Holy Waiting
December 7, 2008
II Peter 3:8-15; Mark 13:24-37
On my way over to the coffee shop last week, I paused to chat with the child care center kids on the playground. One little girl was hanging from the monkey bars, just dangling there, swinging back and forth as she slowly made her way across under the watchful eyes of one of the teachers. The tiny body swinging back and forth struck me as just hysterically amusing – cute, funny, sweet and timeless.
The sight skipped my mind back to when Hannah was that girl, when her first successful crossing of those very bars was a milestone of our first year here.
I walked all the way to Murky with a smile on my face at both the sight of that little girl dangling there, and the thought of time passing. People I passed on the sidewalk probably thought I was an idiot!
Time, it is said, is God’s gift to us; what we do with the time that we have been given is our gift to God.
The season of Advent is all about what we do with the time that we have been given.
On the one hand, Advent is about waiting – which can seem utterly passive and often like a huge waste of time. On the other hand, Advent is about hope and preparation. Mostly, I believe, Advent is about living in the tension between the time that is and the time that is to come, and thus, about the tension between what we might call holy patience and holy impatience. Advent, then, is about faithful living in the present moment.
Both of our readings this morning emphasize attention to the present moment, the subtle signs of the movement of the Spirit, the intimations of God. The readings also underscore the utter uncertainty of the future. The author of the letter to Peter suggests that there is, indeed, something salvivic in the way that we tend to Advent time. “Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.”
In Mark’s gospel, Jesus puts it simply: “stay awake.”
Stay awake to the present moment. That may be the most difficult challenge of all for us – not only in the liturgical season that we call “Advent,” but in all of the advent seasons of our lives. After all, life is made up of countless small advents. From the expectation that a little girl on the monkey bars will grow to a young woman, to the hope that our work in this moment will amount to something good and lasting for the future. Through all such advent time, we are bound, it seems, to spend too much of our time worrying about that uncertain future or fretting, angry, grieving, over past losses or struggles. So we miss advent time because we are living in the past or worried about the future, and thus asleep to the present moment.
Against all that, Jesus says simply, “stay awake.”
Staying awake, being mindful, is being faithful in the between times in which we live and move and have our being. And if we are not mindful to the present moment, it is all too easy to miss the still, small voice of God which whispers to us, “be still, and know that I am God.”
I was pondering such mindfulness, such awakeness, this week and was struck by a couple of seemingly random experiences that brought to mind a pair of disparate conversations spaced apart by about a quarter century, through which, years later, God seemed to be speaking to me this week about Advent time. Let me unpack that for you.
As you may have seen on my blog this week, I happened to hit opening day of the new Capitol Visitors Center. It was an Advent kind of experience. After six years and $600 million of waiting and hoping and preparing – of the advent of the new center, as it were – the place finally experienced, a few weeks early, its own Christmas-type fulfillment. That was my own interpretation of the faces and attitudes of every staff person – from the security guards to the docents – whom I encountered in the 45 minutes I spent wandering the new center. They were all so clearly happy and excited finally to be able to play with their new toy! It was a little snapshot of hope fulfilled. Mind you, this is not a comment on the place, the money spent or any of that – merely an observation about the emotions on display among those who had waited, hoped, prepared, and expected this day for such a long time. Their patience was rewarded, their hopes fulfilled, and it was written on their faces.
The second experience involved a bit of house cleaning. I was dusting this week, and for the first time in too long I dusted the backs of book shelves behind the books. I’ve put that off for months, using my inability to do this motion as an excuse.
Anyway, in dusting behind one row of books I found a little book that had been pushed behind the others. It’s called, What Child Is This?, and it’s a simple little story aimed at early adolescent readers – you’d find it in the “young adult” section of the bookstore or library. I couldn’t remember when it came into our house, and I had not read it, so that evening I did.
It’s not great literature – a bit above average as kid lit goes in my experience. But it was a good story about foster kids longing for community, connection and family at Christmas time.
When eight-year-old Katie tells Mr. Pollard, the social worker that she wants a family for Christmas, he tells her to think little. Her teen-aged foster brother, Matt, tells her later that it isn’t true, that “Christmas is about big things.” Matt’s response to the social worker’s well-intended warning about false hopes stopped me cold: “There is no such thing as false hope, thought Matt, no matter what Pollard says. Hope just is. Every morning, every night. Hope doesn’t guarantee. Hope doesn’t promise. Hope doesn’t do a thing.
“But you have to have it.”
You have to have it. Hope, which is nothing more, but nothing less, than an orientation of faith toward the future, trusting that the intimations of God point toward the fulfillment of the promises of God.
Such hope entails, indeed, demands a practice of holy patience.
My friend, John Bell, calls it the discipline of waiting. Scripture is full of waiting, and Jesus spent a goodly bit of time in the discipline of waiting – waiting for the right time to go up to Jerusalem, waiting at the well to engage in conversation with a woman, waiting in the garden, waiting, ultimately, in the tomb.
