Hope, Doubt and Expectation

sermon by Torin Eikler
Isaiah 35:1-10 Matthew 11:2-11

Patience and I have had a long and strange relationship. When I was a child, I thought like a child. When I wanted something I wanted it, and I wanted it right now. But I was the oldest, and it didn’t take long for me to begin to learn how to wait. That began my long struggle to learn about patience – a journey punctuated by failures and moments of recommitment, and up till just a few years ago, people would have commented regularly on how understanding and tolerant I was … in my work … in my relationships … with my children. That was a matter of pride for me since I had been cultivating a laid-back approach most of my life.

These days, though, I find that I am easily goaded into irrational and even vindictive responses. Sometimes the littlest things (a small foot touching my leg under the table, for instance) spark a dark look or a snappish, “stop it now!” Sometimes my anger nearly gets free, and my voice takes on a life of its own, thundering things that I never expected to come out of my mouth at people who really don’t deserve the stormy response they are getting. If patience is a cardinal virtue than I have most certainly fallen from grace as I suspect we all have from time to time.


Patience doesn’t seem to have been an issue for John the Baptist, though – mostly because he doesn’t seem to have had much to begin with. From the beginning he shouted out his angry frustrations in tirades laced with threats and epithets, preaching fire and brimstone and the judgment to come. Strangely, his angry rants seem to have drawn crowds of people. Some came just for the show. Others took his message to heart and left with new resolution to change their lives. Eventually his critiques got the attention of the rich and powerful landing him in prison, and this man of the wilderness found himself in a dark cell, locked away from the freedom he had known.

I think it must have been hard for him to sit there day after day. No sunlight to order the rhythm of his life. None of the honey he was used to eating (though I suspect he might have appreciated exchanging bread for the locust that had been his mainstay). No one to talk to but the guards and an occasional visitor. If he didn’t know patience before, he must have learned a measure of it there as he waited for the Messiah to fulfill the promises of Isaiah and set the prisoners free.

But time wore on, and the prophesies that John had made did not come to pass. He began to wonder, and his patience wore thin. And that was reason enough for John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus who had jumped for joy when he recognized the messiah while the two were still in the womb, to begin to doubt.


Doubt may seem like a strange theme to bring into Advent with its promises of joy and love and peace for all humanity, but I think it has a place here. There are surveys that suggest that anywhere from 15-30% of people in attendance at any given church service (clergy and laity alike) would say that they don’t really believe in everything the church teaches about Christ: angelic visitors, virgin births, kings following a star to visit a baby god on the strength of a dream. There is a billboard that just went up at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel in New York that pretty well sums it up for many people. It has the well-known Christmas card scene of men on camels headed toward a stable with a star overhead, and it reads, “You KNOW it’s a MYTH. This season celebrate REASON!”

You may or may not be part of the 15-30%, but I think it’s probably safe to say that most of us have our doubts about the story of the nativity, about many of the stories in the Bible, and even (or maybe especially) the some of the teachings of the church. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Doubt is a part of faith. There are some who even say that those of us who experience doubts are closer to the Kingdom than those who are absolutely certain about their beliefs. Doubts drive us back to God, asking again and again: “Is this for real? Are you really that kind of God? Is your love so great that you would actually become human and die for us?” “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” And the same doubts leave us questioning ourselves too. What do we believe? Does it matter what we believe? Should it really change how we live? If it is all true – if Christ really did become human to bring us salvation, what does God expect of us in return?



Expectation … now there’s an idea we are more comfortable with. We’re all about expectation in Advent. We expect snow and cold. We expect crowds of people shopping for the gifts that are expected under the tree on Christmas morning. We expect warmth and holiday cheer in those we meet (though we don’t always find that at the mall). We expect to hear the story of how God came to live among us as a helpless baby in a lowly stable.

But things don’t always meet our expectations. They fall short, or they go beyond. Sometimes events just go in an entirely different direction than we imagined. That shakes us up, gets us out of sorts. I think that’s part of my struggle with patience. My children – other events and other people too, but mostly my children don’t live up to my expectations. They don’t always eat the food we have lovingly prepared. Sometimes they throw it on the floor. They don’t always play nicely together. They hit each other, and they won’t share toys. They don’t always listen to me (that’s a big one). They are generally lovely and well-behaved boys for everyone else, but they just aren’t for me, and somehow that seems to be reason enough for me to get … shall we say “frustrated.”

“Frustrated” might be a good word for John’s response when Jesus didn’t fulfill his hopes. There he was in prison for taking on Herod – for starting the revolution that he expected Jesus to lead and Jesus was healing people, raising them from the dead, and … teaching them. This was not the Messiah that John envisioned. Where was the righteous cleansing? Where were the winnowing fork and the burning chaff? Where was the ax laying waste to the forest of corruption that had so fueled his anger? If this was the one anointed to bring redemption to the Jews, then that redemption was totally different than he had expected.


But God … God is not bound by our expectations, and as maddening as that may be, it’s a good thing. If things always went according to human expectations, who knows what kind of mess we would have made of the world by now. None of us would have envisioned the god-baby Jesus. None of us could have predicted the depth of divine love and mercy. None of us would have framed redemption in terms of the reconciling grace brought by Christ.


In an email discussion this week, one of my colleagues described Mary’s Magnificat as a song of revolt – a song that rejoiced in the promise of change – of human vision broken open by the power of divine love. The Messiah she proclaims would not be what … would not be who people expected. He would come scattering the proud-hearted, bringing down the powerful, lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry, and sending the rich away hungry. He would not lead a grand rebellion overthrowing the Roman authorities and gathering the people once more into a great nation. His revolution would change the world in a different way: bringing sight to the blind, healing the lame, cleansing the leprous, raising the dead. Restoring the outcast to society and reconciling humanity to God, he would change the world one person at a time.


It’s a revolution that is still going on. One person at a time, the Child of Hope bring healing and reconciliation. One person at a time, the Prince of Peace brings love and peace into the world. One person at a time – one you and one me – Christ comes into the world, and the promise of the babe in the manger is born.

In little ways – little unexpected ways, the Kingdom of God is coming near. That is reason enough for hope. That is reason enough for faith in the face of doubt. That is reason enough for joy in the midst of our waiting.