A Fourth Church Sermon by Adam H. Fronczek

November 28, 2010 | 4:00 p.m.

Watching and Waiting

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Matthew 24:35–44

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. I must admit to you that paying attention to the church calendar often gives me a funny feeling—a feeling like we, the preachers, are trying to impose upon you an occasion that we think you should have particular feelings about, and we make an assumption that, without our help, you will not think about the important things you must. For some of you, it may not be the case that you need my help with the details of the church calendar; I’m also not sure that you necessarily need my help knowing what to think about. Nevertheless, this past week I did put some thought into a subject related to Advent—because I knew I was going to need to talk to you about something—and I concluded that most of you are surely just as familiar as I am with the subject I chose, so perhaps it’s my job simply to slow us all down so that we can really think together about what it means.

Here’s how I’d like to start. I’m going to say a word that has to do with Advent, a word that I want you to think about. It’s a word that describes a person, and when I say it, I want you to try to picture that person’s face. It’s not a particular person that I’m trying to get you to think about, but rather the idea behind the word, so let your imagination run freely. The word is . . . waiting.

Waiting. What do you see?

Waiting. I see a man seated in a chair in a hospital emergency room. His wife is inside; she’s been in an accident; it’s bad. They had a fight after work earlier that night. It wasn’t that bad of a fight, but when it didn’t seem to be going anywhere, they decided to take a break for an hour or so. She went for a drive. Three hours later the hospital called. He is restless. He taps his toe on the ground, digs his fingertips into his thighs, sometimes puts his head in his hands and rubs his eyes. He checks his watch to see how long it’s been. Waiting.

Waiting. What do you see? I see a woman at a bus stop in front of a vacant lot. She is older and is by herself; her only companion is the two-wheeled wire basket she will use for her afternoon of errands; every Saturday she has no choice but to ride the bus four miles to get her prescriptions and go to the grocery store. A group of young men loiter in the vacant lot. They sometimes shout profanities. She is scared. The bus drivers on this route know the old woman, and she always sits near the front of the bus; they make her feel safe in this neighborhood of hers that has changed so much from what it used to be. The young men are getting louder. She looks to the left and sees no bus. Waiting.

Waiting. What do you see? I see a young couple on the front stoop of a six-flat in Lakeview. Tonight was their first date. He wears a blue wool coat with the collar turned up to keep out the cold; she has on high heels and tights and a scarf knotted tightly about her neck. They are turned facing one another. The night is cold but they don’t seem to be bothered by it. The wind has made their cheeks rosy and makes her eyes water a little; she blinks, wipes away the tear, and smiles. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. She wonders what will happen next. He wonders the same thing. Waiting.

Waiting. What do you see? I see a middle-aged man seated next to a table. On the table sits a bonsai tree. The tree is tiny; it sits on the tabletop in a pot the size of a takeout container, and the tree only stands about nine inches high, even though it is seventy-one years old. The tree belonged to the man’s father, who was a great gardener but not much of a father, and they hadn’t talked in several years before the old gardener died and left the precious tree, his most prized possession, to his son. For the first three years that he owned the tree, the man watered it regularly and gave it plant food and kept it in the right amount of light. And nothing happened. Nothing. In that third year, it began to sprout a little new growth, and the man, who had never owned a bonsai tree, had to make a decision: Do I trim it now? Will trimming it help it to live and become more beautiful? Or will I cause it to die, like my father died. After weeks of watching the little tree and thinking about his father and reading his bonsai books, the man trims the tree. And waits to see what will happen. Waiting.

Waiting. What do you see?

We all know what waiting is like. Waiting is one of the most universal of human experiences, and it happens in so many different ways, sometimes accompanied by fear, sometimes by hope, sometimes by anxiety, occasionally by patience. Sometimes we endure a waiting period and know how long it will be; other times it could go on for any amount of time. Sometimes we expect to find ourselves waiting; other times, unexpectedly, we find ourselves waiting and are helpless to do anything else but wait.

Waiting comes up a lot in the Bible. Here’s an example many of you will know.

Waiting. I see a man on a boat. He has been adrift at sea for many days without any sight of land. His family is with him; they had prepared to be on the boat for a long time. They brought plenty of food and water and are not worried about survival, yet. But they aren’t sure how long it will be until they see land again, and having left all of their friends and their home, they are unsure what life will be like from now on if they ever do get off that boat. There Noah stands, looking out from the bow of the ark. His beard is getting longer, which is a blessing because it helps to hide the concern and uncertainty on his face when his children are near. But his wife knows his eyes, which he cannot hide from her, and in them she sees what she knows is revealed on her own face as well. Waiting.

In the passage I read tonight, from the New Testament, the Gospel writer Matthew uses Noah’s story as an example when he teaches a lesson about waiting for Jesus. Why? My theory is because Noah is an example of someone who had something really important happen to him at a time when most people were not ready. They weren’t waiting or preparing for it, but Noah was lucky, because he prepared.

When the great flood came, people were taken by surprise, which should be no surprise to us modern people, because the terribly fearful thing about natural disasters is that they almost always come without warning, and we are not ready. The passage I read to you from Matthew is about the coming of Christ and it is told in a way that can be scary: “Two will be in the field,” it says. “One will be taken, and one will be left.”

Now, there are some people who will lead you to believe that this is some kind of precise description of how Jesus is coming back and what will happen to you and me. There are Christians who use that kind of interpretation to frighten and control other people. But I don’t think that’s true to what is going on in the text. I think the point the author is making here is directly related to what happened in the story of Noah and the flood: quite often, when God is doing something incredibly important, few of us wait for it with the urgency or the preparation that it deserves. Matthew the gospel writer knows that the coming of Jesus does not impact most of us like waiting in a hospital room or for a city bus or even a kiss. Each year when we remember in Advent that Jesus is coming, it is much like Noah’s flood or a natural disaster, because most of us will be caught unaware—we are, in fact, not waiting for Jesus. Think about it. When I invite you to think about an image of a person waiting, when I share with you images like the man in the hospital, the woman at the bus stop, the couple on the date, do you wait for the coming of Jesus with that kind of fear or anxiety or hope? I can speak for myself. I don’t. I know that on December 24 in this very room we will remember and celebrate the birth of Jesus; we will celebrate God’s coming into the world, and it will happen, but I do not wait for it with the urgency that the matter deserves, and what’s more, I have fallen into a boring rhythm of knowing exactly how Jesus’ coming will take place, and I do not expect to be surprised by the unknown at Christmas. I am not “waiting” for Jesus as I should.

Why not? Why don’t we wait for Jesus the way we wait for other things? My theory is that we don’t wait for Jesus because we really don’t know what it is that we’re waiting for. None of us have ever met Jesus, but my hunch is that if we did, if we ever really came to know him as we should, the joy and the challenge and the dramatic shift that would cause in every one of our lives would be so great that we would be filled with every bit of anxiety and fear and hopefulness that goes with the greatest moments of waiting in our lives. We would be both eager for the wonderful things he would reveal to us and we would dread the things in our lives that we might have to change, because he would show us who we are really created to be.

This Advent, I want to invite you to think about that. Read stories about Jesus’ life. Pay attention to the things he did and said. Pray to him about things that are going well in your life and things that you are concerned about. Look for signs of God at work in the world around you, and let’s ask together, what is it we’re supposed to be waiting for?

Amen.