Chalice Reflection & Expectations

Chalice Reflection of Jane Goedecke
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
December 7, 2008

My first reaction to this morning’s theme “Expectations” was that expectations bring anxiety. The word does connote a “looking forward” but with standards to be met, promises to be kept, goals to be achieved. I don’t know what Jan has in mind for this morning, but I started getting nervous!

Life sends us too many expectations and I, and perhaps, some of you, too, have a tendency to believe things are “expected” of me even when they’re not. I’m going to try using the word “anticipation” instead.

I am anticipating a beautiful winter wonderland after the snowfall. I am expecting the plow man to show up. See the difference?

And this time of year I need to be especially vigilant in eliminating the “E” word. In years past I let the holiday become a mountain of expectations for me. Age and fatigue have helped me become more realistic, but it is an ongoing battle. I invite you to join me in the struggle. Let us anticipate the blessings and joys of this holiday season and let go of the expectations.

I light the chalice this morning in the spirit of anticipation.

“Expectations”

A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Jan Carlsson-Bull
First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Cohasset, MA
December 7, 2008

“If there were no Advent, we would need to invent it,” remarks John Taylor of this season marking the four weeks before Christmas. On this second Sunday of Advent, I’m reminded that we don’t need to invent it; it’s with us to the extent that we tend even to some of the dimensions of this story of the birth of Jesus. We may though need to re-invent it.

Advent means “coming to” or simply “coming.” We speak of the advent of an era, the advent of a new course of action, the advent of a person. Birth is an advent, a coming, a new beginning, an arrival. From the first observance of Advent into the sixth century, it referred exclusively to the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Then its meaning shifted, and it was observed as the season of expectation, of preparation, for the coming of the child Jesus—or, in Christian terms, the Christ child. Advent has become a season of expectation, a spiritual pregnancy of sorts, permitting us to prepare for whatever Christmas means to us. Again, in Christian terms, it is preparation for the marking once again of the birth of him who was deemed by so many to be God become human in the form of a humble baby—a form to which we can all relate, since this is how we all began.

Advent in our time commences on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, but if we consider this a time of approach, why not turn to one of the New, or Second Testament, Gospel stories for those first indications of expectation? The Gospel of Luke is the only Second Testament Gospel that records what many term “the Annunciation.” Sometimes we Unitarian Universalists need to pay serious attention to biblical text, even though we can rationalize it away as being one of many stories about a story whose lines have blurred immensely over the centuries. We can revisit that story and discover anew its richness for faith marked by a belief that this was about the Son of God coming into the world and faith marked by an understanding that a child was born who would make his mark on the world in ways that were downright revolutionary—Love being the rare Gospel that it is and indeed, the Gospel, the “good news,” that described the core teaching of Jesus in his brief adult life.

To get a firmer grip on this story, let’s revisit Luke’s account of how Mary discovered she was about to become pregnant. Now this sounds like something that Mary should have learned in a class akin to our OWL series—the Our Whole Lives series in which our Unitarian Universalist youth learn the basics of sexuality from trained and trustworthy adults who are not their parents, which enhances the credibility for almost any adolescent. Mary wasn’t quite a candidate for OWL in time or tradition, but the story goes that she did have what we might freely call a “trained and trustworthy adult” in the form of the angel Gabriel.

Before we jump to metaphor or mythology to describe what happened, let’s check out Luke’s more or less original story, albeit written almost a century after Jesus’ birth. With the oral tradition in full play, we can surmise that the story had been told and retold before being cast into the written word. Storytellers were the historians of their day and took great pains to memorize what had been passed to them that they might pass it with maximum accuracy onto the next generation of those who would keep the story alive, a story that some still call “the greatest story ever told.”

Luke in the early part of his first chapter describes another pregnancy, that of Mary’s relative, Elizabeth, with John the Baptist, a formidable figure in his own right. Luke explains that Elizabeth was six months pregnant when:

“the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph…”

NOTE that Mary isn’t yet pregnant, so it just might make sense that as a young engaged Jewish woman, she was indeed still a virgin, though not for long, since it’s a rare virgin who gives birth to a baby. In fact, a virgin birth deserved feature story status in some ancient edition of the National Enquirer.

Back to Luke…
[Joseph was] “of the house of David: and the virgin’s name was Mary. And he [that is, the angel Gabriel, who served as a messenger of God] came to her and said, ‘Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!’ But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.

He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High;
And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,
And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever;
And of his kingdom there will be no end.’

And Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I have no husband?’ And the angel said to her, [and this is where it gets iffy!]

‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
And the power of the Most High will overshadow you;
Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.

And behold, your kinswoman Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible.’ And Mary said, ‘Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.’ And the angel departed from her.”

Luke goes on to tell the story of Mary visiting Elizabeth and her husband, Zechariah, and of Elizabeth proclaiming upon Mary’s arrival that Mary is “blessed among women,” followed by Mary’s spontaneous proclamation of what God had set in play through her and how generations would call her blessed. Then we’re told that Mary remained with Elizabeth about three months, just enough time for Elizabeth to give birth to John and for Mary to get through her first trimester in the trusted company of her kinswoman.

Luke sets the scene for expectation writ large. If anyone is pregnant even now, we commonly say, “She’s expecting.” Pregnancy is all about expectation, all about advent, an anticipated arrival of a child. I don’t doubt that any of us here who have given birth to a child or adopted a child or experienced this vicariously through family and friends know how heightened this expectation is, how keen our senses are, how hyper-vigilant we are to who is to come…that “who” being a big question mark for the span of time from confirmation of pregnancy to birth.

