November 27, 2011
We’ve made it through another Black Friday with only a few incidents of pepper spraying and gunshots. Andy Borowitz, in his satirical news briefs, noted that “Egyptians risk their lives for a new government” and that “Americans bravely do the same for new flat screens.” Borowitz’s cup is half full. “We have been looking for evidence that the economy is on the mend,” he quotes a bogus profession of economics from the University of Minnesota. “When people resort to homicide to buy a Blu-ray player, that is very, very good news indeed.”[1] Consumer confidence is up! I told you Borowitz’s cup is half full…
We’re not good at waiting. Some stores can’t even wait for the traditional shopping season to begin on the day after Thanksgiving, so they encroached on Thanksgiving, the one holiday they’ve not been able to fully commercialize (they’ve left that to the NFL). Once again we fall for the old bait and switch trick, rushing in to grab one of the few carrots that are dangling. I know; I’m cynical. But seriously, we don’t like to wait. We see it as wasting time that could be used more productively. Or we don’t have patience and we want what we want now and are not willing to wait a little longer. Advertisers attempt to create the sense of urgency, of an immediate need. Perhaps fearing that if we wait a bit before satisfying our desires, we may no longer desire whatever it was that we felt we so desperately needed. They want us to buy on impulse, before we consider whether or not it’s something we need or can afford!
We’re not good at waiting, but waiting at the core of the gospel! The Jews waited over a millennium for a Messiah and we, as Christians, have waited nearly two millennia for his return. Listen to what Sue Monk Kidd, in her book When the Heart Waits, says: “When you’re waiting, you’re not doing nothing. You’re doing the most important something there is. You’re allowing your soul to grow up. If you can’t be still and wait, you can’t become what God created you to be.”[2]
I plan to talk a lot about waiting during the four Sundays of Advent this year. It is not something that I am particularly good at, so maybe we will learn together. My passage for today’s message will come from the 37th Psalm, reading verses 3-11.
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“Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him,” the Psalmist proclaims… Be still and wait…
There are two times in our lives that we wait… As children and again when we are in our evening years. During both periods of time, we have to depend on the help of others; we’re limited in what we can do for ourselves which is primarily why we have to wait… But in the decades between childhood and our later years, we rush around and have little time for waiting. And the danger is that we will also have little time for God.
Shortly after moving here, Wendy Kimble lent me a book that I think all Michiganians (or Michiganders or whatever it is we’re called) should read. It’s Bruce Catton’s Waiting for the Morning Train, a book about his childhood in Benzonia, in the Upper Lower Peninsula, at the opening of the 20th Century, at a time when timber was more important to our economy than automobiles. Catton’s memoir is a delight to read. He writes:
Early youth is a baffling time… Living in it is like waiting in a junction town for the morning limited; the junction may be interesting but some day you will have to leave it and you do not know where the limited will take you… In this respect early youth is exactly like old age; it is a time of waiting before a big trip to an unknown destination. The chief difference is that youth waits for the morning limited and age waits for the night train.[3]
Waiting on a train or waiting for a plane is something we all must do. But unless we’re the engineer or the pilot, there’s not much we can do about such waiting… You can’t board until the train or the plane arrives and then you’re at the mercy of pilot or the engineer… And lest we think they’re in charge, they’re at the mercy of the weather and the guys in the control towers and the conditions of the track or runway… Perhaps we don’t like waiting because we have no control and that’s precisely why God has his people wait so often and for so long. For in waiting, we realize that we’re not in control, that we’re not God and that we’re dependent on something beyond ourselves. Waiting allows God to be God and for us to be his children.
Throughout the 37th Psalm, we’re encouraged to wait and to have patience. The Psalm is an acrostic poem, which means that each line begins with the next letter in the alphabet. However, this structure is lost in English, as the Hebrew alphabet doesn’t exactly match ours. Furthermore, in order to create such a Psalm, there is a fair amount of repetition.[4] Much of the Psalm addresses the apparent success of the wicked. The Psalm begins with the call not to fret over the gains of the wicked or be envious of wrongdoers. The righteous look at the wicked and their ill-gotten wealth and wonder what’s up with that. Why do those who mock God prosper and those who are faithful go without? “Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit,” we’re told in Proverbs 10:2. But when you’re in the position of those whom the Psalmists addresses, such Proverbs sounds like a cliché.
