A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, November 30, 2008
Mark 13:24-37
I recently saw a statistic that adult Americans spend an average of 62 minutes of every day, waiting: waiting in traffic, waiting for the eggs to cook, waiting for the bridge to close, waiting for computers to boot, waiting for the other party to arrive, waiting… waiting.{http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=439013}
Even more interesting is that most people equate waiting with wasting time. Most people hate waiting: standing still, doing nothing is treated like an enemy. It’s no wonder there’s such a high demand for devices that make it possible to work anywhere, any time, so there’s never an idle moment.
There are all sorts of ways to wait. Retailers are waiting to see if they can keep it all together in this season that normally brings the highest sales figure of the year; home-buyers with sub-prime loans are waiting to see whether they’ll be evicted before Christmas; Detroit’s “Big Three” are waiting to see whether Congress will bail them out. And we’re all waiting for home values to stabilize and the stock market to gain.
On the surface Advent waiting may feel like this, but it’s so much more: Scripture tells us we wait together for the realm of God to break into our human situation; and that all of creation cycles through birth, death, and rebirth.
God is certainly not required to appear only on December 25th. That date is symbolic of God’s activity in our world, but the moment may come at any time. So, for these four weeks before Christmas, across the centuries, we within the church have told the story and have waited for hope, peace, love, and joy; we’ve waited for justice to roll down like waters, nourishing the earth and our souls.
Advent waiting is a corporate affair. We pray that we’ll all be able to wait and prepare together. Everything around us tries to incite feelings of frenzy and urgency. This happens not only in the pressures of the economy but even right here in the church.
I’ll never forget the uproar when I arrived here as senior minister 19 years ago, at the beginning of Advent, and Shirley Curry and I agreed that we’d sing Advent hymns during Advent… rather than Christmas carols. One person said I was the Grinch who stole her Christmas. I got notes reminding me this is a Congregational Church and I had no right to take away your Christmas carols by fiat. One dear friend (who shall remain anonymous) told me that if I didn’t repent she’d be forced to attend another church next Advent where they sang Christmas carols every Sunday of December.
Advent is not about rushing into Christmas. Quite the opposite! Advent means we’re willing to wait for God to fulfill the promises in God’s own time. And we’re watching for the signs…
What are you feeling today as we turn the corner and begin the story again and watch and wait? Is this season of Advent waiting a nuisance, or an anxious time for you… or is it perhaps an opportunity to open your soul to the larger purposes of God?
The Gospel of Mark tells us that in our waiting we still need to be on the watch, be alert, and not letting our attention wander. Be ready, look for the signs – because God breaks into our human story in times and ways that we can’t predict.
What we know for certain is that God’s engagement with us is always for our good, always for our redemption, always for the sake of bringing us closer in covenant, closer in love, closer to the realm God has promised.
Even in the most troubling times we can be filled with hope, anticipating that the coming of God will be good news to you as a person of faith and to us as a people. So Advent waiting is qualitatively different from the 62 minutes we experience every day. Advent is about our conforming our own hearts to God’s invitation, patiently traveling a path of preparation; as we lay a foundation block by block, and light our way candle by candle: hope, peace, love, joy.
I’m reminded of how the Scottish author and poet Robert Louis Stevenson famously said it: “Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive. Why? Because life at its best is not a destination but a journey. If you charge through life like a pirate, tossing the plunder left and right in order to reach some imagined treasure, you’ll end up lost and empty, and injuring others along the way.
But if you’ll move through this season (and life) with hope and a deeper sense of gratitude you’ll remember God’s promise to walk with you on this journey and to guide you away from these dangerous places that threaten your soul, and sap your joy.
For the author of Isaiah, writing in the 6th century before Jesus, there’s a tone of pleading that God will do something big and dramatic as in the old days:”When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for you.” [Isaiah 64:3,4]
This section of the prophecy was probably written as the first Jews were returning from their exile in Babylon. They came back to Jerusalem not rejoicing, but weeping, sad and fearful that God had abandoned them forever.
We sometimes imagine, as they did, that God always comes in some kind of earth-shattering moment: the hurricane or blizzard, or the Apocalypse. The Gospel lesson simply points us to the importance of remaining open and alert. God is certainly in the commonplace: in the eyes of a child, the love of a mother, the touch of a friend, the privilege of sharing your life with another, the beauty of being part of something that really matters to you and to the world.
But remember, too, that Advent tells us to be ready and to be deeply alert so we may seize the moment when it appears.
Fifty-three years ago tomorrow Rosa Louise Parks, a seamstress and cleaning woman, climbed onto a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and sat right down in a front seat rather than going to the colored section at the back. She later said that she wasn’t trying to make a fuss but was just too tired to move.
She was arrested for violating the law that forced blacks to go to the back or to stand so white folks could sit. A young pastor named Martin Luther King, Jr., organized a bus boycott by black residents and the law was challenged in Federal court. Within months it was overturned and the great wall of segregation began to tumble.
Many well-meaning people, among them many Christian leaders, urged King to be patient – that good will would win the day if the Negroes would just let things take their time. In 1964, King wrote one of his most powerful books, Why We Can’t Wait. He recognized the opening in which God was present; he seized the moment, and he gave his life to an assassin’s bullet in 1968.
No one should have to wait for justice, but millions do.
No one should have to wonder whether she or he deserves to inherit the dream. But countless hordes live in danger and fear and despair.
And now, 40 years later, we’re witnessing the fulfillment of a vision and a promise and a hope… certainly not the end of the journey but another marker along the way.
While we wait we can see face of God and show it to others. Just look around you.
All of us must wait, actively, faithfully, hopefully, for the redeeming power of God to overwhelm all the powers of sin and darkness and fear.
So today we begin of Advent preparation knowing that God promises much more than we have seen already. This is a time of waiting and watching. Will you join me?