Jeremiah 33:14-16
Luke 21:25-36
“Waiting in Hope”
29 November 2015 St. Andrew’s
Military Chapel Singapore
So now we wait…And we’re not all
that good at waiting, especially those of us surrounded by the military culture
for it is a culture full of type A personalities. Combine that with our instant
gratification culture and we can feel like nothing will ever be accomplished,
at least not as fast as we demand it to be completed.
How many of us are like the cab
driver I had a few weeks ago. As he was driving back from the airport with the
speed of someone in Hong Kong, I heard an almost continuous stream of
complaints, and probably a few curses, muttered under his breath at each and
every driver we passed from Changi to Sembawang. At first it was entertaining,
but then I realized I do the same thing to people that dare make me wait even a
heartbeat when I’m driving. Who do they think they are trying to slow me down?
How many of us have attempted
something well before we are ready? When I had just graduated high school, I
went diving in the Bahamas. All my brother and I received was a quick 30 minute
familiarization walkthrough of the equipment and then in short order we were
diving on a shipwreck at a depth of over 65’. Once I finally went through a certification
course, I thought back on that trip and shuddered at how lucky we really were
that day.
Now, I’m not saying to never push
ourselves beyond our comfort zones. For in that stretching of ourselves we
learn and grow, but we really need to have a few tandem jumps and ground school
before we jump out of a perfectly good airplane with silk square attached to
us. Without a proper base of knowledge, our impatience can really cause us some
damage.
I would wager a guess that most of
us find ourselves at our most impatient this time of the year. For we are done
with Thanksgiving and looking towards Christmas. We look at our shopping lists
and our to do lists then glance at our travel plans and feel like the world
just doesn’t have enough time to get it all done. We go shopping and get
frustrated with the lack of parking, stores running out of what we “need” for
the holidays, or get antsy waiting for Amazon Prime to come through and deliver
presents out here to Singapore just in the nick of time for Christmas.
And society wants us to feel this
way. Christmas is the biggest shopping season so stores want to get the
decorations up as soon as possible. The more stressed and impatient we are
about getting the perfect gifts, the more we spend. That’s why most stores just
skip Thanksgiving and go straight from Halloween to Christmas decorations.
Granted, here in Singapore we were afforded a few extra days as they did wait
until Diwali had passed before breaking out the Christmas decorations. Orchard
Road waited until the 10th or 11th of November to turn on
the Christmas lights. Even in Japan, not a Christian nation by a long shot, the
Winter Holiday lights were already up before the end of November.
Which brings us to today, or rather
the church season in which we find ourselves today. The first Sunday of Advent
is the new church year. Like January 1st, we are called to look
forward to what is coming. We are full of hope about the future. But, instead
of making resolutions we are called by Christ to wait, to prepare for his
incarnation. In the midst of the most wonderful time of the year and the stress
of getting everything ready, we are called to sit and wait.
Society is running around yelling,
“Christ is Coming! Christ is Coming! Hurry and get everything ready for him!
Make sure you have all the boxes checked! Make sure you have the right
decorations and food!” The church tradition and Scripture are quietly
whispering, “Wait. Slow down a bit and pay attention because the Kingdom is
near.”
Tertullian a second century lawyer
and priest, who some call the founder of Western theology, wrote, “The kingdom
of God, beloved brethren, is beginning to be at hand; the reward of life, and
the rejoicing of eternal salvation, and the perpetual gladness and possession lately
lost of paradise, are now coming, with the passing away of the world; already
heavenly things are taking the place of earthly, and great things of small, and
eternal things of things that fade away. What room is there here for anxiety
and solicitude?”
Today, Jeremiah’s words told us that
the LORD will fulfill the promise made to the house of Israel and the house of
Judah where justice and righteousness will be the order of the day. Luke writes
that a day is coming when everything will be turned upside down and God’s
redemptive glory is near. Both of these writers are saying we need to wait, as
long as it takes.
Now we can’t just wait without a
promise. Us humans aren’t good at waiting, even less so if we are told to wait
without a purpose. How many times has the military made us wait? Pretty much
every day of our career. But, if they just say wait without telling us why we
must wait, we get upset and frustrated. We can wait a long time if we just have
hope, and that is what Jeremiah and Luke offer us in these passages, how to
wait in hope.
Luke doesn’t use end of the world
language to scare us or to make us wait for the end of the destruction of
everything we see. He is using that language to give us hope that we will see
many things that make us think things aren’t right, and they aren’t, so that we
can recognize redemption when it comes. Luke knows that most everyone of his
time missed Christ the first time around, so he is telling us to pay attention
because Christ will be back and his Kingdom will reign in its full glory and
redemption. So we have to wait in hope for that day to come.
We may not see it, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be
ready for the revealing of the Christ’s Kingdom. We have to prepare for Christ
so that we aren’t caught off guard again. Christ will show up where least
expect him, Advent and Christmas make that clear. He was from Galilee, born in
humble surroundings, was a refugee from Herod’s slaughter of untold infants
looking for him, grew up not as a ruler or a formally trained rabbi but as a
carpenter, travelled around as a nomad, protested against Roman rule, died
alongside robbers, and had all of his friends abandon him when he was executed.
If that is what our King looks like, we need to slow down and pay attention because
we just might miss him again.
Our hope comes from our belief that the story isn’t yet
over, that everything we see wrong in the world isn’t the whole story, that
there is more to life than just molecules and a life of no meaning. Our hope
comes from the fact that we know how this all ends. We know that Christ
overcame death, and so shall we. We know that out of this broken world in which
we find ourselves come glory and redemption. When we slow down and pay
attention we see glimpses of the Kingdom and it draws us in providing more hope
so we slow down a bit more and focus on Kingdom things to see more of the Kingdom.
When we tell the story of Christmas during Advent, it isn’t
to save people from this world, only Christ can do that. We tell the story
every year to teach everyone, ourselves included, to slow down and look for the
glimpses of the Kingdom so we are prepared to live in the Kingdom when it
comes.
“But amidst all these rejoicings Aslan himself quietly
slipped away. And when the Kings and Queens noticed that he wasn’t there they
said nothing about it. For Mr. Beaver had warned them, “He’ll be coming and
going” he had said. “One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like
being tied down—and of course he has other countries to attend to. It’s quite
all right. He’ll often drop in. Only you mustn’t press him. He’s wild, you know.
Not like a tame lion.”
We don’t know when we will see Christ again, but we are
called to wait in hope for the day that is near.
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