What Do You Expect?

I have seen a lot of instances of three things so far this year, and frankly, leading up to the new year. One is spam in my email folders. There are so many estates all over the world that have named me as the beneficiary of such vast amounts of money that I don’t know how there can possibly be any more money left to run the world.

Another thing I’ve noticed is, like every year, there are so many people who have purchased exercise bikes, joined gyms, or are otherwise intent on shedding the accumulated weight of a year that has left many of us less active than usual, and eating far more than we might have. The comedienne Chonda Pierce said, “Now that I have lived through an actual plague, I totally understand why Italian Renaissance paintings are full of naked, fat people laying on couches.” Maybe it is time to go for a walk or something.

The third thing I’ve noticed coming into 2021, is that people are hoping it will be better than 2020. They are guarded in their expectations, though, and urge us to proceed cautiously because, after all, you never know what a given year is going to do to us.

All three of these things have to do with expectations. The first with either the expectation that I am stupid enough to give someone in Nigeria my banking information, or my own expectation, as Dire Straits put it back in 1985, of getting “money for nothing.” The second has to do with our expectations that resolving again to lose weight and get into shape is going to work this year.

These first one is completely unreasonable, the second, somewhat unreasonable, but the third expectation, that 2021 will be better than 2020, may be very reasonable. It depends upon what we expect, and that’s what I want to tell you about this morning. But first, let us pray… Amen.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”[1]

If you expect 2021 to put the coronavirus squarely behind us and that we get back to normal, I suppose that is a somewhat reasonable expectation. However, I think it shortsighted. Who wants to get back to normal? Evidently, we want more money than normal, and less weight than normal, so why would we want everything else to be normal? Since we’re in a place where we’re comfortable hearing about such things, let’s talk about getting back to normal in church.

If that’s what you want, you’d keep an interim pastor forever, the same number of folks would become new followers of Jesus here at St. Paul’s, and you would not mature in the faith any further, becoming stagnant in understanding God’s will for you. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to return to normal. So what should we expect in the new year with a new pastor?

It’s pretty handy to have today’s gospel lesson as a way to illustrate how things can and should change. In the story, a pre-adolescent Jesus has gone up to Jerusalem with his family to celebrate the Passover feast. They’ve done this for years. It’s always the same thing: a commemoration of deliverance from bondage in Egypt, by observing among other things, a traditional feast of symbolic foods that helps God’s people remember what he did. Participants recall the fact of 430 years of enslavement in Egypt by eating matzo, an unleavened, bread eaten by the poor. They also consume bitter herbs that symbolizes the bitterness of slavery, yet they also enjoy charoset, a sweet paste that represents the mortar that the slaves used to cement bricks. The meal also has four ceremonial glasses of wine to punctuate the proceedings. I’m not talking about the tiny wine glasses we use in our communion services.

The point is, Jewish people looked forward to this every year like we look forward to Christmas and Easter. And Passover is the same thing every year just like our Christmas and Easter celebrations are pretty much the same thing every year. We have refined our traditions; we look forward to them; and we don’t want anyone messing with them. Then along comes Jesus.

After their custom of celebrating Passover had concluded, our gospel story shows Mary and Joseph walking the 90 miles back to Nazareth. (I don’t suppose they had any difficulty shedding any extra pounds.) After they had walked a day, about one-fourth of their journey, they figured out Jesus wasn’t in the company of their extended family. After checking with all their relations, the only thing they could do was head back to Jerusalem. Can you imagine? They couldn’t phone ahead to inquire. They couldn’t drive the roughly 25 miles and be there in less than an hour. It was another whole day of walking before they could even start looking around the city for Jesus. I don’t suppose any of us have ever been in a worse spot. Mary and Joseph have been entrusted with the Son of God…and they lost him.

Once they got back to Jerusalem, they spent another three days looking for him. I can’t conceive of the anguish and terror in losing one of my children for four days. But on the fourth day after realizing he wasn’t with them, they found him. And according to young Jesus, he was where they should have expected him to be. He was in his Father’s house. He said it so matter-of-factly; nonetheless, Mary and Joe didn’t understand. And if it weren’t for how relieved they were to have found him, they might have found him exasperating.

So, how does this apply to us, and to 2021? Well, Jesus was in his Father’s house, asking questions and learning from the rabbis or teachers in the temple. And from that time on, “Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature.”[2] He grew in knowledge, understanding, and maturity. That is not normal. But it’s good, right? So how does this happen?

It helps to be the Son of God, I suppose, but then again, but through baptism, we are all children of God. The Apostle Paul assures us that we “are all sons of God through faith.”[3] We should all be growing in wisdom and stature. But how? How does this happen? It’s no more difficult to understand than how to lose weight. You already know how to do both. The real mystery is, do you actually want to do so?

If you really want to lose weight, you’ll exercise more and eat less. If you want to mature in faith, you’ll stop consuming so much TV or Internet or whatever else takes up so much time, and start consuming more of God’s Word and those other things that happen in your Father’s house.

God has “made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will.”[4] I want to know all about that and to grow into the sonship he has destined for me, and I want to do it with you. So, I want you to know that this is what I will spend myself in accomplishing among you. I will teach you God’s Word, administer the Sacraments often, and shepherd you so that you too may grow into your relationship with Jesus. That’s what you can expect from me in 2021, whether I finally lose a single pound this year, get any richer any quicker than I ever have, or even if some other plague comes along. I will preach and teach the Scripture, duly baptize, serve you Christ’s holy meal, and take care of you.

And I will expect from you that you will want to learn and grow, that you will want your children baptized and raised in the Christian faith, and that—and I can’t stress this one enough—you will let me know when you need my help, especially when you go into the hospital. Please don’t expect me to be a mind reader. It’s okay to let me know when you’re sick or having surgery; it’s not okay to complain that I didn’t care enough to visit when you never let me know. Don’t expect someone else will tell me. They will often respect your privacy or assume someone else told me. In fact, they will expect that you told me. So, tell me!

Let me assure you that I enjoy visiting, especially those who can’t get to their Father’s house any more. I like to bring God to them, offering them his Word and the Sacrament of Holy Communion in the home or nursing home or hospital. There is no difference between doing so in those places or here at 205 St. Paul’s Church Road. For wherever the Word of God is taught, preached, and obeyed, and where the Sacraments are rightly administered, the Father’s house exists.

That’s what I expect St. Paul’s to be this year: my Father’s house. Susan and I are excited to be among you, are moving our membership to St. Paul’s, and want to be fully involved with you in the life of this congregation. But that involvement begins and ends with the Word. Count on it. Expect lots of it. It’s the stuff Christians are made of, and because of that Word that does everything in the church, I think we can expect more out of 2021 than getting back to “normal”—that this year will be better, and the next year better still.

I expect this because “God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”[5] He will do more than you expect, just like he did for Solomon in our first lesson. Start with the right expectation, like Solomon did, and God will supply the rest.

May it be so even among us. Amen

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 1:3.

[2] The Revised Standard Version (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1971), Lk 2:52.

[3] Galatians 3:26

[4] The Revised Standard Version (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1971), Eph 1:9.

[5] The Revised Standard Version (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1971), Php 2:13.