The Rev. Carol S. Wedell

What are you waiting for?  This is, after all, a season of waiting.  If you haven’t already, you’ll likely be doing your share of it at the mall, the post office or the grocery store.  You may wait on hold for a “customer service representative” to assist you.  You’ll probably wait for the postal carrier to deliver Christmas cards bringing greetings from friends and loved ones.  You may wait for cookies to come out of the oven, or to see family members who live out of town. The children here this morning are undoubtedly waiting for the “big unwrapping” that occurs at Christmas.  I’m guessing that there may even be a few of you who are actually waiting for the whole thing to be over!

But what are you really waiting for?  What are you waiting for in your family?  In our church?  In our community or nation?  In our world?  For what do you yearn, deep in your heart?  Perhaps you are waiting for feuding loved ones to reconcile, or for a dear one to regain health.  Maybe you are waiting for a new job or a new chance or a new relationship or a new attitude.  Some of you may be waiting for the pain of grief to ease. Others of you may simply want to know that you are loved.  Perhaps you are waiting for things simply to calm down or for life to be more manageable.  Certainly we all are waiting for a world where war will cease and where no one will go hungry.  

Advent, the four Sundays prior to Christmas when we prepare for Christ’s coming, is a time of waiting.  And unlike the secular world around us, which plunges headlong into a consumer frenzy, Advent offers us the opportunity to acknowledge those deeper yearnings that stand in such stark contrast to the surface cheer and festivities.  At the beginning of a new church year, in the midst of sometimes frantically busy lives, we pause.  We take a deep breath.  And we wait for God’s coming among us. 

It’s probably worth a reminder that at Advent we don’t simply look back with nostalgia to the birth of a baby in Bethlehem.  We also look forward to the time when Christ will come again. (Which is why this first Sunday in Advent, our lectionary texts point to what is often called, “the second coming.”)  In a way, we stand in the middle – remembering Jesus’ birth, but also looking forward to the time when Christ will reign in fullness. 

So we wait.  We wait for things to be different, better.  In that waiting, that yearning, we acknowledge that the world is not as it should be.  Against that backdrop, our readings this morning begin to make a bit more sense. 

The prophet Jeremiah had witnessed the unfaithfulness of the people and the king.  Babylon had laid siege to Jerusalem, with its destruction in sight.  The world as he knew it was falling apart.  Jeremiah himself had been thrown into prison.  To put it mildly, things were not going well. 

In our gospel lesson from Luke, Jesus, just prior to his own passion, predicts terrible times – distress among the nations, natural disaster, suffering and persecution.  It’s important to note, however, that the gospel of Luke was written after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, a time of enormous turmoil and uncertainty.  So the people for whom Luke wrote already had personal experience with suffering.  They knew full well that the world wasn’t as God intended for it to be. 

Both readings, then, are set in a context where the darkness of the world was readily apparent.  And it is precisely in the midst of that darkness, that the light of hope emerges.  Jeremiah declares, “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made….a righteous Branch will spring up…and he shall execute justice and righteousness…Jerusalem will live in safety.”   In Luke we read, “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” 

Just when things look to be their worst, just when the news seems only to be bad, the promise of hope appears. In Advent, we wait in hope for God’s coming.  But how?  How do we wait faithfully? 

To prepare for the coming of God into our lives and world, we first wait by acknowledging the truth of our situation, by naming the darkness, by admitting that all is not right with the world.  For many of you this will be personal and immediate.  You don’t need me to spell out the places of sorrow and anxiety that fill your lives.  Health concerns, both mental and physical, grief, financial pressures, addiction, and troubled relationships weigh upon too many of us.  

For others of you, whose personal lives are full and joyful, it only takes a glance at the paper or the news on TV to remind us that this world is a far cry from what God would have it be.  Death tolls from Iraq, pictures of destruction in the Middle East, or even stories of shoppers trampling one another in search of a bargain are graphic reminders that all is not well. 

To us, then, who live in a far from perfect world, who know both personal pain and corporate anxiety, come words of confidence and hope:  Yes, bad things happen.  Pain is real.  Earthquakes and terrorism and wars and cancer all occur. But they are never the final word.   What we are offered in Scripture is the word of promise:  God is faithful and will not forget us. 

The kind of hope we are shown in Scripture is not the kind of “too cheerful” optimism that we are tempted to pass off as hope, a kind of “feel good” story about the triumph of the human spirit.  Such stories may warm our hearts for a while, they may pacify our anxiety momentarily, but ultimately, stories that rely on our own ability to transform a situation will leave us wanting.  

The hope upon which our waiting is based during Advent is a hope based on God – not ourselves.  Our hope rests in the promise of God, who promises against a backdrop of despair that there is a future of justice and righteousness, of goodness and peace.  As Christians, we have seen glimpses of that future, of that kingdom in the One who was born in Bethlehem, who was crucified and risen, God who is with us now and who promises to go forward with us into the future.  

As Sally Brown has written, “Despite the undeniably massive and dismal failures of compassion and courage with which human history is littered, despite hurricane and flood, present sorrow and fears about the future, Advent preaching proclaims:  ‘Fear not, your God comes to you.’  In Advent, we remember how God’s promise was handed over to us in the flesh-and-blood babe of the manger, from a source entirely outside and beyond us.” (Journal for Preachers, Advent 2006, p. 14).  In other words, our hope lies not with ourselves, but with God who promises to be with us always. 

Or as James F. Kay has put it , “The Gospel is neither a cocoon that insulates us from the sufferings of this present age nor a pair of ear plugs that shuts out the groaning of creation… The Gospel is Good News, not because it predicts a future based on our good behavior or other present trends; the Gospel is good News because it promises a future based on God’s faithfulness in Jesus Christ.”  (Seasons of Grace, p. 7) 

One pastor wrote of how the light of God’s presence pierced the darkness of Advent for her several years ago.  She writes, “My mother died on December 11 and I flew to Seattle for the funeral, returning home a week later.  There was a huge stack of mail brought into the house by our dog sitter on the dining room table.  Obviously  many Christmas cards.  So I began opening them.  The images were familiar:  the star of Bethlehem.  The light of a candle.  The lights on Christmas trees.  Light pouring from a stable.  The next card took me by surprise.  It was a sympathy card!  Then a few more, mixed in with the Christmas cards.  At first I separated them into two piles.  Christmas here, sympathy there.  The message inside the next sympathy card was this:  ‘Death is not the extinguishing of the light; it is putting out the lamp because the Dawn has come!’  Suddenly all the cards merged in my mind.  ‘The Light has come!’  Impulsively, I merged the piles and said to my husband, reading cards beside me, ‘They all say the same thing.’” (Sermonshop 12/15/96 Advent Note 121 by Sam and Carol Hosler, on www.ecunet.org, Dec. 14, 1996). 

We too wait for that same miracle, that same hope.  We wait for the light of that first Advent candle to cut through the darkness and remind us that God’s promise is sure:  we are not alone. 

In the meantime, we live in a world that needs that kind of hope, that needs more than a band-aid.  As followers of Christ, we are hope-bearers, carrying the light that announces that God intends to make the world right.  May that light permeate our lives – and may we dare to share it.