Waiting for God

“Waiting for God”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, November 27, 2011 at NPEM, New York

35Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”(Mark 13:35-37)


Today begins the liturgical season of Advent, probably my very favorite season of the liturgical year. Advent, these four weeks leading up to the celebration of Christmas is probably one of the times I most feel the disconnect between our modern culture and my Christian faith. As the secular world begins to celebrate Christmas, with decorations and lights, Christmas trees, wreaths and Christmas muzac filling the air, we change the altar colors to blue and sing songs of longing and waiting and expectation, songs that speak of the end of the world and of the coming of God into the world at the end of time. It is the beginning of a new year in the Church and we speak of the end of time. Beginnings and endings are all of a piece in Advent. In these weeks before we celebrate the nativity of Jesus of Nazareth we look forward to the end of the world as we know it, with a mixture of hope and dread.

The passage from Mark’s gospel this morning is known as the “little Apocalypse” with its ominous portents of the end of life as we know it, the sun darkened, the moon failing to give light, stars falling from heaven. In the portion of the gospel that immediately precedes what we heard this morning, Jesus warns his followers of the signs that the end-times are coming. False prophets and false messiahs will arise, wars and rumors of wars will abound, his followers will be handed over to authorities to be persecuted and flogged, parents and children will be set against one another – all manner of bad things will be happening, and those will all be signs of the end-times approaching. But then, he says, after giving us all these signposts to watch for, only God knows when the end will come so all we can do is watch and wait. The tension that the early church was beginning to feel between its belief in an imminent return of Christ and the reality that the time wasn’t arriving as soon as they expected it to is reflected in this gospel text. This gospel writer was already starting to do what later Christian writers and theologians would have to do, which is to accept that God is in control of history and that perhaps, God works in ways that humans cannot predict or fathom. Only God knows how the world will end so we need to quit trying to predict the unpredictable and adopt an attitude of expectant watchfulness.

Advent, contrary to popular belief, is not simply about getting ready for Christmas by shopping, baking, entertaining and indulging in an orgy of consumerism and bacchanalian partying. It is about quiet, watchful waiting. Waiting for God to be born in our hearts, waiting for God’s kingdom to break into our world, waiting for the fulfillment of our highest dreams and aspirations as individuals and communities, dreams of a world marked by peace and justice, a world in which hunger and homelessness and disease do not claim so many human lives.

Waiting is something that we 21st century folk have become unaccustomed to doing. We are increasingly impatient and desirous of instant and immediate gratification. With cellphones and computers, high speed internet access, digital photography, microwaveable dinners and other technological wonders, we no longer have to wait for anything. Waiting is its own form of spiritual discipline and one that has almost been lost in modern life. On the few occasions in life where it is still unavoidable, many of us find it excruciating. Whether it is waiting for a child to be born, or waiting for the results of important medical tests, or waiting at the bedside of a dying loved one, or waiting to hear about an important job offer or professional appointment, we tend to find waiting to be a painful and agonizing process. Yet our forebears in the faith knew well what we have almost forgotten. Waiting is an important and crucial spiritual discipline. Advent invites us to rediscover it.

Holly Whitcomb, author of a book about the spiritual gift of waiting puts it this way:

Waiting presents an enormous challenge. We are impatient, I-can-fix-it kind of people… but not all situations can be fixed. We assume that everything in life can be made better by taking action, but sometimes it just isn’t so. … Yet waiting is an enormous opportunity if we regard it as a wise teacher. Waiting offers us a great deal when we choose to learn.
Waiting is an important guest to honor in the guest house of our humanity. If we consciously allow waiting to be our teacher, we can accommodate waiting more peacefully. If we welcome waiting as a spiritual discipline, waiting will present its spiritual gifts and some of our richest spiritual opportunities if we are conscious enough and courageous enough to name them and live into them.
Bingo halls and casinos often post the sign, ‘You must be present to win.’ In order to convert the inescapable lessons of waiting into deliberate spiritual gifts, we too, have to be present; we need to pay attention. (Seven Gifts of Waiting)

A famous preacher once noted, “Advent begins in the dark.” Advent is all about waiting in the dark, and that is something we humans find very hard to do, despite the fact that it happens a lot in the course of a human life. The author of Mark’s gospel exhorts us to keep awake, to be constantly on edge, to be ready for whatever God may do, but it’s hard to do that when the waiting seems endless. Sometimes waiting can be exciting, like waiting for the birth of a child. You may know the general time period that the birth will happen but you never know exactly when, and those last few weeks and days can seem endless as with every twinge you wonder, “Is this it?” Waiting for death is a remarkably similar process. Often doctors and nurses can tell a family that a patient is actively dying, but never can anyone predict exactly when the moment will come. The vigil at a bedside is full of the kind of agonized expectancy that our Advent texts speak of and it is excruciatingly difficult for we humans to let go and let God control the process, even though that is what we say we want to have happen.

Waiting is tough. Active, expectant watchful waiting is even tougher. Its too easy for us to lose heart when the waiting seems endless, to give up and go to sleep or to become not fully present by filling our lives with activity and busyness, noise and distraction so that we don’t have to contemplate the very thing for which we are waiting. Our Buddhist brothers and sisters understand well what Jesus is saying in today’s gospel text, as their spiritual practice is fully focused on becoming “awakened ones” which is what the term “Buddha” means.

Advent is the liturgical way our church reminds us to live our lives in an attitude of expectant, alert watchfulness. The kind of waiting that we are called to in Advent requires us to pay attention to our world, to keep an eye out for God, by paying attention to the signs and wonders around us that hint at God’s presence in our world and God’s inbreaking into our existence. Jesus reminds us to look at the world around us for signs of God’s work in that world, to be alert to discern the hand of God working through the chaos of human existence. It’s tempting to dull our senses with busyness or apathy, but in Advent we are called to live life on the edge, to be poised to move with God, to respond when God breaks into our world in whatever way God does in this time and place.

Advent is all about expectant, watchful, hopeful waiting. This kind of waiting is actually the hallmark of the spiritual life. It requires discipline and trust in God in the face of struggles and agonies that may seem unendurable. Advent is our liturgical reminder that much of our life of faith is comprised of waiting. While we wait we remain alert, awake and hopeful. We don’t tune out or give up. Our Advent observance reminds us that we must remain active and involved and committed to the furtherance of the reign of God. We are called to be part of the process of bringing God’s kingdom into our world.

During Advent we are reminded to live our lives like people on the verge of some exciting discovery, like an expectant mother in that excruciating 9th month. When there is nothing to do but wait we are forced to center ourselves, to be present in the moment and to give up our need to control the events and processes of our lives. When we are waiting for something to happen, we have no choice but to surrender to God, to let go and empty ourselves and allow things to unfold in their own mysterious way. “O Come O Come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, who waits in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear.” Waiting can feel like a lonely exile until we remember the promise of God with us. Advent invites us to focus on the new beginning embedded in every ending, the ending inherent in every new beginning and to relish the waiting that is an integral part of the birthing of God’s kingdom in our lives and our world. In those lonely waiting times let us pray the Advent hymn, “Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee O Israel.”

Amen.