John Bell suggests that “Waiting is an important countercultural spiritual discipline. And it is that for a number of reasons: In the first place, instant decisions, especially as they affect our life and the lives of others, are not always the best. […] Secondly, waiting allows for the development of relationships which would never mature if first impressions were the last word. […] Thirdly, waiting is the prerequisite for real intimacy. In personal relationships, the beloved will not give away what is deep in herself or himself until time and familiarity have enabled trust to develop and intimacy to be safe. […] Finally, waiting is a sign of love. Indeed it is perhaps the most clear indication of whether or not love is true.”
And so we wait, in Advent time.
But our patient Advent waiting is not a passive state, not a time of sleep, but of staying awake and aware to the subtle movement of the Spirit in our midst, beckoning us onward toward that Kingdom time in which we already partially dwell.
That thought, this week, reminded me of a pair of conversations. The first occurred more than 25 years ago, when I said to a faithful young seminarian, about something I’ve long since forgotten, “we’re closer to death every day, and we’ll all be dead for a long, long time.” He said to me, “David, we’ve only just begun to live, and my faith tells me that we will live for a long, long time with God.”
The second conversation was more recent, and was with someone from a church who was growing impatient with the pace of change and progress in the congregation. I said, “in the long run these things will happen.” He said, “in the long run, we’ll all be dead.”
There it is: the Advent tension between holy patience and holy impatience. We live in that balance, which is nothing new under the sun. Like the little girl on the monkey bars, we live suspended between a past to which we cannot return, and a future that beckons us onward in faith and hope. And as the mix of joy and determination on her face reminded me, this is life, and there is such joy in it!
Jesus lived that way, in that balance, as well.
When we pray together the prayer that he taught his disciples, we open our hearts to that tension as we say, “thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”
On earth, now, in our time – a holy impatient demand for the fullness of the kingdom of love and justice, of compassion and mercy, of grace and peace to be realized now, in our time, in our midst.
Balanced with the holy patience that understands that the kingdom of heaven is never fully realized, that it is always calling us from a future that will never be fully present and complete because creation itself is still living in Advent time, still emerging, still growing, still being completed, still to come in the future of God’s imagination.
The great gift of God in Jesus Christ, the great gift of Christmas, is to be shown just how to live in this Advent time: live into hope. For, if we are to live into an eternity in the presence of God, why not start living in that presence right here, right now?
May it be so, for each of us, this day and always. Amen.
II Peter 3:8-15; Mark 13:24-37
On my way over to the coffee shop last week, I paused to chat with the child care center kids on the playground. One little girl was hanging from the monkey bars, just dangling there, swinging back and forth as she slowly made her way across under the watchful eyes of one of the teachers. The tiny body swinging back and forth struck me as just hysterically amusing – cute, funny, sweet and timeless.
The sight skipped my mind back to when Hannah was that girl, when her first successful crossing of those very bars was a milestone of our first year here.
I walked all the way to Murky with a smile on my face at both the sight of that little girl dangling there, and the thought of time passing. People I passed on the sidewalk probably thought I was an idiot!
Time, it is said, is God’s gift to us; what we do with the time that we have been given is our gift to God.
The season of Advent is all about what we do with the time that we have been given.
On the one hand, Advent is about waiting – which can seem utterly passive and often like a huge waste of time. On the other hand, Advent is about hope and preparation. Mostly, I believe, Advent is about living in the tension between the time that is and the time that is to come, and thus, about the tension between what we might call holy patience and holy impatience. Advent, then, is about faithful living in the present moment.
Both of our readings this morning emphasize attention to the present moment, the subtle signs of the movement of the Spirit, the intimations of God. The readings also underscore the utter uncertainty of the future. The author of the letter to Peter suggests that there is, indeed, something salvivic in the way that we tend to Advent time. “Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.”
In Mark’s gospel, Jesus puts it simply: “stay awake.”
Stay awake to the present moment. That may be the most difficult challenge of all for us – not only in the liturgical season that we call “Advent,” but in all of the advent seasons of our lives. After all, life is made up of countless small advents. From the expectation that a little girl on the monkey bars will grow to a young woman, to the hope that our work in this moment will amount to something good and lasting for the future. Through all such advent time, we are bound, it seems, to spend too much of our time worrying about that uncertain future or fretting, angry, grieving, over past losses or struggles. So we miss advent time because we are living in the past or worried about the future, and thus asleep to the present moment.
Against all that, Jesus says simply, “stay awake.”
Staying awake, being mindful, is being faithful in the between times in which we live and move and have our being. And if we are not mindful to the present moment, it is all too easy to miss the still, small voice of God which whispers to us, “be still, and know that I am God.”
I was pondering such mindfulness, such awakeness, this week and was struck by a couple of seemingly random experiences that brought to mind a pair of disparate conversations spaced apart by about a quarter century, through which, years later, God seemed to be speaking to me this week about Advent time. Let me unpack that for you.
