Impatiently Waiting
Advent on purpose
The brilliant Madeleine L'Engle wrote, “Advent is not a time to declare, but to listen, to listen to whatever God may want to tell us through the singing of the stars, the quickening of a baby, the gallantry of a dying man. Listen. Quietly. Humbly. Without arrogance.”
Waiting, like stomach flu and explosive diarrhea, can humble you. No matter how loud or insistently you “Karen,” not getting what you want when you want it, can be a humbling journey. And while “advent” means “arrival,” this is a slow, slow train comin’.
The prophet tells us that “…those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” How does a runner run and not get weary? How does a walker walk and not faint? By running a lot and walking a lot, a lot. And waiting a lot develops your capacity to wait and grow at the same time.
And I hate waiting.
But the waiting is good for you. The waiting develops your capacity for more.
But let’s contrast that vibe with what the psalmist wrote for us to sing together…
… you have rejected us and abased us,
and have not gone out with our armies.
You made us turn back from the foe,
and our enemies have taken spoil for themselves.
You have made us like sheep for slaughter,
and have scattered us among the nations.
You have sold your people for a trifle,
demanding no high price for them.
You have made us the taunt of our neighbours,
the derision and scorn of those around us.
You have made us a byword among the nations,
a laughing-stock among the peoples.
All day long my disgrace is before me,
and shame has covered my face
at the words of the taunters and revilers,
at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.
All this has come upon us,
yet we have not forgotten you,
or been false to your covenant.
Our heart has not turned back,
nor have our steps departed from your way,
yet you have broken us in the haunt of jackals,
and covered us with deep darkness.
If we had forgotten the name of our God,
or spread out our hands to a strange god,
would not God discover this?
For he knows the secrets of the heart.
Because of you we are being killed all day long,
and accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord?
Awake, do not cast us off for ever!
Why do you hide your face?
Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?
For we sink down to the dust;
our bodies cling to the ground.
Rise up, come to our help.
Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.
Sometimes waiting just makes us heart sick.
Sometimes it feels like we won’t survive the waiting.
Sometimes we feel like God has forgotten where we live, forgotten what to call us and so just avoids us like an awkward moment.
One of the most important discoveries in the Advent of Jesus, for me, one of the most extraordinary, is that Jesus has arrived to be for people, to meet the needs of others, to show compassion and not dominance, to establish justice for all rather than a throne for himself.
The stories of the gods in the ancient near east mostly envisioned the gods as takers, the ultimate consumers, the apex of the hierarchy – we exist to meet their wants and whims - but Jesus comes into the world to invite us into a different way, a better story, a God who serves and who subverts the practice of the pecking order.
In the Message translation, Eugene Peterson translates Paul’s description of love, in part, with this phrase, “Love…Isn’t always “me first.” Neither God, nor the people of God are about establishing some “honor culture” that elevates any one above any other.
The danger, of course, is that we mistake Jesus coming as a servant to mean that Jesus has come to meet our every want and whim, to empower us to be the ultimate consumers, the divinely sanctioned apex predators, to put US at the top of the hierarchy.
Spoilers, that’s not how Jesus comes to serve people like you and me.
Jesus comes to heal us, to set us free, to pay our spiritual and emotional debts off, to liberate us from systems that pit us against each other and exploit people and value things more than friends.
Jesus came to serve us the way a nurse serves their patients, or a therapist serves their clients, or a teacher serves their students. According to God, service does not diminish us, it makes us more like God, it’s the true path to greatness.
Dr. King said, “Everybody can be great because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.”
The Advent is our invitation to become like Jesus, to come into the lives of others in the same way that Jesus comes into our own lives. As Paul writes to the Philippians, “Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.”
Waiting for the advent of Jesus isn’t a white-knuckled journey to just hold on until Jesus comes back. It’s an invitation to a robust way of living out or living in the story of Jesus until he returns to write the final chapter. We occupy our waiting with opportunities to serve others, to meet the needs we encounter around us, and actively pursue the Jesusy work of kindness and compassion.
We’re all waiting, so we might as well make something of this moment in between.
But here’s the thing, our working won’t get that slow, slow train to pick up any speed. However, spending ourselves on behalf of others, we become rich. Emptying ourselves to make room for others, we become full. Humbling ourselves to meet the needs of others before our own, we become great.
Walter Brueggemann offers us this Advent prayer for the waiting…
In our secret yearnings
we wait for your coming,
and in our grinding despair
we doubt that you will.
And in this privileged place
we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we
and by those who despair more deeply than do we.
Look upon your church and its pastors
in this season of hope
which runs so quickly to fatigue
and this season of yearning
which becomes so easily quarrelsome.
Give us the grace and the impatience
to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,
to the edge of our finger tips.
We do not want our several worlds to end.
Come in your power
and come in your weakness
in any case and make all things new.
Amen.
- THE GRACE AND THE IMPATIENCE TO WAIT – AN ADVENT POEM BY WALTER BRUEGGEMANN