The Psalmist attempts to get his audience to focus on doing what is right and good and noble and not worry about others. It is an important lesson for those of us who strive to follow the ways of God. We’re to be a bit strange, at least when you compare us to the rest of the world. We’re to strive to do right, regardless, even if it goes against our short-term interest. And we’re to be hopeful people, even when things are bleak, because we know that Jesus Christ is our Lord, that he is all that matters. I was reading an Advent devotion yesterday by J. B. Phillips and came across this quote:
When, we may well ask, have Christians been promised physical security? In the early Church it is evident that they did not even expect it! Their security, their true life, was rooted in God; and neither the daily insecurities of the decaying Roman Empire, nor the organized persecution which followed later, could affect their basic confidence."[5]
Neither wealth nor security are we promised as followers of Jesus, at least not in this world. Instead, we’re to store up treasures in heaven.[6] We’re to follow Jesus as the disciples did because we know there is not another one in whom we can place our trust. [7] This Psalm reminds us that we’re to do what is right. Instead of looking around and comparing ourselves to our neighbors and feeling sorry, we’re to focus on the eternal. There is much in this world that is unjust, and when we can we are to strive to work to change that, but in the end, we’re to remember that in the fullness of time, God will make all things right.
Advent is a season of living in tension, of living in the meantime. Advent reminds us that our lives are lived out between two great events in human history. The first is Jesus’ coming as a child in Bethlehem, which we celebrate at the end of the season. The other event has yet to occur, that is Jesus’ return to earth, at a time when he will come as we recite in the Apostles’ Creed, “to judge the quick and the dead.” It is between these two events that we wait, but we don’t do so passively. We wait, opening ourselves up to be transformed by a loving God. We wait, doing God’s work in the meantime. We wait, knowing that we’re not the answer, that we can’t make all things right, but trusting that God has all things under control.
John Ortberg, a Presbyterian Pastor at Menlo Park in California and the author of many of our Bible Studies has said that “Biblically, waiting is not just something we do until we get what we want. Waiting is part of the process of becoming what God wants us to be.” We’re not to wait like a child who longs to receive a special toy under the Christmas tree. Instead, we wait humbly, knowing that what God has in store for us will be so much better than what could do ourselves.
Yet waiting is so very hard. It seems as if everything in life is instant. We used to have to wait for the newspaper or the 6 o’clock news, but now we have 24 hour news channels and the internet. We used to have to wait for see our photos taken at Christmas, which brought us joy in the darkness of January, but these days we have instant photos that we can also share around the world, instantly. Heck, we even have instant noodles and instant grits. Everything, it seems, can be available at our fingertips in an instant if we just have the cash (or available credit)… But we run into a problem if we think we can have “instant spirituality.” God doesn’t work on our timetable and he requires us to develop patience and as we wait and trust, God changes us in ways we can never change ourselves.
As I’ve said, waiting is at the heart of the gospel. Waiting and patience are skills we all need to foster. The next time you find yourself having to wait (and you’ll get plenty of opportunities during this season, don’t think about it as wasted time. Instead, offer up a little prayer to the Lord, opening your heart to transformation.
“For those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land…” Amen.
©2011 Jeff Garrison and First Presbyterian Church, Hastings, MI
[1] Andy Borowitz, “Black Friday,” (November 25, 2011)
[2] Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits (New York: HarperCollins, 1990), 22.
[3] Bruce Catton, Waiting for the Morning Train: An American Boyhood (Detroit: Great Lake Books, 1972), 39.
[4] James L. Mays, Psalms: Interpretation, A Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1994), 159.
[5] J. B. Phillips, "The Danger of Advent" in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press, 2001), 19.
[6] Matthew 6:19-21.
[7] John 6:68.
