Expecting the Messiah
Reflections on the Advent Readings
As some of you may know, a group of us went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls on November 21st. Being Saturday, it was quite busy… I was fascinated by how the display was set up. For those of you who were there, or who have been to see the scrolls on your own you’ll know what I’m talking about.
The entry are has this massive wall of what are made to look like bricks, each inscribed with a quote from what are often called the “Sectarian” scrolls found at Qumran. The quotes were written in Hebrew, and Greek, inscribed into the surface, and then the saying was translated into both English and French. It’s quite impressive, to be sure.
The display continues, trying to set the time period into context. It shows artefacts from the period, including pottery, coinage, maps, pictures… the kinds of things that you might expect to see. As one gets closer and closer to where the scrolls actually are, the lights are getting gradually darker and darker. The grand-ness of the entrance gives way to displays that become increasingly Spartan and minimalist. We are warned that the dim light is so that the scrolls would remain protected from further light damage.
When we finally get to the part of the display that has some of the actual scrolls, while the room is large, it is quite dark, and there is nothing more than these seven triangle-shaped pillars. Each is about ten feet tall, and roughly four to five feet across. The three sides has a information of on the particular scroll fragment in question. One side has an enclosed angled shelf where the scroll itself is kept. To actually see the scrolls on display, you pretty much have to bend over, put your face to the glass, cup your hands around your eyes and let your eyes adjust so that you can see the writing on these very dark fragments of animal hide.
From those of us who visited there, the comment that I heard most often was “I thought they’d be bigger.” followed closely by “it was really too dark for me to see anything.” My Father-in-Law was not all that impressed, he saw a dead leaf that had been tracked into the building, and was tempted to give it to one of the staff and say “here… you missed a piece.”
When I did the introduction to the Scrolls as part of the Bible for Dummies course, I had mentioned that of the “true” Dead Sea Scrolls that would be on display, all but one of them were ones that were taken from the fourth cave found at the site. While the fourth cave yielded the most documents in the archaeological dig, the storage system for the scrolls had fallen apart over time, and the jars holding them smashed open when the shelves collapsed… exposing the scrolls to the weather. As such, none of the scrolls found in there were intact… Imagine putting together over 600 different Jigsaw puzzles spread out over 50,000 pieces… and none of the puzzles are complete!
As such, the scrolls that were on display were assembled fragments of what were once larger documents… but even then I have to admit that when I saw the scrolls myself, I was struck by how small they were. The penmanship was amazing at that size, but they were still small. Even as one who had studied the scroll from afar, it was something else to actually see the document in person…Any time we’ve seen the scrolls in picture or in form, they’ve been blown up, enhanced and literally presented larger than life.
Each of us had come with an expectation of what we might see… and in many ways, the expectation was greater than what we actually saw. It was a lesson in Advent expectation and anticipation that was far more profound than any sermon I could come up with.
How’s this for a Parallel? The Scrolls were written and collected at a time where the expectation for the Messiah was extremely high. Not only that, there were diverse and conflicting opinions on what the Messiah was, and who the messiah could be, and what the Messiah would do. You may not know this, but the community that was responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls developed a theology of Messiah that involved not one but two individuals… a religious Messiah who would restore the purity of the temple and the people’s fidelity to God, and a political Messiah who would free the people from Roman rule and re-establish an independent nation.
Just about anybody who lived on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean around the time that Jesus lived had an opinion on the Messiah. People had built up such high expectations that it’s not surprising that when the one who we call Messiah didn’t measure up.
It’s a lesson for us in waiting. Expectation and anticipation can be good, but we can become so obsessive about it that we actually become blind to the very thing that we are waiting for. Advent is about anticipation and expectation, but also about letting ourselves be open to the possibilities of God showing up in the one place we’re not looking!
Advent is all about waiting and anticipation, but it’s not this narrow kind of waiting. Ten years ago, in the lead-up to the turn of the Millennium there was a lot of anticipated hype and date-setting that Jesus would appear in Jerusalem. I remember reading a story around that time of a small group of Christians who were very adamant in their particular literal interpretation of the Bible as future history. So certain in their interpretation were they that they had travelled to Jerusalem, and set up a vigil near the gate where they expected Jesus to appear at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. One had gone so far as to set up a video-camera pointed at the spot where they expected Jesus to appear. Needless to say, Jesus didn’t appear on cue.
