WHILE YOU WAIT

(Preached on Sunday, November 30, 2003)

Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly.                                  -Luke 21:34

 

What do you do while you wait?

We do a fair amount of waiting during an average week.

We wait in traffic.

We wait on hold on the telephone.

We wait in checkout lines.

We wait for the server to take our order or bring our food.

We wait for folks to respond — to our phone message, to our letter, to our e-mail.

We wait for things to download, to boot up, and to print.

 

And what do we do while we wait?

The proliferation of cell phones have made waiting easier for us.  We feel we can at least get something done while waiting in traffic or in line.

Many folks also turn waiting into an opportunity to check their Palm Pilots, calendars, and lists of things to do.

Or we open up our laptop computers and get work done.

For years businesses have tried to improve our experience of waiting on hold by playing music and offering recorded assurances that our call is important to them and that the next available agent will be with us shortly.

Now, they are instead, promoting products.

The irony with most of what we do while we wait is that it usually has nothing to do with the thing we’re waiting for.

I may make some calls on my cell phone while waiting in traffic, but the calls don’t alleviate the traffic or increase my speed.

I may take a moment to look ahead on my calendar while waiting in line at the grocery story, but my calendar does not assist my grocery shopping.

 

Have you ever been waiting in a grocery line behind people who seem unprepared when it’s their turn to check out?

They get to the front of the line and fumble for their wallet or coupons.

They only then begin to fill out the check that could have been mostly completed during the wait.

We are busy about many things while we wait, but so often the stuff we’re dong has no relation to or impact on the thing we’re waiting for.  The result often is that we are unprepared for what we are waiting when it finally arrives.

Being prepared is a central theme in this teaching of Jesus from the gospel of Luke.

Using highly poetic language, rich with metaphors and symbols, this passage admonishes Christians to remain steadfastly committed to their faith.

It reminds us that the question before us is not so much what we wait for, but how we are waiting?  What are we doing while we wait?

 

A homeless person sleeping on a park bench is waiting, but not for anything in particular.  He’s just sitting, waiting, existing, getting by.

A college student headed home for Christmas break waits at an airport to board a plane home.  She is excited about seeing her family.

Her waiting is loaded with anticipation.

An expectant mother about to give birth is also waiting with excitement and anticipation.  But two things make her waiting different.

First, the person she is waiting for is already here.

Her child may be hidden, but she is already present.

Second, the mother’s waiting contains an element of cooperation.

The child wants to be born, but the mother must cooperate in the process — groaning, gasping, pushing.

 

Some of us are waiting for God to appear in our lives or the world like the homeless person on the park bench.

To our way of thinking, if God ever really did come in the person of Jesus, it is taking God an awfully long time to return, and maybe God really isn’t coming back. 

So we wait, expecting nothing to happen and, it seems, nothing does.

Others of us are like the college student. 

For us, this time of the year reminds us of what God once did and how wonderful it was, and we are excited and full of anticipation of what God next will do.

But the best kind of waiting on God is like that of the expectant mother, who brings to life someone who is already alive, and delivers someone who is already present.

 

After all, God is already here.

Hidden perhaps, but within us and among us.

This time of the year, and Jesus’ teaching, remind us that our waiting on God is all like childbearing. 

We bring a living God to life in our own lives.

But if God is to be born in us, we have to do our part — groaning, gasping, pushing.

 

Theologian Walter Burghardt once told this story:  “The day after Thanksgiving the New York Times told of a 33-year-old local cab driver whose shoulder-length hair was tied in a ponytail.  This cabby had ‘prayed to God for guidance on how to help the forgotten people of the streets who exist in life’s shadows.’  As he recalls it, God replied, ‘Make eight pounds of spaghetti, throw it in a pot, give it out on 103^rd Street and Broadway with no conditions, and people will come.’  He did, they came, and now he goes from door to door giving people food to eat.”

Burghardt then continued: “I am not asking you to stuff the Big Apple with spaghetti.  But a New York cabby can bring light into your Advent night.  He prayed to a God who was there; he listened; he gave the simple gift God asked of him; he gave ‘with no conditions’; and people responded.  Here is your Advent: Make the Christ who has come a reality, a living light, in your life and in some other life.  Give of yourself ... to one dark soul ... with no conditions.”

 

The early Christians — the first- and second-generation followers of Jesus — waited eagerly for him to return in judgment over the earth.

They came together to recount the stories of his life among them, and wrote them down so that the stories would not be forgotten.

Their sense of God’s presence and activity in Jesus was so powerful that they were certain that it would not be long before God would intervene in the world to set things right — bringing justice for the oppressed, sight to the blind, healing for the lame, release to those held prisoner, new life to the dead.

They had witnessed all that in Jesus — in his love for all people, his feeding and sheltering the poor.

His followers new this time of reckoning wasn’t far off.

 

But year by year, the followers of Jesus became accustomed to the idea that perhaps the coming of God at the end of time would take a little longer than they had first thought.  And still they waited.

While they waited, they tried to live as Jesus had taught them.

They cared for the poor, fed the hungry, sheltered the homeless.

They remembered how Jesus himself had been born as a helpless child, dependent on others for survival.  And still they waited.

 

They grew old; they died.

Some succumbed peacefully to old age, with their families around them.

Some died horribly in war.

Taken as slaves, others died for the amusement of their captors in the Roman Coliseum.

Followers of Jesus died under unflagging persecution.