PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Psalm 103:1-5; Mark 13:24-37                                                  What's It Like to Wait?

Advent Sermon Nov. 30, 2008:  People's United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  the Rev. Dan Griggs

 

            Today is the first day of the new year—that is, of the church's devotional year.  Advent is the first of the devotional seasons, and that makes sense because we are reading scripture and praying through the story of the life of Jesus Christ.  Advent is about getting ready for his birth in our hearts anew.  It seems so odd, then, that the Gospel for today is about the End of the World.  Mark chapter 13 is about the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jerusalem church's belief that this disaster would signal the return of Christ, Judgment Day, rewards and punishments.  Ah, but here's the connection:  his "return" is his "advent."  We are reminded that we Christians share with the Jews this waiting and watching for the Messiah's advent.  So my question is about how to live while we are watching.  What's it like to wait for his coming?  That's what we're doing.

            The Psalm we heard this morning couldn't be more mismatched to the Gospel:  it talks about the blessings of God and gives God thanks.  But I think the two do go together—like this.  Jesus' admonition to "watch" alongside "I will never forget how kind God is," forgiving our sins and curing all our diseases:  this is how we wait for Christ.  This is what waiting is like:  blessing while we're watching for God's future. 

 

            Waiting.  She had just turned thirteen, and her father was worrying about her because she stayed in her bedroom with the door closed all the time.  What was she doing—surfing websites she wasn't supposed to visit?  Text-messaging everybody in school?  He talked to her mother, "Don't you think you should go talk to her, make her leave her door open.  Maybe we should block websites on her computer."  She smiled at her husband in that knowing way and waited for him to finish jabbering.  Then she said, "She's thirteen.  She's waiting.  She may be staring out the window, or putting away her last dolls, or reorganizing her things; but what she's really doing is reorganizing herself.  She needs time alone to wait."  He sat down and shook his head, "What's she waiting for?"  His wife answered, "She's waiting for answers.  Will she ever fall in love?  What does that feel like?  Will she ever get married?  What will the love of her life be like?  Who will she be when she is no longer a child?  She's waiting for answers."  Waiting. 

            It's like fishing with a pole.  You've been out all day, and you've already caught five or six good ones, and you know that supper tonight will be fish, but you keep throwing the line in and waiting.  You know just where the big one hangs out, and he isn't hungry yet.  Waiting. 

            When our son Bill was eight we visited my brother Dick's home, and he took Bill and me out in his fishing boat.  Bill tried fishing:  it lasted for about five minutes and then he was ready for something to happen.  He asked Dick, "How do you get the fish to get on the hook?"  Dick answered, "Do you see this box over here?  That's my fish-talker.  I drop that box down in the water and call the fish, and the fish-talker talks to them in fish language and gets them to swallow the worm."  I think we've all wished we had a fish-talker sometimes:  waiting is not always comfortable. 

            What's it like to wait?  If you don't have anything else to do, it can get hard to wait.  As the cook's mantra goes:  "A watched pot never boils."

 

            So we all know what that kind of waiting is like.  Is there another way to wait?  Well—it's to have something else to busy yourself with during the wait.  And the best "something else" of all is exactly what the psalm is talking about.  It is to let your soul recline in the blessings of the Eternal One. 

            Here we all are on the first Sunday of Advent, watching, preparing for the Savior to be born anew in us.  Are there any words you've spoken that have cluttered a friendship?  Have you done something to somebody that was rude, or crude, or unloving—or maybe just ignored someone who needed you?  "The Lord forgives our sins."  While we're waiting, you can ask for forgiveness, and for help to do a better job with your living. 

            Is someone you care about sick?  Or maybe you yourself have a medical problem or an emotional stress.  Certainly our illnesses are on our minds—look at how long our Prayer Lists in the worship bulletin are.  Why do we waste all that paper and ink naming the sick?  What are we waiting for?  "God heals us when we are sick," the psalmist sings.  It isn't hard to wait for Christ to be born in us anew if we're attending to prayer for the sick, and giving God thanks for the healing.  Even when a person grows old and tired, and the day brings more trouble eating and moving and getting along:  even when that which frightens us most during most of our lives, death, seems no longer an enemy—even then God brings that healing of soul and spirit that the ancient Hebrews called "shalom"—getting my life right, "shalom"—finding peace.  The psalmist puts it this way:  "he protects us from death."  This "shalom" is also God's gift to us younger folks while we're waiting for the Messiah. 

            "God's kindness and love are a crown on our heads," he sings.  Our culture has become sleek and fast, full of gadgets and grown-up toys for people making millions of dollars and for people facing a mortgage foreclosure.  We run here and there, do this and that; and at the end of the day, at the end of the week, at the end of the year, nothing satisfies.  We couldn't wait, and by not waiting, by doing it all ourselves, we came up short.  This is not waiting:  this is just hurrying.  We have forgotten one of the basic spiritual laws:  "Be still, and know that I am God."  And if we become still, if we quiet our restless minds, if we listen with our souls instead of with our ears, we discover God's kindness and love all around us—"a crown on our heads." 

 

            Jesus said that while we're waiting we need to be "watching."  That's not a literal looking—it means staying aware, paying attention to the relationship between what we're doing and saying and planning and how we're living on the one hand, and on the other the arrival of the Thing we're waiting for.

            You see, when the Jerusalem church in 70 AD (when the Gospel of Mark was written) saw the Roman army break down the city walls and burn the temple of God, although it was a frightful sight, it was their signal:

 

The time for what?  The time for God to fulfill all the greatest promises, to bless us and to transform our lives (even if we are dead) into a whole new commonwealth—the "peaceable kingdom," "the world to come."  This is good news—this End of the World thing.  We got the idea that it's a bad thing by watching too much television and seeing too many wars and hearing too many scary sermons.  I grew up with those scary sermons, and then I read the Bible:  they got it backwards!  Like the little boy who came to his daddy one day and said, "Dad, you know all those bad things we've been reading about together in the Bible?  Well I took a peek at the end of the book, and guess what?  We win!"  This is worth our waiting. 

 

            What is it like to wait?  Waiting is like knowing that what's going on is temporary and transient—there is More yet to come.

            Our waiting is like knowing that the baby is going to be a boy, and we've already named him; but he isn't here yet.  So we sing the carols, we do the shopping, we decorate the room, we call the family together, and when the time comes we will have a warm and joyful welcome for the new baby.  What a happy wait!

AMEN