Best Way to Wait—Psa. 80: 1-3, 17-19; Mark 13: 24-37
A good friend tells me of a story from when he was in Middle School. He called his mom one after noon and asked where she was. She had an old-school cell phone in one hand and a bunch of bags from her trip to Wal-Mart in the other. She pointedly said, “I just got home from Wal-Mart. Don’t ask for anything that wasn’t on the list. What do you want?” “Mom…” he replied, and you could hear the eye roll in his voice. “What?” she replied, with even more annoyance in her voice. “Mom, I went with you. I’m still here,” he said. After shouting a few choice words, she jumped back in the car and drove 22 minutes back to Wal-Mart where she had left him waiting in the electronics section while she shopped.
One of the hardest things in life is to wait. Whether it’s a line at the grocery, an oil change, food, or for God to speak to us, waiting is hard. A friend of mine has a bumper sticker that says, “My cup runneth over and my patience weareth thin.” We all live a little bit like that. But many times, life and faith call on us to wait for God to do the next thing in life. Our scriptures for today tell us ways we can wait with purpose.
The first is to wait with resolve. The Psalm says, “Show us your mighty power. Come to rescue us!” Verse 19 calls on God to turn us back to God and for God’s face to shine down upon us to save us. Resolve is defined as having strong determination. For us that determination is knowing that God shine grace upon and save us in our time of trial. The whole of this Psalm is a calling for God to hear us in the time of trial, to rescue and save us from the suffering that sometimes comes home to dwell with us.
And the sign for us that God will do this is the very season we are in—Advent. Every year we spend this time reflecting on how God sent a savior in the form of Jesus. His work was to reconcile all of humanity to the God we were separated from because we lust after worldly power instead of engaging in our relationship to God. But we also use this time to look forward to Christ’s return. Part of that waiting is the resolve to make the best of our time here on earth. I think sometimes churches can get so focused on Christ coming back that they forget the span of time we have here to make a difference.
Jesus didn’t sit on a chair and wait three years for the cross to come. He went out and taught, healed, showed loved, upended wrong and oppressive ways of living in faith. There was a resolve to his ministry before the end came. And that determination and resolve went right to the cross where he offered comfort to his mother and grace to a thief.
And that resolve in our waiting for Christ should lead us to wait with a mission or sense of purpose in this world. In the Gospel, Jesus tells of a man who went on a long trip and left his servants in charge. He gave them each careful instructions and a task to do. Then he says to “keep watch.” One of my favorite Christmas movies is The Bishop’s Wife. In it, a bishop prays for help building a cathedral. An angel, played by Carey Grant, responds to his prayer. But in the end, it is not the cathedral that is important, it’s the spiritual guidance of the bishop and his family (and congregation) who seem to have lost the way and forgotten what was most important in faith.
That movie reminds us that there is a purpose in life. The bishop thought it was to build a grand cathedral, but in the end, it is charity which prevails. We are called to wait with mission, and like each of those servants in the Gospel lesson, the owner of the house has left us tasks until the day the owner returns. It’s easy to grow weary. Life is often hard, and Jesus seems to be taking his sweet time. I often like to say that since Jesus isn’t here right now, it’s our mission to represent Jesus to others. Jesus came to reconcile us so that we might live as Jesus’s ambassadors in this world.
A friend of mine got in some trouble during his second year of college. He was a music major, and he was required to take a year off school. It was a long, hard year of waiting. It was a year in which he could have sat down, given up, and done nothing, just simply counting down the days until he returned. But instead, he made his practice, his self-growth, his rebuilding of himself as a mission. He practiced his music daily. He got a job and saved money. He got rid of the friends who led him into bad habits, and he made quite the powerful return to school eventually becoming quite successful.
Waiting is not a game of sitting. Waiting is a time of opportunity to grow in our relationship and expand our mission from God. We can wait mindlessly, or we can wait missionally. If we wait missionally, we will find a sense of hope in those waiting periods because they are done with purpose, and not just counting the minutes of pain and drudgery.
And that brings us to the last way we are to wait. We must wait with anticipation. In Mark, Jesus tells a story of a fig tree. When you see the leaves sprouting and the buds on the branches, you know summer is near. Likewise, Jesus says, after anguish, and after the signs, everyone will see the Son of Man returning. His message is clear, we should be anticipating this time. The trees and living things give us clear signs of when summer is coming.
If you are tired of the cold and dark of winter, those buds and sprouting leaves can be a very hopeful sign. The same is true in life. We must wait with anticipation, which for us is hope. Every war, every natural disaster, every trial and tribulation are not going to be some miraculous signs. But it is an opportunity for us to look for hope in the darkness. Waiting can be an anxious and difficult place. If you have a small child and have to wait for any period of time, you will likely encounter crying and a rambunctious child. Adults don’t really fare better.
All of these things today, the ways to wait, each one of them points to hope. In resolve, in mission, in anticipation, we turn ourselves and call the world to look towards hope—for a better practice of faith, for a better tomorrow, for a world that better reflects the love and grace of Jesus. My friend was stuck in Wal-Mart waiting for his mom. He waited with resolve—every sample game would be played. He waited with mission—at least three new games were ready for selection, and he waited with anticipation—his mom would feel so bad for leaving him, she’d buy his silence with those three games. All of those pointed to hope for him.
A friend of mine was meeting me for dinner the other day. He got caught in traffic. His sister had showed up unexpectedly. And he’s just naturally kind of late to everything. But this time, he was running almost an hour late. And to say I waited patiently would be a complete lie. But the moment I got a “5 min away” text, all of that anxiety flooded away to be replaced by hope. I wouldn’t get an “Oops. Dinner for one.”
Where are the places we find ourselves struggling to wait for God in our lives? Does our resolve falter? Have we struggled with finding a purpose or mission? Is our anticipation gone, and our candle burned out? Advent is a time to build and repair these struggles and broken places. The miracle of Christmas is about a Savior who came to live, “God and sinner reconciled.” I pray that as we journey to the manger, to see the hope of all humankind, we can find that same blessed, reassuring hope as we work and wait in this life.
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