I just love this time of year. As we all come from different traditions and backgrounds, I want to offer a brief explanation for definition of Advent. Advent is a period on church calendar leading up to Christmas when Christians celebrate the 1st coming of Christ. Advent is a bridge between what our Catholic friends call “ordinary time” and Christmas.

This is designed to be a time of anticipation and hope.

We use the season of advent to remember that there was a time in history when we didn’t have Jesus. Advent is a season of preparation and is a time to explore and expose what we most desire. It also can be a time to reset and repent of our partial or misguided worship and respond by pursuing God in new and fresh ways.

Christmas is filled with waiting and preparation and Advent reminds us that our souls are waiting, too.

A baby in a manger is where the story begins, but that’s not where our celebration ends. The Christmas story is just a prelude to Christ’s impending glory. We wait and see.

I grew up in a small(ish), rather traditional, Methodist church which observed advent and all the other church(y) holidays. Throughout the four weeks leading up to Christmas, there was a huge wreath in our sanctuary with pink, purple, and white candles representing the prophets, shepherds, angels, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. Each of these are a significant part of the story of the coming of Christ.

At home, my family also had an advent wreath. It sat on our dining room table and was made of artificial holly. My mom still uses it today. We would light the candles before dinner and would read a corresponding passage of scripture prior to sitting down to eat. These are some of my most treasured holiday memories.

“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness and who seek the Lord: Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn; look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth. When I called Him, he was only one man, and I blessed him and made him many. The Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden. In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: “A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’” John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

In this passage, John’s warnings set the tone for much of the story of Jesus. Not only in His ministry, and life thereafter. John speaks of “preparing the way”, without knowing what it will look like when the kingdom of God arrives. Much like the season of advent, they waited with hopeful expectancy for the rest of the story to unfold.

The Jews weren’t just eager for freedom the way most subject peoples are, they wanted it because of what they believed to be true about God.

They knew that they were God’s chosen people and He had made promises to them. What’s more, scripture stated that one day He would rescue them and make everything right. These promises hinged on one thing in particular: God would become King, not only of Israel, but the whole world.

Here in this passage we see that people are coming to John and they’re repenting. Ordinary people were coming, but religious leaders were coming too. Perhaps they were skeptical, but they were there nonetheless.

The people of Israel had been waiting and expecting a powerful messiah to rescue them. While this Jesus was there in front of them and no doubt making waves, and disrupting the culture of the day, they didn’t understand what He was really doing.

John was teaching about “preparing the way and making it straight” and one of the cornerstone messages of John was the power of confession and repentance.

John was baptizing people in the Jordan River as they confessed their sins and vowed a new way of life in following Christ. As the passage in Matthew indicates; “People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.”

Baptism was new and it wasn’t just symbolic cleansing. It was a sign of this new thing that God was doing in the history of His people and the world.

Jesus came forward and requested that John baptize Him. That surprised John and the religious leaders, and even surprises me today. Why would Jesus need to be baptized? Isn’t He already made clean or set apart?

While we aren’t going to dive into that in depth tonight, we continue to read the story of Jesus and follow His ministry and see him live out his life, we note that the leaders of the day never fully grasped what He was doing as He fulfilled Gods plan.

None of it met the expectations that the Israelites had held onto for so many generations. While He was there to bring ultimate reconciliation and redemption, it was not in the way that was expected.

There were also plenty of people in that day who didn’t come to hear the message John was so urgently spreading. Maybe they didn’t buy in, or perhaps like some of us today, they were just too busy or disinterested? Keeping the status quo felt fine and this Jesus character was so out the realm of what had been expected, surely, they weren’t missing out on anything or anyone too important.

Maybe this passage isn’t just about the Israelites so long ago, but maybe it is for us today?

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Israel and Jordan and one of the stops along the way was a visit to the Jordan River. One of the coolest things about that trip was that I had the chance to see with my eyes, these places that I had only read about in the Bible. I am not sure why I had imagined the Jordan River to be large with rushing water and lush greenery, but I totally did, and it was nothing of the sort. It’s narrow and lackluster and sort of resembles the Los Angeles River - at least when it comes to the disappointment factor. This is only one tiny example of a moment where something didn’t live up to my expectations.

Life is chocked full of unmet expectations and the examples of that are endless, at least for me, and maybe for you too?

Even in the face of our unmet expectations, God is calling us to repentance and confession and to open ourselves up to the idea that He is challenging our expectations and to allow him (perhaps for the first time), to surprise us.

Part of the challenge is to be surprised by Jesus and to trust that He is good. Remembering that He comes to fulfill God’s plans, not ours. We wait and see.

How about right now? Are we surprised by God? Have we even opened ourselves up to it? We’re all busy, and we’re jaded and cool. Perhaps we have labels attached to God and what we think He should be or how He should perform? Maybe we’re holding onto some past hurts and disappointments that bring doubt in His glory. In that, we miss the simple and powerful invitation of advent, and the coming Christ.

There is a rumbling under our feet and the holy moment that we are in.

It’s easy to miss it is the busyness of the season. We miss the hand and the invitation to jump in and join God in the new thing. Because it’s new in there here and now.

The surprise of Christ is the enormity of the vision and honestly, the point is not just to surprise us.

The surprise comes from what He is doing and that is the “advent” that John is teaching in this passage. The God of the universe is rumbling in the ground around us and stirring something under our feet. The great God of the cosmos is reaching out her hand and asking us to join her. The ground is shaking, and God is extending an invitation.

God came in the flesh in Jesus Christ because He wanted to be in relationship with us and He desires that response to be mutual. That’s the surprise. It’s much bigger than the vision we could ever cast for ourselves.

As the Israelites were, we too are waiting for God to bring freedom from oppression, free from a kingdom of enemies and to come into a kingdom of peace. God brings a broadening of expectations. He has a bigger vision because He isn’t just here to free us, He’s even here to free our oppressors.

But just as it’s bigger than we think, it’s also so much smaller.

It starts with confession and repentance. God comes in with a big vision of freedom, but the starting place is an inward sense of humility. It starts with confession and repentance. If you want God to bring that big vision, it starts with the smallest place inside.

Is there something in your mind that you are called to question or repent of? What are your expectations and hopes for this advent season? If this is a time of waiting and expectation of God? What about us as a community? Are we corporately open to Him moving in ways that we can’t perceive? Are we okay with Him doing something different than what we’re hoping for?

The heart of the message of Matthew 3 is to wait for the rest of the story to unfold. Wait and see that God is good. Where we expect a great and powerful leader, instead we get a humble and beautiful Jesus.

A Jesus who is here to fulfill God’s promise and will one day bring His justice and joy to the world. Wait and see is the message of Matthew 3. Wait and see is the message of advent.

God is inviting you to take time to get away, to come to the river and be immersed and reflect… to ask Him to reveal His majesty, in the big and small. We pray that we will prepare a way for the justice that God brings.

We wait and see.