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In the late 1960s in downtown
Irwin—near where my first church appointment was located—there
was a beloved family physician. She was not our doctor, but
she was the physician for a large segment of that community.
She ran a most interesting practice. She had no assistants, no
office staff, but she was very faithful to all who came to
her. Her office hours were from 9:00 a.m. to “whenever,”
almost every day of the week. She was always there until the
last patient was seen. The rub was that there were no
appointments. You just came. And you waited. Sometimes you
waited all day. But you waited, knowing that eventually you
would be seen. Sometimes she might be on a quick hospital run.
Sometimes she would be out at an in-home emergency. But she
would be back, and you would be seen.
People loved her and trusted
her. So they waited in her office without complaint. Her
office is the most vivid real example of a true waiting room
that I can remember.
I doubt very seriously that her
plan would work today. Nobody likes to wait anymore. Most of
the doctors that I see have very precise appointment times.
“We’ll see you at 10:10 a.m.” “We’ll see you at 3:17 p.m. on
Tuesday.” The fact is, we don’t like to wait very much.
Some medical treatment waiting
is still unavoidable. You walk into an office that has a row
of examination rooms. You are invited into one of those rooms.
You are instructed to strip down and put on a piece of crinkly
paper. You listen to muffled sounds coming from other
rooms—wondering if your door will be the next one the doctor
opens.
A physician we knew in the North
Hills had an engraved plaque in his office that read as
follows: “Come in, take off all your clothes, sit down. I’ll
be with you in a moment.”
One of my favorite stories
about doctors’ offices is about a man who came to see a doctor
because he had an earache that wouldn’t quit. The nurse in
that particular office had had a rough day. She took him to
one of the rooms and said, “Take off all your clothes, cover
up with this piece of paper and lie on that pallet over
there.” The man protested, “I just have an earache.” Replied
the nurse, “Look, if you want to see the doctor you’ll do
exactly as I say.” So he did.
On the other side of the room
was another man who had arrived earlier, also lying under a
piece of paper. The first man looked over and said, “I don’t
know why I had to go through all of this. I just came in for
an earache.” Replied the second man, “You think you’ve
had a rough day? I just came in to read the water meter!”
We don’t much like to wait. At
the grocery store I choose the self-checkout line, much to my
wife’s chagrin. It may not really be faster, but somehow it
feels faster. At the bank I use the drive-through window
almost 100% of the time. I almost never have to wait, even
when cars are in the other lines. The last time I was inside
the bank was the day the machine ate my MAC card. I ended up
having to “wait” for the manager to arrive.
We don’t much like to wait.
We’ve gone to faster and faster computers because we don’t
like to wait. We’ve gone from dial-up Internet connections to
LAN and TPC connections to Broadband connections. Each upgrade
promises to reduce the wait time.
We don’t much like to wait.
Occasionally I am asked at a wedding rehearsal, “How long will
the wedding last tomorrow?” My first answer is always, “It
depends upon how long I preach.” A worried frown comes across
the person’s face. Then I say, “The wedding will last about 30
minutes.” There is a broad smile of relief. I remember reading
a story about a bride and groom standing at the altar to say
their wedding vows. The bride looked over and saw a set of
golf clubs standing beside her husband-to-be. “Why in the
world do you have those there?” she said. He responded, “Look,
this won’t take all afternoon, will it?”
We don’t much like to wait.
Children don’t like to wait till Christmas morning to open
their gifts. Our high school seniors are anxiously waiting
right now for college acceptance letters to arrive in the
mail.
We don’t much like waiting time,
or waiting rooms. But Advent is a season of waiting. Advent is
about creating a waiting room in your heart. In a real sense,
then, Advent goes against the grain of the times. The Psalmist
says in our text for today, “My soul waits for the Lord.”
Another Psalm writer says, “For God alone my soul waits in
silence.” The prophet Isaiah writes, “They who wait for the
Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with
wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall
walk and not faint.”
But we’re not sure that’s good
advice. We’re not sure that waiting is good advice.
Aren’t we supposed to be doing for the Kingdom?
“Waiting” sounds a bit dull or out of date, or out of style.
Yet waiting is one of the
positive visions of Scripture. Luke begins his narrative
gospel by telling us about six people who waited. The first
were Elizabeth and Zechariah, the parents of John the Baptist.
They had no idea what God was doing, but they knew God was up
to something. Zechariah was actually afflicted so that he
could not speak during the duration of Elizabeth’s pregnancy
until John was born.
The next two people who waited
were Mary and Joseph. They knew that God was doing something
through Mary, but they weren’t quite sure what. And so they
waited.
