SunNov292009
PSALM 25:1-10
“Wait a minute.” “Wait, wait, don’t tell me.” “Wait for it.” We wait in lines, wait in traffic, wait for the bathroom, wait for events to start. We wait for breakfast, for a Starbucks, for the server. We wait for a child to get home after the prom, for a parent to sober up, for the new printer to arrive in the mail. We wait for the thank you, for the apology, for someone to notice. We wait for the text message, the twitter update, the movie to start. We spend a lot of time waiting. And if I say urgently to you, “Wait! Wait!” [SILENCE], you wonder, you pay attention, you expect something to happen.
We generally think Advent and Christmas are about the past. And they are. They’re about the long-ago birth of a baby who was and is the Child of God. We adore this season because we remember what has already happened. God has come to be one of us. Advent looks backward, to the event that changed history forever.
Advent also looks to the future, though. There’s somebody here who’s lonely, looking for companionship. You may be single or divorced. You may be new to the area. You may have had a falling out with a best friend. But you feel alone. And you wait. You wait, as the psalmist says, for God, all day long (Ps. 25:5).
There’s somebody who’s getting older and sees their abilities fading—a limp here, a memory lapse there. There’s somebody else who just feels empty—giving all the time, perhaps, or burned out by long hours on the job; someone for whom everything used to be clear, but who can’t seem to feel the joy they used to feel. And you, too, wait. You wait for God all day long.
In many and various ways we wait—wait for things to come out right, wait for things to settle as we hope they will. And the fact is, we just don’t know how they’re going to turn out. They may soar with beauty, or they may crash and burn. Or they may just go nowhere, the status quo clawing into us and not letting us go. And all we can do is wait, wait, wait. “For you [O God we] wait all day long.”
Good things come to those who wait, we hear. And maybe they do. But waiting is still one of the hardest things we do. Even the good things—waiting for a baby, or for a contract to come through, or for Chagrin Falls High School’s state title football game on Saturday—even these things are difficult. Because we’re never quite sure how they’re going to turn out. We want things to go our way. But if they don’t—and at least occasionally, even in the luckiest lives, things go terribly wrong—then what can we hang our hat on? Since we can’t depend on constant success, what can we hope for?
Christian waiting and hope has several dimensions to it. The first is that God continually takes the ashes of our lives and makes something new out of them. I crashed and burned with numerous girlfriends, and somehow finally found Mary. Some of you have suffered miscarriages and later been given a child. Not a few have struggled with jobs that went nowhere, and finally landed the right one. Out of the lifeless coal of our lives God has produced glittering diamonds. The painter/singer/potter God has produced something new and beautiful. The power of God is what enables us to wait hopefully. Nothing is so far gone that it can’t be turned around.
The second dimension of Christian waiting is that, as ardently as we may wish for certain outcomes—a great first date, a healthy baby—real waiting and hope lets go of the results. This is where waiting gets very difficult. You may wish, with every fiber of your being, that your business succeeds, and that you come through this economic downturn with everything intact. It’s certainly not inappropriate to wish for that. What is finally inadequate is to depend on that result. The fact is that our happiness or contentment doesn’t hinge on certain things happening. We think, for example, that we’re going to die if we lose our home. And while it’s easy for me to say, since I still have mine, the fact is that we will survive, and may yet thrive, even if we lose that home. This is hard to hear, and may not make much sense, because in this culture we put so much stock in results—in the things we have and the success we achieve.
I walked through a nice men’s clothing store several weeks ago, and happened by the fitting station. There a man was trying on some very expensive clothes, and reporting that he was flying his own plane to Dayton for Thanksgiving, but might fly back briefly on Friday before returning to Dayton again on Saturday. The fact is, I was impressed. I thought, “This man is a raging success. He has everything, and can do everything, he wants.” My simple clothes and average mode of transportation seemed rather paltry by comparison. Success, I was reminded, is an Armani suit and a Lear jet. Wouldn’t I be all set if I had those things?
As I left the store, I was sobered to realize I had been co-opted. I, too, find my worth in those things. I, too think “everything would be fine, if only . . .” And of course it’s not true. That’s not where my real fulfillment lies. My happiness lies somewhere else. If I’m really to be content, I have to look to an entirely different standard. There’s a passage in one of the letters of the apostle Paul that puts it beautifully. “I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through the one who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:11-13). Our sense of contentment need not rise and fall with our income or the stock market or the fate of the Browns. We are rooted elsewhere, and that’s where to take our bearings—in the only wise God whose love for us never fades. As the psalmist puts it: “O my God, in you I trust” (25:2). Not in Ralph Lauren or straight As or a healthy baby. In God.
So God can make everything new. And our real fulfillment doesn’t depend in any way on the material circumstances of our lives. And lastly—and this lies in tension with our need to let go of results—Christian waiting is not at all passive. Yes, God is at the root of all growth and change. But it’s not as though we’re simply puppets without any role to play. A Christian waits by joining the fray. Again the apostle Paul puts it so well: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for God’s good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13). Active waiting, waiting that dives in eagerly, is a hallmark of the Christian’s stance.
