Week 1: Expecting (…still).

We end our study series on N. T. Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope, with his reflections on resurrection and Easter, just in time to start all over again on the liturgical calendar, with Advent. Maybe you feel like you need a little time to catch your breath, but I like the way the end of the story bumps into the beginning of the story as we begin the re-telling of it to ourselves once again.

Even more, I like the way Wright’s challenge to take up the ongoing work of God in the world, to continue the work of creating God’s kingdom in the here and now, leads straight into the anxious question of Advent. Where is the kingdom of God in the here-and-now? When will it finally get here? Sure, we’re supposed to be working hard to make it happen, and thanks for the reminder, Reverend Doctor Wright; but what sort of visible effect does all this hard work have? While we’re working at it, we’re waiting, and hoping, expecting to see something of this kingdom break into the human reality that is often still too sad, too broken, too painful. As one critic put it to Wright, “as there is clearly no trace of a new kingdom after 2000 years, perhaps it is kinder to Jesus to leave this out.” (244) Now there’s the crux of the problem, right. What signs of this inaugurated kingdom of God do we see in this world? Or do we only have evidence of brokenness?  This has to be faced head-on.

Wright’s answer is to suggest some visible traces of the kingdom of God; and I pray that you too can find those traces in your own lives and in the lives of others. Quite frankly, the people gathered here in this room today constitute the strongest visible sign of God’s presence in the world for me. But—I have to say—you people are exceptional. Most people I find to be depressing, or simply maddening, to be around. And so this trace of the kingdom that I see is exceptional—a light shining in the darkness, and while we can, and should, celebrate that light, we should also be asking, why is the rest of this place so damn dark? Could someone turn the lights on, please? Didn’t you do that once just by saying “let there be light”? C’mon…because we’re waiting, down here in the dark.

This is what it means to live in the kingdom of God which is both “already” and “not yet.” Already, because we, and so many many others, are the torchbearers, the lights in the darkness that remind us that darkness is not all that there is and not all that there should be. Not yet, because we long to stand in the full floodlights of a completely fulfilled and present kingdom of God, in which the darkness has receded. We wait for it. We hope for it. We expect it.

And so, for the next few weeks of this Advent season, we’re going to meditate on this theme of expectation. And because I’m a woman who loves to talk about bodies and pregnancy and babies and birth, and because there was no one to stop me, our theme will be “what to expect when you’re expecting.”

[you can find the whole text of this sermon here.]

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