I think it is word of caution to us. Advent is about waiting and anticipation, about possibility and promise, but the dark side of it is to build expectations that are so specific that we can’t recognize God right in our midst.
Shifting gears just a little bit, think of it this way: There are four words that we associate with Advent, and all of them are about the best parts that come with waiting and anticipation. Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love… The first Sunday of Advent is most commonly associated with Hope… Hope is a part of healthy waiting. It’s about being open to the possibilities and the promise of God, while at the same time constantly pointing to something better that is still yet to come. But when we try to control that hope, to bind it up, and impose our own expectations, on it, we lose it.
Another element to our visit with the Dead Sea Scrolls was the reality that we brought my daughter along. My in-laws wanted to see the scrolls as well, so we decided to turn it into a family visit. After all, there were children’s parts in the museum… but they weren’t at the Scrolls exhibit on this level. As you may guess, she’s three going on four, and does not wait in line very well. We had to settle an occasional temper tantrum… but once we got into the scroll chamber, I decided to lift her up and show her what we had come to see. It was the fragment of the Deuteronomy scroll. We looked down at the scraps of parchment and the writings, and Megan turned to me and said,
“Daddy, it’s beautiful!”
She came in with no expectations at all… so for her expectations of size, of readability, of whatever I was imagining that I’d see weren’t there… and she was able to appreciate the beauty in something that I never really thought of as beautiful. Fascinating yes. Enlightening, yes. Beautiful… well, not really. Here I was thinking that I was trying to help Megan learn how to wait… and for a brief moment, she taught me what waiting really was. I realized that all I was trying to do was teach her line-up etiquette… I wasn’t really teaching her how to truly wait. For her, in the brief moments before we got to the scrolls, she wanted to see, she wanted to touch, she appreciated what was around her… and we were just trying to get her to sit in the stroller.
“Daddy, it’s beautiful!”
It was a lesson to me that the waiting in Advent is appreciating the moment and the beauty in places that we least expect it. Maybe our lesson is that simple. Don’t let our expectations get the better of us… and appreciate the beauty of waiting on God in the moment.
Amen.
As some of you may know, a group of us went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls on November 21st. Being Saturday, it was quite busy… I was fascinated by how the display was set up. For those of you who were there, or who have been to see the scrolls on your own you’ll know what I’m talking about.
The entry are has this massive wall of what are made to look like bricks, each inscribed with a quote from what are often called the “Sectarian” scrolls found at Qumran. The quotes were written in Hebrew, and Greek, inscribed into the surface, and then the saying was translated into both English and French. It’s quite impressive, to be sure.
The display continues, trying to set the time period into context. It shows artefacts from the period, including pottery, coinage, maps, pictures… the kinds of things that you might expect to see. As one gets closer and closer to where the scrolls actually are, the lights are getting gradually darker and darker. The grand-ness of the entrance gives way to displays that become increasingly Spartan and minimalist. We are warned that the dim light is so that the scrolls would remain protected from further light damage.
When we finally get to the part of the display that has some of the actual scrolls, while the room is large, it is quite dark, and there is nothing more than these seven triangle-shaped pillars. Each is about ten feet tall, and roughly four to five feet across. The three sides has a information of on the particular scroll fragment in question. One side has an enclosed angled shelf where the scroll itself is kept. To actually see the scrolls on display, you pretty much have to bend over, put your face to the glass, cup your hands around your eyes and let your eyes adjust so that you can see the writing on these very dark fragments of animal hide.
From those of us who visited there, the comment that I heard most often was “I thought they’d be bigger.” followed closely by “it was really too dark for me to see anything.” My Father-in-Law was not all that impressed, he saw a dead leaf that had been tracked into the building, and was tempted to give it to one of the staff and say “here… you missed a piece.”
When I did the introduction to the Scrolls as part of the Bible for Dummies course, I had mentioned that of the “true” Dead Sea Scrolls that would be on display, all but one of them were ones that were taken from the fourth cave found at the site. While the fourth cave yielded the most documents in the archaeological dig, the storage system for the scrolls had fallen apart over time, and the jars holding them smashed open when the shelves collapsed… exposing the scrolls to the weather. As such, none of the scrolls found in there were intact… Imagine putting together over 600 different Jigsaw puzzles spread out over 50,000 pieces… and none of the puzzles are complete!
