The Waiting

How long?

Out of all the spiritual practices that form us, I find the Waiting to be the most challenging.

And here we are in the season of Waiting or Advent, as we usually call it, that always reminds me of a doctor pushing on tender places and asking, “Does this hurt?”

When I talk to younger followers of Jesus today and the “good, old days” come up, it’s hard for me to adequately describe the anticipation we were all feeling out of the 70’s for the second Advent of Jesus. We were sure that Jesus’ return was imminent, all the signs were there. Whether you were Amillenial or Pre or Post, the vibe was strong – Jesus (or the anti-Christ) would be here soon.

That conviction drove a lot of things we did back then.

It provided enough energy to keep a lot of things going.

The certainty created an urgency with which we worked, attended prayer meetings, held conferences, did evangelism and formed movements.

It was not so great fuel for forming infrastructure or sustainable practices.

Even into the early 2000s you could still feel the momentum from the Jesus People movement expressed in what we called renewal, church planting and the proliferation of mega-churches and movements like Promise Keepers.

There’s a proverb that says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.” And I’ve lived a big part of my life believing I was on the verge of a dream being fulfilled. But these days, I feel more like Simeon or Anna, sitting, watching, waiting for the world to change.

In this Advent season I am experiencing the waiting more acutely than ever. Fresh grief is part of this ache I feel. Part of it is knowing the year ahead is a federal election year and anxiety rushes in when I think about how the evangelical church will behave. But a lot of it comes from feeling like someone has gamed the bend in the arc of the moral universe and might has become right and mercy is for losers.

We have these words that are a part of our Christian tradition – like, “turn the other cheek” and “vengeance is mine, says God” and “we wrestle not against flesh and blood.” We have those words but when we feel threatened or someone does evil, my evangelical family seems to be the first in line looking to wrestle with flesh and blood, to destroy people and to repay evil with evil.

It's like we have passages of Scripture that are set aside as needed while we hold other passages as sacrosanct.

We have words that are a part of our Christian tradition – like, ““You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave.” And then we set those aside and draw up org charts and promote a hierarchy in the Church. We seek to nuance what is plain for the sake of having power over others because we can’t imagine a different kind of world.

We have other words that are a part of our Christian tradition – like, “All” and “World” and “Saints” and “Brothers” used to describe people that we wouldn’t think of as either. We’ve become so stingy with our orthodoxy, so narrow with the Way, so discriminating over who is in and who is out. Magically, our orthodoxy always includes those who are just like us. We traded the humility of considering others better than ourselves for exclusivity and hubris.

Try telling a Christian leader that they are sinning by acting like Lords in a hierarchy Jesus rejected. Try telling faithful evangelicals that they have Palestinian brothers and sisters we ought to protect. Try explaining to serious Christians that following Jesus doesn’t require people to believe everything the same way they do.

But nevertheless, I stay in the Temple and I wait with Simeon and Anna. I sit under the weight of waiting. I watch. I lament. I embrace a holy depression; I grieve that which Scripture teaches us grieves the heart of God. I choose to receive this Waiting as necessary to the formation of Christ in me.