I’m not really a fan of surprises.
Even when the actual thing that surprises me is good – a delightful present, an experience I truly enjoy, cookies – I just…don’t like feeling unprepared.
(As a kid, I made lists for Santa Claus for a reason.)
Some of you may genuinely enjoy surprises, especially under the Christmas tree. I kind of envy you.
But I know I’m not alone in preferring to know what’s coming, what’s going to happen.
Especially when it’s important.
Jesus’ early disciples definitely wanted to know about the important things coming their way – about the actual way, and the real time, that salvation would come.
And Jesus says no.
No; you can’t know that.
No one can know that.
I don’t even know that.
It’s a surprise!
(Oh, come on, Jesus. Can’t you at least leave us the illusion that you’ve got this planned and covered?!)
Okay. Deep breath.
Ultimate salvation – the return of the Messiah to settle all the things that are still a mess, to bring all of God’s peace, justice, glory and love into full reality among us – is going to be a surprise.
A good surprise (Right, Jesus??!)
But definitely a surprise.
Jesus tells his disciples, tells us, that it’s going to happen when we are busy doing something else. We’ll be in the middle of our ordinary days – up to our eyeballs in email or getting through the to-do list or driving somewhere – and it’ll just happen. Dramatic and disruptive and glorious and shocking.
And whether that surprise is joyfully or catastrophically disruptive depends on how we prepare. How we are staying ready.
Every year in the church, about this time, we start talking about “being ready”. It’s the theme of the season of Advent, the season of preparation for the coming of God.
The coming of God we already know about, in the story handed down to us of a baby born in Bethlehem. And the coming we’re anticipating, the eventual glorious return of the Christ to complete and heal and resolve everything, once for all.
It’s a lot of preparation, for the known and the unknown, all at once.
It’s also a time when the preparation and readiness demands of the world around us may be ramping up. We’re supposed to be preparing for the celebrations of Christmas, to be ready with the perfect surprises of gifts for (and from) those we love – and to prepare for all the things we know will happen: travel or family gatherings or church pageants or work “holiday” events and year-end deadlines.
There’s a lot to be ready for.
Including, Jesus insists, the very real possibility that that final coming of God that ends our sense of time and changes everything could happen right now!
Surprise!
So be ready.
No one knows when.
My shoulders – already a little tight from searching the internet for perfect Christmas surprises for my family – are twitching as I think about it. Are you sure you couldn’t schedule this, Jesus? Really sure we have to be on watch now?
Because constant watchfulness – this knowing something could happen and being ready to respond all the time – consumes energy and attention, wears down your body and your spirit.
In many cases, it’s a trauma response, readiness and vigilance as a repeating echo of fear and loss and shock that spins constant adrenaline in a belated effort to keep yourself safe.
And that… well, that doesn’t actually sound like what Jesus would be teaching us to do.
In fact, he might be insisting it’s all going to come as a surprise so we don’t tie ourselves into knots of tense, protective awareness, all set to catch the moment before it catches us.
So that we wait, we prepare, differently.
As he’s been telling his disciples how the unexpected and disruptive coming of God will unfold, I noticed he’s been warning us not to respond to all the alarms, to the misleading alerts, that are on their way. We are not to jump up and respond every time someone says “Here’s the Messiah! Go there! Come here!” The coming we are waiting for will be everywhere, and in all things – not something we have to race after or we’ll miss it.
You and I are to be fully in the moment and place where we are, and be ready for the fullness of God to come to us, to everything, to everywhere, completely.
In the moment and ready everywhere and anywhen, because the most unlikely times and places – the dentist’s office, the evening news – could be suddenly full of the glory and power and justice and love of God.
To be ready in this way means to be always doing what we want God to find us doing, to be always where we want God to meet us, to be actively expecting love, justice, glory, and healing any time, any moment, anywhere.
To be prepared, in this way, means to arrange our lives, hearts, and minds for transformation. To practice a readiness to accept love that shows up unexpectedly, to share and rejoice in love that comes to us in disruptive ways. To be ready, even waiting eagerly, for God to open our hearts unexpectedly to deep, powerful, generous connection with a stranger or an adversary.
Or to someone so familiar we forget we could love them.
We’re to be ready for those surprise loves to turn our lives upside down, instead of trying to manage and limit the ways that we open our hearts so it doesn’t disrupt our lives.
We’re to set up our everyday lives so that God’s justice and mercy flow through us and lift us when it floods over the world; so that we’re ready to forgive and be forgiven in ways that change the course of our lives – instead of bracing against change, against reconciliation with those we’ve hurt, as if it’s a tidal wave we can’t survive.
That kind of readiness means we are living receptive and open, in welcoming expectation of God’s glory, justice, love and presence every when and every where.
It’s the exact opposite of the hyper-vigilance that comes from, and anticipates, trauma and anxiety.
That serene openness doesn’t come naturally when we’re talking about wars and earthquakes and meteors and social upheaval, as Jesus has been doing.
Or at least, it doesn’t come naturally unless you already trust Jesus, already know you can fall unprotected into God’s disruptive justice and glory and find healing, strength, hope and love.
That trust that Jesus came to teach us all the first time.
That’s why we prepare, this coming month, to feel our hearts broken open with love and tender care for a baby awkwardly, disruptively, unexpectedly born in Bethlehem, trailing glory and power and healing into a world not at all ready and thoroughly surprised by it.
Because preparing our hearts to love unexpectedly, to be washed in healing and glory we can’t see coming, is how we stop needing to know just when it’s going to happen.
It’s how we prepare to love surprises.
And preparing our hearts to be changed at any moment by reconciliation and peace,
learning to expect unpredictable wonders to show up in our everyday lives anywhere and everywhere,
is how we live ready, live prepared for the always-surprising, disruptive, extraordinary wonder of the coming of the fullness of God.
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