As such, the scrolls that were on display were assembled fragments of what were once larger documents… but even then I have to admit that when I saw the scrolls myself, I was struck by how small they were. The penmanship was amazing at that size, but they were still small. Even as one who had studied the scroll from afar, it was something else to actually see the document in person…Any time we’ve seen the scrolls in picture or in form, they’ve been blown up, enhanced and literally presented larger than life.
Each of us had come with an expectation of what we might see… and in many ways, the expectation was greater than what we actually saw. It was a lesson in Advent expectation and anticipation that was far more profound than any sermon I could come up with.
How’s this for a Parallel? The Scrolls were written and collected at a time where the expectation for the Messiah was extremely high. Not only that, there were diverse and conflicting opinions on what the Messiah was, and who the messiah could be, and what the Messiah would do. You may not know this, but the community that was responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls developed a theology of Messiah that involved not one but two individuals… a religious Messiah who would restore the purity of the temple and the people’s fidelity to God, and a political Messiah who would free the people from Roman rule and re-establish an independent nation.
Just about anybody who lived on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean around the time that Jesus lived had an opinion on the Messiah. People had built up such high expectations that it’s not surprising that when the one who we call Messiah didn’t measure up.
It’s a lesson for us in waiting. Expectation and anticipation can be good, but we can become so obsessive about it that we actually become blind to the very thing that we are waiting for. Advent is about anticipation and expectation, but also about letting ourselves be open to the possibilities of God showing up in the one place we’re not looking!
Advent is all about waiting and anticipation, but it’s not this narrow kind of waiting. Ten years ago, in the lead-up to the turn of the Millennium there was a lot of anticipated hype and date-setting that Jesus would appear in Jerusalem. I remember reading a story around that time of a small group of Christians who were very adamant in their particular literal interpretation of the Bible as future history. So certain in their interpretation were they that they had travelled to Jerusalem, and set up a vigil near the gate where they expected Jesus to appear at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. One had gone so far as to set up a video-camera pointed at the spot where they expected Jesus to appear. Needless to say, Jesus didn’t appear on cue.
I think it is word of caution to us. Advent is about waiting and anticipation, about possibility and promise, but the dark side of it is to build expectations that are so specific that we can’t recognize God right in our midst.
Shifting gears just a little bit, think of it this way: There are four words that we associate with Advent, and all of them are about the best parts that come with waiting and anticipation. Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love… The first Sunday of Advent is most commonly associated with Hope… Hope is a part of healthy waiting. It’s about being open to the possibilities and the promise of God, while at the same time constantly pointing to something better that is still yet to come. But when we try to control that hope, to bind it up, and impose our own expectations, on it, we lose it.
Another element to our visit with the Dead Sea Scrolls was the reality that we brought my daughter along. My in-laws wanted to see the scrolls as well, so we decided to turn it into a family visit. After all, there were children’s parts in the museum… but they weren’t at the Scrolls exhibit on this level. As you may guess, she’s three going on four, and does not wait in line very well. We had to settle an occasional temper tantrum… but once we got into the scroll chamber, I decided to lift her up and show her what we had come to see. It was the fragment of the Deuteronomy scroll. We looked down at the scraps of parchment and the writings, and Megan turned to me and said,
“Daddy, it’s beautiful!”
She came in with no expectations at all… so for her expectations of size, of readability, of whatever I was imagining that I’d see weren’t there… and she was able to appreciate the beauty in something that I never really thought of as beautiful. Fascinating yes. Enlightening, yes. Beautiful… well, not really. Here I was thinking that I was trying to help Megan learn how to wait… and for a brief moment, she taught me what waiting really was. I realized that all I was trying to do was teach her line-up etiquette… I wasn’t really teaching her how to truly wait. For her, in the brief moments before we got to the scrolls, she wanted to see, she wanted to touch, she appreciated what was around her… and we were just trying to get her to sit in the stroller.
“Daddy, it’s beautiful!”
It was a lesson to me that the waiting in Advent is appreciating the moment and the beauty in places that we least expect it. Maybe our lesson is that simple. Don’t let our expectations get the better of us… and appreciate the beauty of waiting on God in the moment.
Amen.
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