Expectant parents know a thing or two about active waiting. First, their own procreative role is crucial. Then they prepare the baby’s room and buy the necessary clothes and equipment—baby bottles, a stroller, a high chair. And finally, at just the right moment, the mother pushes for all she’s worth! There’s certainly no baby without the work of God. But the whole experience of pregnancy and delivery is immensely enhanced as we engage in the process. Expectant parents live out an active kind of waiting.
This is the way it is, too, with those who wait for the return of Christ. We who wait for Christ’s advent, Christ’s second coming, know that a final return will almost certainly not happen during our lifetimes. But we also know that that return does happen day by day, in bits and pieces, that it bears fruit wherever we see and participate in those practices of steadfast love that are windows on the heart of God. “Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths” (25:4). The psalmist is eager to know the “way” of God (25:4, 9, 10), in order to walk that road and do what’s right.
The way of God is to love us no matter what we do. This is what the psalmist calls “steadfast love” (25:6). It means that if we’ve wandered away, we’ll be welcomed back. If we’ve lost our way, we’ll be shown the path. If we’ve done something of which we’re ashamed, we’ll be forgiven. The deepest conviction of the people of Israel and of those who follow Christ is that “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39). We wait well and faithfully when we live that steadfast love and allow it to work its way in the lives of those we love.
A colleague of mine (Lillian Daniel) called my attention to a New York Times story, several months ago, about a woman in Montana whose husband told her that their marriage wasn’t working, that it was her fault, and that he was leaving. Not an uncommon scene by any means. What was so striking about the piece was that the woman said to him, “I’m not buying it.” She decided, as she said, to “duck.” Her husband wanted, not literally, but figuratively, to strike out at her—to blame her for his dissatisfaction. She had the rare wisdom to know that what he was going through was not a marital difficulty, but rather a kind of mid-life crisis. His work wasn’t going as he had hoped it would. He was getting older and seeing that the years of promise were largely behind him now and that there wasn’t a whole lot he could look forward to. So when he said, “I don’t love you any more. I’m not sure I ever did,” she said, “I don’t buy it.” She “ducked.” She told him essentially that she didn’t believe him; that he could continue to live there; that he could come and go as he pleased; that he didn’t have to participate in family events; and that he would have the space to breathe and to find himself.
Hardly surprisingly, he didn’t know what to make of her approach. He was surly and rude. He didn’t show up at their fourth of July dinner. He did whatever he pleased while the rest of the family went on about their lives. She acknowledges that this was incredibly difficult on her, and that many of her friends thought she was a total sap. But she was determined to let his crisis play itself out, and not to cave to his sense that the marriage had failed.
And what happened is that some six months after his bold declaration, he came to the house one day and mowed the lawn. She says no one mows a lawn who doesn’t want to live there. And she was right. Slowly he rejoined the family. “It was Thanksgiving dinner,” she says, “that sealed it. [He] bowed his head humbly and said, ‘I’m thankful for my family.’”
What this remarkable woman did was to wait patiently for what she trusted would finally happen. She took on that great quality of God’s, the “steadfast love” that most marks the Holy One, so that her husband would have the room to come to the real issue behind his frustration and sorrow. Had she punished him and ruled him out, he never would have gotten there. It was only her patience and forgiving love that let him figure it out and come home again. “I ducked,” she says. “And I waited. And it worked.” (Laura A. Munson, “Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear,” The New York Times, Aug. 2, 2009).
Could every marital conflict be handled just as this woman handled hers? Of course not. We need to say as clearly as possible that what this woman did is not some recipe for dealing with every marital discord. What she did worked for the two of them. That’s all we know. In this case what we see, though, is one woman’s patient and active waiting, a waiting of steadfast love that resulted in healing and an eventual reconciling.
Joseph Nolan has written a poem called “The whole earth’s a waiting room.” This is how it goes:
We wait—all day long,
for planes and buses,
for dates and appointments,
for five o’clock and Friday.
Some of us wait for a Second Coming.
For God in a whirlwind.
Paratrooper Christ.
All around us people are waiting:
a child, for attention;
a spouse, for conversation;
a parent, for a letter or call.
The prisoner waits for freedom;
and the exile, to come home.
The hungry, for food;
and the lonely, for a friend.
The whole earth’s a waiting room!
“The Savior will see you now”
is what we expect to hear at the end.
Maybe we should raise our expectations.
The Savior might see us now
if we know how to find him.
Could it be that Jesus, too, is waiting
for us to know he is around?
(quoted in Resources for Preaching and Worship, Year C, p. 1)
“Could it be that Jesus, too, is waiting for us to know he is around?” If we wait, God will appear. And perhaps, just perhaps, if God waits, we will appear. For you, O God, we wait, and for us, O God, you wait all day long. Come, Lord Jesus. Come, you people of God. Be there!