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Foundry United Rev. |
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“Until Christ Comes…Watch” Sunday, December 2,
2007 |
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Psalm 130 Rev. |
The
Christian year is a play and the first act is Advent. The theme of Advent is waiting.
And
waiting itself, which is a very concrete experience, is about more than
waiting. Waiting is a universal human experience but it is also a symbol – a
symbol of our finitude, the limitations with which we all must live. It is a
consequence and symbol of our lack of control. We are not fully in control. There are
things we can not make happen when we want them to happen. There are things
we can not make happen at all. We
have to wait for them. We
plant a seed in the ground, and there are lots of things we can do to create
good conditions for the seed to grow and to keep ourselves busy –water, hoe,
mulch, fertilize – but we still mostly need to wait. It is a process that we
are not fully in control of. At best, we are cooperating with some other
forces and powers. What do
we do while we are waiting? This is the question raised by Act One “Advent”
in the drama of the Christian year. What do we do while we are waiting? Which
is also to ask the question, how do we handle the reality that we are not
fully in control of our own fate, our own future, our own welfare, and – by
God – not even our own existence. What do
we do until Christ comes? Until the future comes? Until fulfillment comes? Until the end
comes? What do we do with those places and situations in our lives where we
are not finally in control? They are scary places for many of us, I think.
Vulnerable places. What do
we do while we are waiting? What do we do with the places in our lives where
we can not make what we want to have happen happen through the force of our
own efforts and willpower? One of
the traditional Christian answers to the question of what we do during Advent
is to watch. It is an answer worth taking a look at again. Watch
and pray, Jesus tells his disciples more than once (Mt. 26: 41; Mark 13: 33;
Mark 14: 38; Luke 21: 36) Stay alert, as the New Revised Version translates
it. Pay attention. One of
the things we do while we are waiting is to watch. One of the things we do in
those places and dimensions of our lives where we are not fully or finally in
control is to watch. Stay alert. Pay attention. We do
this because life…or the universe…or God has a way of sometimes having
something else in mind other than what we are waiting for. Theologically
this is the concept of the freedom of God. Craig Barnes has a book entitled When God Interrupts: Finding New Life
Through Unwanted Change. He writes:
“Since the days of the exodus, one of the hardest things for God’s people to
accept is that they have a God whose ways are not their ways. For this reason
the Hebrews were once tempted to have a god of wood and stone that would be predictable
and familiar. People today turn to gods of power and wealth for the same
reason, because we understand these idols. [Work hard and you will succeed.]
People,” Barnes writes, “who live without a mysterious Savior that they
cannot always understand, much less control, live without any sense of awe or
wonder to their lives. Nothing amazes or astonishes or overwhelms them,
because their world is too small for God to fit into.”[i] The
reason we have to wait, the reason we are not fully in control of our lives
and world, is because something greater and bolder and more wonderful is
happening here than we could imagine, plan, or engineer. Most of the time the most amazing parts of
life are not the things we’ve planned for but the things life throws at us. So
while you are waiting, watch. Because the most consuming and powerful
experiences of your life are likely not to be what you are waiting for but
what life throws at you while you are waiting. The growing edge of our lives
is not the stuff we are managing and in control of but the places where we
are not in control. I like
Barnes’ title – Finding New Life
through Unwanted Change. I told you about my friend whose life went
through radical change beyond his control is a few months time. He felt as if
his world was falling apart. He was seeing a therapist. He told me that the
most helpful thing the therapist suggested to him was that, when something
happened, instead of saying to himself, “Isn’t this awful,” he should say to
himself, “Isn’t this interesting. I wonder how this will turn out?” While
you are waiting, watch, stay alert, pay attention, because the richest and
most profound parts of life may be what happens to us and not what we work
for or ask for or hope for. The
Psalmist in Psalm 130 adds another dimension to this. He begins the Psalm, by
praying “Out of the depth I cry to you, O Lord.” The Latin is “De
profoundus.” From the profound places of my life, I cry out to you O Lord. Then he
writes, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits for the Lord…more than those who
watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.” In the
midst of whatever profound sadness or grief the Psalmist is in, he waits, and
the waiting is hard and long and seems to take forever, but he waits with
confidence that the Lord, like the morning, will come. The big
struggle of waiting, of not being fully or finally in control, is the
struggle of trust. Is life, with all its ups and downs and fears and
surprises, finally good? Is the universe an accident, a fluke of some kind, a
joke maybe, or is it the work of a caring and benevolent divinity? Is
humanity the product of the survival of the fittest in an eat-or-be-eaten
world or are we made in the image of a good God? After the darkest night,
will morning eventually come? To
watch for the morning in the profoundest night, is an act of trust…the
essential act of faith. It is what we are invited and called to do as a
people of faith. It is what we are invited and called to share with all those
around us in despair. While
we wait, in those places where we are not in control of our fate, our future,
our own existence, on the other side of the night is the morning. Watch for
it. www.foundryumc.org |
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