Fourth Wednesday of Advent
Scripture Reading for Today:
Expectation’s Negotiated Fulfillment
by Simon Lasair
A pandemic is an interesting time to have health care workers in your life, as I do. In normal times, I expect to hear stories of sick people and families struggling with loved ones’ illnesses. But what I did not expect during this time are the constant stories of stress and anxiety. Working in health care is always stressful. But this year’s pandemic has accentuated many of these stresses. Constantly changing protocols, worries about personal protective equipment shortages, hospital units being overpopulated, in addition to the perception of governments not doing enough, have all increased the stress and anxiety for the health care workers in my life. There is the hope and expectation that things will soon turn a corner, but then these hopes and expectations need to be revised when faced with the concrete realities.
The challenge is that few know which hopes are realistic, and which are pure fantasy. For example, many in the medical community are praising the work done to fast-track a COVID-19 vaccine into distribution. Others are wondering whether these vaccines—that have shown such early promise—will have the necessary long-term effectiveness. Yet others are arguing we need to learn to live with coronavirus, managing it in the same way we manage Influenza and the common cold. When hope and expectation emerge, then, they are quickly counterbalanced and undermined by the points and counterpoints of competing voices. In such a time it is difficult for real hope to take firm root.
Not surprisingly, all today’s passages speak of expectations, expectations fulfilled, hope, hopefulness, and living on the cusp of the future. There is little to do with the past in them. Yes, Mary and Hannah commemorate some of God’s past deeds in their songs. But these commemorations have to do with God’s promises being fulfilled, not only in the past, but now, in the lives of these women. From these women’s perspectives, God has been faithful, both in the past, and now in the lives of their yearned for sons. Yet there also are some interesting dynamics in both these stories.
To illustrate, Hannah’s song comes after the birth of Samuel. In fact, it comes right after she fulfills her vow to devote Samuel to God’s service. God has honoured God’s promise to give Hannah a son, so now it is Hannah’s turn to do likewise. She and Elkanah, her husband, have thus delivered their son into the care of Eli the High Priest. With Eli, Samuel can learn the ways of God and become a mediator between God and God’s people. Now Samuel is in Eli’s care, Hannah promptly disappears from the biblical narrative. This rare occasion when a woman is given voice in the Bible is quickly abandoned to tell the story of her son. Hannah’s role in the bigger story is to bear Samuel; once that role is fulfilled, her specific story is no longer important from the Bible’s perspective.
Mary’s story is somewhat different. Once Jesus is born, Mary appears on and off throughout the Gospels. Sometimes it is to prompt Jesus to perform a miracle, as at the wedding at Cana, much to Jesus’ protest (John 2:3-6). Sometimes it is to speak with Jesus, only to have him publicly deny his relationship with her, his mother (Matthew 12:46-50). Mary also attends Jesus’ crucifixion, and desires to minister to his dead body after its burial, only to discover the body is no longer where it was laid (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:1). She is also among the disciples at Pentecost, and thus participates in the unexpectedly dramatic events of that day (Acts 1:14).
Unlike Hannah, Mary does not disappear from the Gospels’ stories. But we are given very little insight into how she responds to all Jesus says and does. A rare clue is offered in Simeon’s prophecy when Jesus is presented at the Temple: “ … a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:35). Mary does say she and Joseph had “great anxiety” when Jesus remained at the Temple as a boy, thus causing his parents to search for him (Luke 2:48). But once Jesus offers his parents his reasons, Luke writes, “His mother treasured all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:51b).
We can speculate regarding what Luke means by this word, “treasured.” It is possible Mary experienced great turmoil because of her son’s words and actions. But it is also likely she brought this turmoil into conversation with the prophecies issued before Jesus’ birth concerning who he would be and what he would accomplish. Even after Jesus’ birth, then, Mary’s expectation continued. It was also counterbalanced and challenged by all the concrete sayings and actions Jesus himself performed.
From both Hannah and Mary, then, we might learn that our expectations will never be completely fulfilled. Rather, they will be negotiated and re-negotiated when we are confronted with their concrete outworking. Our lives will always thus be lived in the tension between promise and concrete reality. Perhaps this is most poignantly expressed by the crowds who cheered Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem, laying palm branches at his feet. How many of them suspected that scarcely a week later Jesus would be executed like a thief?
But we can also learn from these women that we are not the primary actors in the story of humanity and God. Yes, we might agree with feminist commentators that women are too often marginalized in the Bible and related literature, not to mention the church. We can also join their cries for justice within theology and church practice. However, we might also consider that too often all of us, men and women alike, desire to be protagonists in stories that are not primarily about us. In some ways, Hannah and Mary are resigned to their cultural reality that their hopes are best realized in bearing sons. But, Jesus too knows he plays a specific role in a bigger story—there are reasons why he doesn’t resist his trials and crucifixion.
Ultimately the story of which we are all part is the story of God and the cosmos. Jesus plays a central role in that story, and our responsibility is to discern how best we can most fully participate in it. So, while we are in this season of expectation, not only Advent, but also in our world, we are called to embody a deeply rooted hope. But this hope is also best embodied with a profound openness to however it might be realized. Hannah and Mary might have had very different desires regarding how their sons lived their lives. Yet what makes them exemplars of faith is how they accepted the unfolding of their sons’ lives, trusting that somehow God’s promises would be fulfilled through them.
Though we live in strange and challenging times, then, we can join our prayers to Hannah’s and Mary’s, petitioning that we too might manifest such faith, allowing God’s promises to be questioned and challenged by our lived realities. We might also pray to trust God will fulfill God’s promises, no matter what the future holds, but always in ways that will defy our easy and straightforward understanding.
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