The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Advent 1C
Waiting is not a thing any of us enjoy. None of us are good at waiting. Waiting, waiting … when we wait, we are in an in-between time. We’re waiting for something that isn’t here yet. And while we’re waiting, it is hard to be in the moment now. While we wait, all of our emotions and thoughts bubble up. What-ifs, memories, frustrations, and fears bubble up from the depths. When we are waiting, we try to distract ourselves to make the time pass by faster, but it still drags on.
If we’re in a waiting room at the doctor’s office, we sit and scroll on our phones, peruse outdated magazines, wondering what news will greet us. We might be worried we’ll get a diagnosis with a poor prognosis, or perhaps we’re worried about someone we love hearing that bad news. We might also be waiting, HOPING for a diagnosis that can explain what we’re enduring.
And as we wait, we are split – our brains live in a future of “what-ifs”, things that could happen, what the future might be, yet our bodies live in the present. There are chores to get done at home, messages to respond to, errands to run. Our minds are in the anxious future, and our bodies are in the uncertain present. Not fully in the present, and the future is not yet here.
Year after year, there is the admonition to learn how to wait during Advent. We’re invited to slow down, we’re told. Slow down, enjoy the moment, live in hopeful expectation of Christmas. Most years, it’s an attempt to draw our attention to Advent’s themes of hope and longing for God in the midst of a consumerist swirl of the holiday season. The world around us has been decorating for Christmas for weeks by now, and our email inboxes have been inundated with “Black Friday” sales since the beginning of November. Why suffer through waiting, when festive celebration can be had now? We decorate, we sing, we watch the holiday classics.
But the mean ol’ church and the mean ol’ priest make us do this Advent thing. The readings from the prophets and the apocalyptic messages that start off Advent slap down the festivity. Sure, we’ll eventually move toward readings that lead us up to Christmas, but Advent is not just about waiting for Christmas; it’s about waiting for Jesus’ return.
Note that when I say we’re waiting for Christmas, we’re not waiting for the birth of Jesus; Jesus has already been born, 2024ish years ago in a city called Bethlehem. We’re waiting for the celebration we call Christmas, and in our worship, we’re waiting for Jesus to come back, to set things right.
Because things aren’t right. We live in a world where people suffer and die. We live in a world where war, violence, hatred, greed, exploitation, and oppression exist. We live in a world where people can’t afford a Thanksgiving meal and rely on strangers to feed them. We live in a world where power is valued above justice and mercy.
And Advent brings us to see all these things. Advent makes us wait. Advent makes us look around us with God’s eyes, to see the pain of the world. Advent makes us listen with God’s ears, to hear the groans and cries of a creation begging for healing and hope. Advent makes us wait. Instead of an abundance of festive lights, Advent lights a candle in the midst of the darkness. Advent asks us to look into the darkness of the world around us, to see what so easily goes unseen in the rush of life. Advent asks us to behold all the reasons why God took our human flesh and was born human in Jesus. Look at the world, and let your heart open to the pain and suffering of the world, let your heart open up like God’s heart.
We don’t instinctually do this, of course. We don’t want to see pain because our empathy makes us feel pain, too. The pain of the world seems so impossibly large, and our hearts seem so small they might disintegrate from the pain. This whole universe that God loved into being, this whole universe groans and cries out for its mother who gave birth to it.
And we are part of that universe. We, too, groan and cry out to God, our mother, to hold us, to love us, to tell us that it will all be ok.
We long to have God with us in this waiting room. We want God to hold us in our pain and fear. We want God to hold our hands and bring us back to the present moment when our minds wander anxiously in imagined futures. We want God to give us strength to stand when the doctor comes out to the waiting room to give us the news.
And we want God to bring us news, the Good News.
Good News that, no matter what happens now, the good we do today will bear good fruit and the little light we hold will shine in the darkness to give hope to all who need it.
Good News that, no matter what suffering might be ahead, God’s love endures forever.
Good News that, no matter how messed up things may be or how terrible they may become, Jesus Christ will and already is reconciling and healing and restoring what is broken.
Good News that, no matter what, the Word of God’s love is the everlasting Word that shall make all things a new creation. This Advent, we wait. We wait. We do not know how long we shall wait. We wait, eyes open to the darkness, with flickering and unquenchable light. We wait, holding the hand of God, holding the hand of our neighbor. We wait, and we have hope. Amen.