Advent describes a season of expectancy, a season of hyper-attentiveness to what is to come. Every birth, every arrival, every coming of a child shakes our universe—perhaps less so in magnitude than did the arrival of Jesus or Moses or Mohammed or Abraham or even Mahatma Gandhi or Eleanor Roosevelt, but nonetheless each and every child is preceded by a season of Advent.

We are expecting. We mark this in the tradition of our Christian roots by the lighting of Advent candles set into an Advent wreath, a relatively recent tradition said to have begun among German Lutherans. Once again, what has become a religious rite had its roots in pagan rites—specifically, the pagan fire wheel. The circle or wheel or wreath symbolizes eternity, a “world without end,” an “everlasting to everlasting.” Each of the four purple candles—purple being the emblematic color of royalty—is lit week after week until all four candles are burning bright on the Sunday preceding Christmas itself. On Christmas, the pink candle, the center candle, is kindled, indicating that Jesus, the presumed “light of the world,” has come. The waiting is over. Here he is! No more full nights of sleep for Mary or Joseph! Yes, there was Joseph, that back burner partner who hung in (after, most of us assume, getting Mary pregnant in the first place) and helped to parent what would prove to be one challenging youngster.

But let’s back up. Let’s back up to this seasonal time of expectancy. What we know about the story of Luke that has come down through the ages is that Mary was expecting and that she had enough sense to be wary, to be vigilant, to know that life is never the same once a path has been taken that is for the most part irreversible. Remember, you can’t be a little bit pregnant. You’re either expecting or you’re not.

What, I wonder, are we expecting, amid this season of Christmas—and not just Christmas, but the lights and re-enactment of the story of the miracle of Hanukkah and the lights and observance of the recent story and rites of Kwanzaa and the lights and observance by Hindus worldwide of Diwali, a festival of lights that pays tribute to the pantheon of Hinduism. What are we expecting and what can we learn from this ancient account by a fellow named Luke, who received it from his first-century predecessor story tellers?

Expectation is a state of vigilance. Expectation is often accompanied by anxiety, occasionally by the strategies of reflection and meditation, and almost always by some planning that usually goes awry because the path to all our Bethlehems is rife with potholes. Sometimes we escape them; sometimes we don’t.

In John Taylor’s reflection on Advent, he observes that “we are always expecting.” And he writes a nano-breath later that we are “hopeful.” We are hopeful creatures and “hopefulness deserves a festival.”

Maybe so, but expectation and hope don’t completely overlap. Expectation is indeed a state of vigilance and planning. Hope, on the other hand, informs our expectation with a sense that all will ultimately be well. Hope transcends anxiety and hyper-vigilance and even meditation and reflection and lifts our souls into spiritual resilience—not la-la land thinking, not denial, but a resilience of our very souls, a readiness to ride the waves and discover gifts unanticipated in whatever happens.

Let’s go back to Mary. Here she was stuck with a child Jesus who would later be said to run off from his parents at the age of 12, when they took him to Jerusalem. Who did he hang out with? The sages in the temple, whom he confounded with his questions and commentary. Who did he hang out with as a young adult—not accounting for a good two decades that we know nothing about—but a band of brothers who were not exactly perched on the highest rung of Galilee’s social ladder. How did he end up? That’s for another season, another time.

How do we remember him and why? For those of us who are of liberal faith, we connect again and again with his teachings, with his parables that spoke of loving folks who are despised, bringing wholeness to folks who have lost any remnant of hope, sharing what wealth we have—spreading the wealth in fact—so that none will go hungry or become homeless, forging a course as peacemakers blessed as children of God. It’s so much easier to chalk up the arrival of Jesus as the arrival of the Son of God and let that notion occupy center stage so we don’t have to wrestle with the rugged teachings that he imparted and for which he paid dearly. Hope is held by trusting that each of us can move through whatever lies ahead with grace and graciousness that is even remotely akin to what we learn from those accounts of who this babe of Bethlehem grew to be. Hope is held by letting go of rigid expectations and letting be what is and letting how what is evolve into what will be.

This is a season of expectation, but let it not be a time of rigid expectation. The news of our world intimate and global suggests we loosen our expectations and hold hope. All we know is that a child was born. All we know is that we were once children. All we know is that most of us in this Meeting House this morning are grown-ups, riding the waves of what is, marked with scars and souvenirs of waves that were, anticipating but uncertain of what turbulence lies ahead. What to do but light a candle. With every child, a light comes into the world. That light burns brightly, flickers, and is consumed, becoming once again part and parcel of the substance from which we sprang.

As we light our candles of Advent, let us be no less jubilant about a season of anticipation, a season of expectation, and the reality of hope held in each child we cradle, each manifestation of love we practice, each ray of light that illumines our souls as we move through each precious day. Amen.


Sources:

“The Advent Wreath,” in Celebrating Christmas: An Anthology, Edited by Carl Seaburg, Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, 1983, 2004, Authors Choice Press, New York, 235.

The Gospel According to Luke, The Bible, Revised Standard Version

John A. Taylor, “If there were no Advent...,” in Celebrating Christmas: An Anthology, Edited by Carl Seaburg, Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, 1983, 2004, Authors Choice Press, New York, 235.

“Winter Festival and Celebrations,” Church of the Larger Fellowship, in Celebrating Christmas: An Anthology, Edited by Carl Seaburg, Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, 1983, 2004, Authors Choice Press, New York, 235.