The fifth person who waited was
an old man named Simeon. Luke says he waited faithfully at the
temple every day for the coming of Messiah. And the sixth
person was a woman named Anna. Luke says she was married for
seven years and widowed for eighty-five years. (How old do you
suppose she was?) Anna spent a portion of each day fasting and
praying in the temple, waiting for God to arrive.
These images may be ancient, but
they are metaphors for a very positive way of life. We are
deeper, richer people when we learn to wait.
In the very season when we need
to explore the discipline of waiting, life speeds up. We add
so much. We have cards to write, gifts to wrap, food to
prepare. We attend breakfasts with Santa for our children and
office parties for ourselves. We have multiple social
engagements—perhaps more than at any other time of the year.
All of this is not so bad except that these events crowd out
the waiting portions of life.
What gets left out are the
ingredients of a waiting discipline. We omit daily devotions
or moments of waiting in prayer before God. We skip our
Covenant Discipleship groups or CBS groups or other small
group meetings. Sunday School classes in many churches are
temporarily disbanded during the latter part of December.
Reading and reflection time is almost non-existent. Most of my
religious journals, as well as my weekly newsmagazines have
pretty much gone unread for the past two weeks.
So what does this waiting
finally mean? What does it mean for us? What does waiting mean
for postmodern people in 2002?
Note that it is not
waiting for Jesus to be born. That has already taken place.
The nativity of Jesus is already accomplished. A couple of
years ago one of our Sunday School children came out of the
class the Sunday before Christmas. His parents asked him what
he had learned today in the lesson. His reply was stellar.
“Oh, she’s still on the donkey,” he said. She’s not
still on the donkey. The nativity of Jesus is already
accomplished.
And this is not about waiting
for Jesus to come again. Yes, that’s some part of the message.
But frankly, it’s a fairly confusing part of the message and
subject to a lot of speculation, especially in light of the
very popular “Left Behind” books.
Advent for you and me has a
single theme. Build a waiting room in your heart. Build an
interior waiting room where Jesus can enter, where Jesus can
reside, where Jesus can fashion and shape you.
That’s where the real message is
for our time. Simone Weil, a Jewish writer, once said,
“Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the
spiritual life.” In these weeks we create a waiting room for
the promises of God.
AS INDIVIDUALS
Partly, we wait as individuals.
Most of you have come here today because you have sensed the
presence of God in your life. You have experienced something
of the advent of God along the way. Perhaps it has not been so
much for yourself as it has for other people you know. You
know folks who have had this experience and they’ve shared it
with you. You have come because of some very precious and
special moments of divine revelation.
Advent is the season of
expectation and hope that it will happen again. God will break
gloriously into your life once more. God will be alongside
you, with you, and within you.
So you open up a waiting room.
This is not the crowded inn of Bethlehem, but a place well
prepared and ready. This is a place where you expect new and
confirming moments.
Please note that waiting is an
active experience. Waiting is not passive. During my seminary
years I learned about the listening process in doing
counseling with individuals. But after I graduated from
seminary I learned about something called “active listening.”
Active listening is involved listening. It means doing
something. It means being a part of the listening process in a
highly energetic way.
Waiting is not a passive
experience. It is an active experience. And waiting does not
always have to be done in quietness or meditation. Perhaps one
of the unique parts of the Christian life is that waiting can
be done in the midst of living your daily life. That’s the
special quality of the construction of this waiting room.
If life is going well, you wait
for new challenges and responsibilities. If life is broken or
breaking apart, you wait for healing, wholeness.
The key is not to wait too long.
Don’t wait too long to build that waiting room in your heart.
I read a story about a woman who called an insurance agent and
said, “I want you to insure my house.” The agent replied,
“I’ll have to come and see the house first.” Responded the
woman, “You’d better hurry. It’s on fire.” There is a tendency
to wait too long to build the waiting room.
IN COMMUNITY
But we also wait in community.
Two of the texts for today are plural. “OUR soul waits
for the Lord.” And from Isaiah, “THEY who wait upon the
Lord shall renew THEIR strength. THEY shall
mount up with wings as eagles. THEY shall run and not
be weary.” Our faith tradition understands and celebrates the
power of community. Most of the Advent texts in the Old
Testament are waiting texts. It is in community that
much of the richness of God is revealed.
This has been so true for me
over the years. This church in particular has helped me to
build a waiting room in my heart year after year.
The Bible is a community book.
We are gathered here as a community. This sanctuary is one of
God’s beautiful waiting rooms. In the 11:00 hour this morning
the Youth Center will become a marvelous waiting room for our
youth as they participate in a monthly Youth Rally.
I offer you a simple Advent
challenge today: let your heart be molded into a wonderful
waiting room. There is no greater strength or stability of
soul than a well-constructed waiting room of the heart. |
