A bench in a park. And in that quiet place listen to the longings of your heart. That grief and loss that just won’t go away when you see that loved one’s picture or empty chair. The mistakes that changed your life and took away so many opportunities. The regrets that followed those mistakes and won’t stop accusing you. The fences you have tried to mend and never were able to. The love you yearned for and never found. Listen to all those yearnings and longings. Let the tears rise up and flow. Let the sobs and sounds of the heart be heard by your ears. Then see how clear it is that there is no help for you if you don’t cry out for Jesus. Give voice to your longings with the words, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” And as you cry out your expectations for God’s presence, His forgiveness, and His power I have no doubt you will also hear God’s voice saying, “I am coming soon. In fact I am already here.” Amen.