Waiting

 What do we do when we need to wait?

It’s what this season is all about. Today is like New Year’s Day in the Church. No, not for the secular calendar. Y’all still have a whole month of 2025 left. But Advent begins the new Church year, and we begin in the void. There’s no John the Baptist, there’s no Jesus, Mary and Elizabeth don’t even know they’re expecting yet. In the next few weeks we’ll slowly fill the void with the familiar: next week the tree goes up, we hear the prophesy of Isaiah, Gabriel visits both Zechariah and Mary, and the poinsettia orders come in (thanks Jan!), and the sanctuary will be full of pretty red flowers.

But we don’t have any of that yet. We kick off Advent not with nice baby news, but with apocalyptic warnings: a random person in a field will be taken, a random woman minding her own business in her kitchen will be taken, your house might be broken into, and no one knows when. Get ready! Jesus had a major flair for the dramatic. If you’re a nerd, like me, you can at least get excited about starting Year A in the Revised Common Lectionary, a year where most of our Gospel stories come from Matthew. Woohoo! But, if you’re, like, not weird, then you’re not going to start a conversation on a blind date with that particular quip. And…that’s kind of where we are right now. Someone we trust set us up with The One, and we’re sitting at a restaurant, at a table for two, staring at an empty chair.

What do we do while we wait for Jesus to show up?

This is a challenging notion, during a challenging time of the year. We don’t love waiting because, even though life is full of it, our culture encourages us to be impatient and pushy and try to skip the line. We can pay extra for next day shipping on those Christmas presents. We can buy that Lightening Lane pass at Disney World. We can pay for Netflix without ads. We can get put on a cancellation list and get gruff with the receptionist at the doctor’s office to see if we’ll get an appointment next week instead of next month. We honk in traffic jams. We push the elevator button over and over, as if our urgency will make it come a little faster.

But, generally speaking, we don’t know how to cope when we have to wait. If we can’t buy expediency, or temper tantrum our way out of the wait…we have no idea what to do. And, on top of that, our priorities are very skewed. We’ll pre-order the new Nintendo Switch months in advance because it has a bigger screen, but if I have to wait 15 minutes at the pharmacy for them to fill my prescription, then nuts to this, my medicine can’t be that important, can it?

How do we decide what’s worth waiting for, and what isn’t? I’d argue we should follow Jesus’ advice in John 10: 9-10, another warning to be prepared to wait for him and not get distracted: “9 I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

What’s a thief to us, and what gives us abundant life? Jesus tells us not to wait around for, listen to, or trust the former, and to be steadfast to the latter. 

This time of year, the thieves are everywhere, and they’re loud. My email inbox is flooded with messages about The Big Sale going on at some online store I only ever used once. I get a dozen robo calls a day to my cell phone, all offers to refinance debt. I’m getting incessant texts from my kids’ schools about the bake sale, the book fair, the pizza party, the bottle and can drive, the pajama party, the chorus concert, and, lest we forget, those “spirit weeks”, where I have to send the kids to school looking like candy canes or snow men or gingerbread. I sneak a complaint about those in at least one sermon every year. Guys, it’s the holidays, the bar is way too high. They’ll go to school wearing clothes. That’s all I’m committing to.

The capitalistic, consumeristic thieves are rampant this time of year, telling us to buy more, spend more, give more. More presents, more parties, more feasts, more decorations. Otherwise, do you love your family enough? Are you enjoying Christmas enough? 

The “more, more, more” messaging makes the waiting that needs to happen so much harder. By all means, buy gifts, make cookies, go to holiday parties, and dress up if you want. But not if those things don’t bring you abundant life.

In the meantime, we’re staring at that empty restaurant chair, and waiting. Waiting for Jesus to show up with Good News and better days. What would a world saturated with Jesus look like? That’s the promise, but I’m not sure. But, if nothing else, I’m imagining an end to the constant newstream of wars, mass shootings, and political corruption.

So, how do we wait well? How do we learn how to do the thing no one taught us? 

The best way we can wait right now is by getting organized around things that fill our spirits. How often are you making your way down to church? Coming more often is never a bad move. How much time are you spending in prayer? Do you have any daily or weekly devotional practices? I personally benefit quite a lot from meditative prayer. It clears out the noise, especially during the holidays, and grounds me in my priorities. Acts of service to the community also help refocus all of us.

In the meantime, we might not be able to know when, or how, but I can tell you, there’s no question of the “if”. Good things are coming. And it gets better.

Amen.