As you may have seen on my blog this week, I happened to hit opening day of the new Capitol Visitors Center. It was an Advent kind of experience. After six years and $600 million of waiting and hoping and preparing – of the advent of the new center, as it were – the place finally experienced, a few weeks early, its own Christmas-type fulfillment. That was my own interpretation of the faces and attitudes of every staff person – from the security guards to the docents – whom I encountered in the 45 minutes I spent wandering the new center. They were all so clearly happy and excited finally to be able to play with their new toy! It was a little snapshot of hope fulfilled. Mind you, this is not a comment on the place, the money spent or any of that – merely an observation about the emotions on display among those who had waited, hoped, prepared, and expected this day for such a long time. Their patience was rewarded, their hopes fulfilled, and it was written on their faces.
The second experience involved a bit of house cleaning. I was dusting this week, and for the first time in too long I dusted the backs of book shelves behind the books. I’ve put that off for months, using my inability to do this motion as an excuse.
Anyway, in dusting behind one row of books I found a little book that had been pushed behind the others. It’s called, What Child Is This?, and it’s a simple little story aimed at early adolescent readers – you’d find it in the “young adult” section of the bookstore or library. I couldn’t remember when it came into our house, and I had not read it, so that evening I did.
It’s not great literature – a bit above average as kid lit goes in my experience. But it was a good story about foster kids longing for community, connection and family at Christmas time.
When eight-year-old Katie tells Mr. Pollard, the social worker that she wants a family for Christmas, he tells her to think little. Her teen-aged foster brother, Matt, tells her later that it isn’t true, that “Christmas is about big things.” Matt’s response to the social worker’s well-intended warning about false hopes stopped me cold: “There is no such thing as false hope, thought Matt, no matter what Pollard says. Hope just is. Every morning, every night. Hope doesn’t guarantee. Hope doesn’t promise. Hope doesn’t do a thing.
“But you have to have it.”
You have to have it. Hope, which is nothing more, but nothing less, than an orientation of faith toward the future, trusting that the intimations of God point toward the fulfillment of the promises of God.
Such hope entails, indeed, demands a practice of holy patience.
My friend, John Bell, calls it the discipline of waiting. Scripture is full of waiting, and Jesus spent a goodly bit of time in the discipline of waiting – waiting for the right time to go up to Jerusalem, waiting at the well to engage in conversation with a woman, waiting in the garden, waiting, ultimately, in the tomb.
John Bell suggests that “Waiting is an important countercultural spiritual discipline. And it is that for a number of reasons: In the first place, instant decisions, especially as they affect our life and the lives of others, are not always the best. […] Secondly, waiting allows for the development of relationships which would never mature if first impressions were the last word. […] Thirdly, waiting is the prerequisite for real intimacy. In personal relationships, the beloved will not give away what is deep in herself or himself until time and familiarity have enabled trust to develop and intimacy to be safe. […] Finally, waiting is a sign of love. Indeed it is perhaps the most clear indication of whether or not love is true.”
And so we wait, in Advent time.
But our patient Advent waiting is not a passive state, not a time of sleep, but of staying awake and aware to the subtle movement of the Spirit in our midst, beckoning us onward toward that Kingdom time in which we already partially dwell.
That thought, this week, reminded me of a pair of conversations. The first occurred more than 25 years ago, when I said to a faithful young seminarian, about something I’ve long since forgotten, “we’re closer to death every day, and we’ll all be dead for a long, long time.” He said to me, “David, we’ve only just begun to live, and my faith tells me that we will live for a long, long time with God.”
The second conversation was more recent, and was with someone from a church who was growing impatient with the pace of change and progress in the congregation. I said, “in the long run these things will happen.” He said, “in the long run, we’ll all be dead.”
There it is: the Advent tension between holy patience and holy impatience. We live in that balance, which is nothing new under the sun. Like the little girl on the monkey bars, we live suspended between a past to which we cannot return, and a future that beckons us onward in faith and hope. And as the mix of joy and determination on her face reminded me, this is life, and there is such joy in it!
Jesus lived that way, in that balance, as well.
When we pray together the prayer that he taught his disciples, we open our hearts to that tension as we say, “thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”
On earth, now, in our time – a holy impatient demand for the fullness of the kingdom of love and justice, of compassion and mercy, of grace and peace to be realized now, in our time, in our midst.
Balanced with the holy patience that understands that the kingdom of heaven is never fully realized, that it is always calling us from a future that will never be fully present and complete because creation itself is still living in Advent time, still emerging, still growing, still being completed, still to come in the future of God’s imagination.
The great gift of God in Jesus Christ, the great gift of Christmas, is to be shown just how to live in this Advent time: live into hope. For, if we are to live into an eternity in the presence of God, why not start living in that presence right here, right now?
May it be so, for each of us, this day and always. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
7:09 AM
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