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December 7, 2008 | 6:30 p.m. Vespers

What Are We Waiting For?

John W. Vest
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Mark 1:1-8
Psalm 85
Isaiah 40:1-11

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Yesterday a pastor friend of mine called me with a Don Rickles joke he had just heard. (My friend is a big Don Rickles fan, by the way). The joke goes something like this:

A famous preacher dies and goes to heaven. When he gets there, he meets God and God says, “Welcome, my good and faithful servant. Do you have any questions that you’ve always wanted answered?”

The preacher thinks about it for a minute and responds, “Yes, as a matter of fact I do. Down on earth we’ve been praying and praying for 2,000 years for you to come back and you never have. What are you waiting for?”

God replied, “Man, I’m not going back down there. Last time I was there I got a Jewish girl pregnant, and they’ve been talking about it ever since!”

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Now I don’t think that is exactly orthodox theology—or even a good joke—but it does say something about the season we are in, the season of Advent. Advent is a time of waiting, a time of anticipation. The joke is right: for 2,000 years we’ve been waiting for Jesus to come back, waiting for the apocalyptic drama of the Bible to finally play out.

Waiting is one thing that we all know at least something about. We wait for the bus or wait for our laundry to get dry. On Thanksgiving we wait for the turkey to be done. Men wait for women—and I’ve heard that sometimes it even happens the other way around. My wife and I are learning about waiting for a baby to be born, though I think she’s probably getting even more ready than I. Whatever it is, we all know what it means to wait. And so Advent is a season with which we can all identify, because we’ve all been there.

But what is it, exactly, that we’re waiting for?

Our scripture readings during this season are filled with incredible prophetic texts from the Hebrew Bible. These passages are filled with fantastic visions of a new world, peppered with messages of hope and restoration. And today is no different.

Comfort, my people! Every valley will be lifted, every mountain made low. God’s glory will be revealed. God’s peace will come. God’s salvation is at hand.

Consider this passage from the psalm, written with such striking beauty: “Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky. The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase.”

What a glorious vision this is! Texts like this are what Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann calls “prophetic energizing” (The Prophetic Imagination). These texts give us hope for a better future. They inspire us to look for better days and have faith in God that such things are possible. During this season, as Christmas approaches, we might call this Advent hope. It’s a vision of the world as God desires it to be.

Advent hope tells us that things might be tough right now but they’ll get better. Advent hope tells us that someday the world will be turned on its head: those at the bottom will rise to the top, and those at the top will fall to the bottom. Advent hope tells us that peace is possible. Advent hope has faith in a child.

But Advent hope is easy to proclaim here in the safety and warmth and comfort of this sanctuary. It’s easy for us to read these passages and sing our songs and feel good about the world. But one step outside of this door brings us face to face with hunger and homelessness right in the shadow of excess and consumption. Open up the news or turn on the television and we’re reminded that the world is indeed full of pain and violence and death.

What happens to Advent hope then?

In order to protect our faith in this Advent hope, we make it something else. In order to avoid feeling like this vision is a cruel mockery of our reality, we put it off until the future. It becomes something that we wait for, but it never arrives. We read and pray and sing and fill our hearts and minds with this vision, but it never comes true. It’s perpetually delayed.

In ancient Israel, during a time of subjugation to a foreign empire, the people hoped for a messiah who would come and save them, a messiah who would restore God’s sovereign reign over Israel. For hundreds of years this never seemed to happen.

Then one day a man from Nazareth, named Jesus, came on the scene. He was baptized in the Jordan River by a man named John, and then he began to preach on his own. He said some remarkable things. He did some remarkable things. People began to believe that he was this messiah. People began to believe that he was the one. Yet when he was killed by the empire he opposed, the hope he inspired was moved into the future. His disciples experienced him as resurrected Lord. It was taught that he would come again sometime in the future and finally restore God’s reign. In fact, the people who wrote the New Testament expected this to happen right away, in their lifetimes.

But they were wrong. And everyone since who has made any kind of prediction about the end times has been wrong. We’re still waiting. We’re still waiting for God to make the next move. We’re still waiting for God to take the next step. We’re still waiting.

But what if—even after all of these years of waiting for God—what if we’ve missed the real point? What if we’re even more wrong than we thought? What if God is actually waiting for us?

Maybe God is waiting for us to do what God has shown us.

Maybe God is waiting for us to love each other as much as God loves us.

Maybe God is waiting for us to care for each other as brothers and sisters.

Maybe God is already here.

We are, after all, the body of Christ. We are, after all, the children of God.

Earlier this evening we heard the opening verses of the Gospel of Mark. “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” It was the beginning of the good news, not the end. It was the beginning of the good news, not the totality of it. It was only the beginning.

So what are we waiting for?

A voice says, “Cry out!” And we say, “What shall we cry?”

In India and Iraq and Afghanistan and in countless other places, people are dying. People are killing each other. Violence is considered the only way to solve problems. Peace is an elusive dream.

A voice says, “Cry out!” And we say, “What shall we cry?”

Throughout the world and right here in our city, some of us have enough to eat and some of us don’t have anything. We have the resources and the technology and the ability to provide enough food for every mouth on the planet. But we just don’t have the will to do it.

A voice says, “Cry out!” And we say, “What shall we cry?”

In a land of abundance, some of us don’t have homes to live in. We’ve fallen behind and can’t catch up. We’ve suffered through storms that destroyed everything we’ve ever had. We’ve made bad decisions and are living out the consequences.

A voice says, “Cry out!” And we say, “What shall we cry?”

Our economy is a wreck and we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. We don’t know if we’ll still have a job. We don’t know if we’ll be able to provide for ourselves or our families. We don’t understand why things have turned out the way they have.

A voice says, “Cry out!” And we say, “What shall we cry?”

All around us families fall apart and relationships end. What we thought would last forever slips from our fingers. The people we always thought would be there for us have disappeared.

A voice says, “Cry out!” And we say, “What shall we cry?”

People are oppressed and abused because they are different from the ones in power. Gender and race and religion and sexuality divide us. We long for justice but find only rejection.

A voice says, “Cry out!” And we say, “What shall we cry?”

Young people die from unexplained illness. Old people die before we are ready. Poor people die from preventable diseases. Life hurts and death is even worse.

A voice says, “Cry out!” And we say, “What shall we cry?”

What shall we cry?

Yet if all we do is cry out, nothing will change. Even if we speak words of hope, nothing will change. If all we have is Advent hope, nothing will change.

What we need is action.

God is already here. We are the body of Christ. We are the children of God.

What are we waiting for?

Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church