Waiting Expectantly

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday December 7, 2008, the 2nd Sunday in Advent.

Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

I have a problem when reading this lesson, and I wonder if you don’t share the same problem. When I read it, I immediately go to verse nine, “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” I mean I immediately go there. There is precedent for this; the Greek word for “immediately” is found fifty-one times in the New Testament. Mark’s gospel uses it forty-one of those times. In Mark’s gospel, so much happens immediately that it’s hard for us not to do the same thing.

It’s also not so uncommon because we know what comes next. We know that immediately after we meet John, Jesus appears. Of course we jump to what’s next; we do it because we know what comes next. No waiting, just go ahead.

As for me, I know what comes next so I don’t particularly want to wait. Do you? I’ve used the “royal we” a few times and it may just be me and the mouse in my pocket, but I don’t think so. There is evidence to show it’s more than just me.

Waiting is something we don’t do well as a culture. Wal-Mart opened the Christmas Store on November 1st, All Saint’s Day, the moment after Halloween. While kids were smashing pumpkins and tee-peeing houses, the Wally-World Elves were busy hiding the garden center for two months. Sure enough, on Boxing Day, December 26th, the garden stuff will begin to come out again. Say what you will, that’s amazing. Time waits for no man, and neither does Wal-Mart.

Advent is coming, the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Still, there is always a big hurry to celebrate Christmas, and Advent is overwhelmed by a wave of Christmas music and Christmas mercantile. Gregg Easterbrook, who writes a column for ESPN.com, has been warning readers about “Christmas Creep” for years. This year, his readers report several examples of Christmas merchandise on shelves in a column dated September 1, 2008.[1] Yes, Christmas stuff was hitting the shelves in Sam’s Club and Hobby Lobby in late August. Advent is coming, but when Christmas starts before Labor Day, it doesn’t stand much of a chance.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Celebrating Advent means being able to wait. Waiting however is an art that our impatient age has forgotten…We must wait for the greatest, most profound, most gentle things in the world; nothing happens in a rush, but only according to divine laws of germination and growth and becoming.”[2]

Last week, the seed was planted. This week, John the Baptist tends the soil with the waters of baptism. This watering will lead to germination, growth, and becoming. No one knows this better than farmers and ranchers. People who live by the soils and the skies know this waiting better than anyone else. So by this, the Christian is called to learn the lesson of the farmer and the rancher, the lesson of Bonhoeffer, and wait. So we wait, we wait expectantly.

Living in Austin, Marie was admitted to the hospital on several occasions. There was nothing worse than waiting. When she was in surgery, I waited for the doctor to come with news of the procedure. The one thing that made the waiting easier was that I knew if my wait was short, it was because something dreadfully wrong had happened. Then if the wait seemed too long, I would fear something dreadfully wrong had happened. So I waited expectantly.

She and I would also wait expectantly for her to be discharged. It was a glorious moment when the doctor would come in and say, “Yes, I will be discharging you today. You can go as soon as the orders are processed.” Now that was waiting expectantly! Any minute I would get to take Marie home. Hooray, any minute now, and hours later it would still be any minute now.

As a hospital chaplain, I get to see the joy in the faces of those who are discharged, and the impatience of those waiting for the orders to come. It usually takes only about twenty minutes for the joy to become impatience; and it usually takes longer than that for the orders to come. So we wait, we wait expectantly.

We are reminded to wait in our reading today from Mark. Jesus doesn’t appear immediately in this gospel. He is the second player. We have to wait for him because John was ordained to be the first, the one who would baptize the man simply referred to as Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee. We even have to wait one more verse for the Spirit to descend upon him like a dove.

So we wait. We wait another eighteen days for Christmas. We wait seventeen days to sing Christmas carols because we wait to sing them until Advent passes and Jesus comes. We wait expectantly because we know what comes next. We wait because Jesus will come, Jesus has come and Jesus will come again. And as the old song goes, “The waiting is the hardest part.”[3]

We want so badly to see the work of God’s hands. We hope and desire it so badly that it makes us hurt in anticipation. We see the injustice in the world against the sick and the poor and those who are pushed to the margins. We want to see the hand of the Lord in action in our lives and in all creation.

We wait expectantly, but that doesn’t mean we are to wait passively. You see, there are at least two ways “to wait.” Waiting can mean staying, lingering, or remaining. This is one way we wait; we are to wait for the coming of the Lord. Still, to wait also means to serve or to work or to care for others. As we stay, we are also to serve. As we await the coming of the Lord, we minister to one another so that God’s work will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

We are called by God to wait, and as we wait we are to wait on others. We are not just called to wait for the hand of the Lord; we are to be the hands of the Lord. How? Drop your change in the Salvation Army kettle the next time you go shopping at Wal-Mart. The Salvation Army’s slogan this year is “Expect Change.”[4] Isn’t that a great reference to putting change into the kettle? Yet it is also a reminder that only by being the agents of change can we ever expect anything to change.

This year, the Session asks you give toys to the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation. Local donations are being accepted at Dollar General and Wal-Mart in Berryville and Huntsville.[5] The Session has also directed us to collect the PC (USA) Christmas Joy Offering[6] in a couple of weeks. This offering supports retired church workers and the Presbyterian Racial Ethnic Schools and Colleges.

As these are wonderful and glorious ways of giving, we must give from all of the gifts we receive from the Lord, not just treasure, but also time and talent. So thanks to you who serve on the Session. Thanks to you who came and decorated last weekend. Thanks to you who clean the church. Thanks to you who helped at Vacation Bible School last summer. Thanks to you who work at the Food Bank. Thanks to you who lead worship. Thanks to you who worship at the Berryville Alliance of Churches services. Thanks to you who visit those in the hospital and those who are home bound. Thanks to you who call and write notes to those who need a pick-me-up.

And all praise to God who empowers us to wait on others.

We wait because it is how we prepare for the coming of the Lord. We wait in service because it is how the Lord wants us to wait. We wait and we reflect on the season, especially on the days when we read the gospel anticipating the Lord’s arrival. We wait expectantly as we wait for the Lord to come again.

We wait together because that is how the Lord wants us to wait. We wait because Jesus has come. We wait because Jesus is here now. We wait because Jesus will come again.

When we read this part of Gospel, it is oh so tempting to go immediately onto the next verse, but we mustn’t. We mustn’t go past today’s reading without waiting. So we wait—remaining and serving the Lord because there is no other way.

To quote the old song again, “You take it on faith, you take it to the heart/The waiting is the hardest part.”[7] Advent teaches us to wait for the coming of the Lord and to wait on the coming of the Lord. Let us wait together, let us wait expectantly, but let us not wait passively.

[1] Easterbrook, Gregg, “TMQ, 2008 NFC Preview” http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/080826, retrieved December 6, 2008.
[2] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, “Christmas with Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” Manfred Weber, Editor. Minneapolis: Augsburg Books.
[3] Petty, Tom, “The Waiting.” Found on “Hard Promises” Gone Gator Music, 1981. From LyricWiki, http://lyricwiki.org/Tom_Petty_And_The_Heartbreakers:The_Waiting, retrieved December 6, 2008
[4] Image found at http://salvationarmyusa.org/ retrieved December 4, 2008. You can follow this link to give online to the Salvation Army too.
[5] For more locations, check out http://www.toysfortots.org/, retrieved December 6, 2008.
[6] For more information and a link to give, go to http://www.pcusa.org/cjoffering/, retrieved December 6, 2008.
[7] Ibid, Petty.