Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

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Sermons

December 2002 (click here to return to "December 2002 Sermons" page)

4th Sunday in Advent (December 22, 2002)

“Surprise!” Dr. Julie Adkins

Text: Luke 1:26-38

SERMON

You can start all kinds of interesting conversations,

or even jokes, with the sentence:

“There are two kinds of people …”

Of course you always have to oversimplify a little

to squeeze everyone into a category.

But it can be instructive nevertheless.

Or at least humorous.

Today’s gospel lesson reminds me of one particular way

you can divide the world into two categories of people:

There are those who love surprises,

and those who hate them.

I’ve always been firmly planted in that second category,

and I’m not quite sure why.

I’ve had more than my fair share of good surprises,

so you’d think I would have learned to love them,

and to look forward to them,

and to hope that one might be just around the corner.

Nope.

It hasn’t worked out that way.

I still dislike surprises in general …

I’ll just grant exceptions for specific instances!

I guess it probably has to do with being a control freak,

and needing not only to have things carefully planned,

but also to have things go according to my careful plan!

I do know that if God had come to talk to me

when I was fourteen or fifteen

or however old Mary was when God came to talk to her …

If God had sent the angel Gabriel to say to me,

“You’re going to have a baby!”

I just don’t think I would have said,

“Let it be with me according to your word.”

No, it would have sounded something more like,

“Do you know what this is going to do

to my plans for college and law school?!

“Gabe, tell God I’ve made my plans,

and not to mess with them.

“I’m writing the script for my life,

and I didn’t say God could edit it.”

Mary may well have wondered

what was going to happen between her and Joseph

when she turned up pregnant.

But apparently, Mary didn’t mind a surprise.

She just took it in stride:

“Here I am, the servant of the Lord.”

Perhaps Mary knew her scriptures well enough

to know that some of God’s best work

has been done through surprises.

Abraham and Sarah had been promised by God

that their descendants would be as numerous

as the stars in the heavens.

God, however, waited to begin the fulfillment of that promise

until they were in their 90s.

Guess what, Sarah?

Now that all your friends are showing around

pictures of their great-great-grandchildren,

you’re going to have a son.

And we’ll send Medicare the bill.

Surprise!

The armies of Israel are being threatened by the Philistines,

who have an unfair advantage:

this really big, mean dude named Goliath.

Saul’s best warriors are too chicken to take him on.

Who finally saves the day?

A shepherd boy, one who composes poetry, for cryin’ out loud,

and plays the harp …

wearing no armor,

carrying only a slingshot and a few stones.

Little David wallops big Goliath.

Surprise!

God seems at times

to take a peculiar delight

in not doing things

the way we humans would have done them.

Which is why we’re fond of saying that

God’s ways are not our ways.

Which is, of course,

easier to say than it is to live with, sometimes.

Briefly …

A couple of things that are side issues,

but are important because they can trip us up.

The first is this:

Just because God sometimes works in our lives by surprising us

doesn’t mean that all surprises come from God.

God doesn’t send us bad surprises, for example.

If, for example, you suffered a heart attack,

don’t conclude that God did that to you!

Your body did that to you!

God may be able to take that bad surprise and use it,

to teach you something about

needing to control your temper,

or learning to manage stress,

or exercising more,

or even being careful because your heredity is stacked against you …

God can take bad surprises that happen to us

and bring good out of them.

But it doesn’t mean that God wanted

that bad thing to happen in the first place,

whether to punish you or to get your attention.

God is not vicious like that.

The second thing is this:

I’m beginning to think that,

if God likes to surprise us sometimes,

that might mean that God

likes to be surprised by us sometimes.

I never would have said that a few years ago.

I guess I assumed that,

because I didn’t like surprises,

God didn’t like them either!

Also, I think, we tend to have the idea that

God already knows everything that’s going to happen,

so God can’t be surprised.

Being Presbyterian, we joke about predestination,

but that’s not what it means.

God does not have everything scripted out in advance.

We have freedom,

to do right or to do wrong.

And when I talk about our surprising God,

what I mean is those times when we do something good

that is out of character for us.

For example,

if you’re someone who is normally shy,

and quiet, and kind of reserved, maybe even a little timid …

and some day you find yourself in a meeting

where a discussion is going on,

and you can tell they’re going the wrong way,

and getting ready to make a bad decision,

and you somehow find it in you

to stand up and say what’s on your mind …

well, I think God would be pleasantly surprised by that.

If you grew up in a family where you were abused,

God knows that forgiving will be hard for you,

and that you will tend to be suspicious of new people

until you know them quite well.

And I believe it will surprise and please God,

if you are able some day

to overcome the terrors of your past,

and find strength to forgive, and to trust,

and to not repeat the cycle of abuse with your own children.

I believe that God is surprised and pleased

when someone who has avoided church for a long time

suddenly returns.

When a criminal serving time in prison

encounters Christ, and repents of all the stuff that got him into prison.

When any of us who love good, juicy gossip

refuse for once to pass it along.

God notices,

and is pleasantly surprised.

Anyway,

one of the things I always need to be reminded of

at this time of the church year

is how God sometimes catches us by surprise.

That God often stands waiting to give us good gifts,

incredible gifts, life-changing gifts,

but that in order to receive those gifts,

we have to step aside from what we thought we were supposed to be about,

and to be open to the entirely unexpected.

We spend a lot of time in the Advent season

talking about preparing ourselves,

planning how we will welcome Christ’s coming.

And all of that is good,

and it needs to be done.

But we also need to be careful

not to plan every second of every day,

not to be so prepared and scheduled and organized on our own

that we have left no room for God to surprise us.

Planning and preparing are good …

I’ve known that my whole life, I think.

But surprises are also good,

when they come from God.

I’m beginning to know that also.

Despite our best intentions,

this is always a crazy time of year,

and it goes by way too fast.

Nevertheless, let us make space for God to break in

and surprise us with hope and joy, peace and love.

Christ is coming!

Amen.