Concord Covenant Church
Sermon
August 18, 2002
Tina Abramson
It is funny how the older I get and the less time in life I have, the more patient I am at waiting. This does not come naturally to me but I am slowly learning, by the grace of God. For the most part, I do not get steamed up in traffic, unless the baby is screaming and the air conditioning doesn’t work. For the most part, I can wait for the person in front of me in line at the grocery store to slowly pull out their check book, dig around for a pen, write the amount in their check register, find their check card, and pay for their groceries – unless I am late to church with the bread and juice for communion. For the most part, I can handle delayed gratification if Ron and I do not get to go out to a movie for the first time in six months and the baby starts throwing up all over me just as the babysitter arrives. I am no serene Zen master, but I am learning that waiting is a spiritual discipline and I do not do myself or my heart rate any favors by getting all worked up. I try to employ a little Brother Lawrence, who advocates for unceasing prayer and praise, even while waiting for the ATM.
There is a lot of waiting in the bible. Way too much to cover in this short sermon. One of the biggest, overriding themes in the story of our life with God is of God’s people waiting for God’s promises to be fulfilled, and God waiting for his people to be faithful. This theme echoes through our own lives as well. We cry out to God to give us our hearts desires and give them to us now. However God often makes us wait for the things we think we want – and the waiting helps us understand our desires and prepares us for God’s answer – which is sometimes yes, sometimes no, and sometimes not yet.
The beginning of Acts is one of the bible’s great instances of waiting. The disciples had direct experience of Jesus – they had been learning from him, following him, and had ministered alongside him. They had experienced His death and resurrection and had been given signs and proof beyond the shadow of a doubt that He was still alive and had conquered death. And then he was gone again, with a promise – I am preparing a place for you and I will send you a helper. The apostles ask – will you then restore the Kingdom of God? – for this is what they have all been waiting for – this is what the Jews have been waiting for - this is what it is supposed to be all about.
But Jesus’s answer is – not yes, not no – it is not for you to know. You must wait. And we are still waiting. With all of creation we are still waiting for the Kingdom of God. Waiting and not knowing when, or how. This was a tough assignment for the apostles. Having a sense that something will happen, but not being able to plan for it. Aren’t there so many instances of this in our own lives? Like the apostles we wait for the new creation – it is a deep human condition. But also like the apostles we want for answers to more immediate concerns and desires, and do not always get them. Sometimes we draw a blank. Where is God in this blankness and why doesn’t He give us the blue print?
We know by faith that there is a blueprint, but we also know that we do not always get the details filled in. But our experience of waiting follows a similar pattern to what the the apostles experienced:
1. They gained experience and learned to use their gifts. Jesus was their teacher and they sat at his feet. We too have teachers, mentors and friends as we take on new challenges, learn new things, experience our lives on the path that God has chosen for us. Just as the disciples had no sense of what they were getting themselves into when Jesus called them, and just as the disciples were selfish and short sighted and stubborn at points along the way, and just as they usually completely misunderstood where Jesus was leading them, we too are in the dark in our experience. We often do not understand the significance of the decisions we make or where they will lead.
2. But then, something happens, a change occurs, that forces us to make a decision, or shift gears, or rise to a new challenge, and rely on what we have learned. In the case of the disciples, Jesus died and then came alive again. This was not what they expected or understood, but they were beginning to understand that now they had a new job – they would be required to go out to the world and make believers of all people. This happens to us to – we are offered a new job, or we lose someone in our life we have come to depend on. We sense we are in a new place all of a sudden which will take us into uncharted territory.
3. When this change begins, I think we often respond like the disciples. We do not know what to do – we feel inadequate, have doubts, are confused. And the answer is not readily apparent. So we have to wait.
4. We feel the Lord telling us to do what He told the disciples to do. Sit, wait, pray. In the weakness of our faith, like the apostles, we wait. Why do we wait? What is so important about the waiting? We are confused and in darkness. We have gifts and skills and things we have learned, we are talented and equipped, so why not get the show on the road? Why is there this blank period? This lack of clarity? This discomfort of not knowing what is to come? This is the hard part. This is the faith part. This is the part that we resist. We do not know what to do. And finally, when we do nothing, if we let ourselves do nothing for a bit, we slowly come to remember that we are not the captains of our destiny. We remember the Lord and then we receive the same thing that the apostles received –
5. God gives them power. Maybe we don’t get it as dramatically as the disciples in the room where they waited on the day of Pentecost. But still, when we wait, we receive power, and tasks and decisions that would have before felt like pulling rocks up a hill, now open up before us lightly, gracefully, full of possibility. And God’s power is made manifest in us and we can now do what we seek to do with His power and by his grace.
But it is the waiting that is the hard part. It is the blank part that we struggle with. Because we are used to be productive, to doing. And, of course, our culture hates waiting, we do not value it at all, and we complicate out lives with devices to avoid waiting like the internet. I was talking to a colleague at work who has been helping a friend develop a business plan to bring drive through convenience stores to New Hampshire. No getting out of the car and hauling your little ones out of the car seat. Sounds good to me. Well, if I happened to need some overpriced pop tarts or some batteries I guess. The truth is, it isn’t that waiting is inherently bad for people. It is because we are uncomfortable withte rhythms of life and we have filled our voids with consuming and force ourselves to wait in poorly lit stores and deal with uncaring teenagers behind cash registers. I know I would like to spend as little time in the grocery store or in Ames as possible. But if I were a farmer, or a desert nomad herding sheep, I would have plenty of waiting to do - waiting for crops to grow, weather to change, sheep to go wherever they are supposed to go. The fact is, waiting is good for us. It reminds us we are not in control.
One of the great phases in life for some to learn about waiting, and for learning that we are not in control, is pregnancy, birth and parenting. I read a wonderful book recently – it is entitled Great with Child, by Debra Rienstra, a professor of English literature at Calvin College. It is a book of wide ranging reflections inspired by her third pregnancy and birth of her son Phillip. In the beginning of the book she describes the waiting involved in trying to conceive a child. She describes the way that she and her husband finally began quietly to speak and agree about the dream of having a third child – an extravagance that went against common sense but that seemed to them to be a divine Yes daring to push through into life. Then came the months of trying, and waiting. Waiting each month to day 29, day 30 – would it be this time? She would feel various symptoms, sure that her body was doing what it should, and, inevitably her mind would run out into the future, to labor, to baby clothes, to preschool. And then, not able to wait anymore, even until the 30th day, they would take the test, and be disappointed. Later she learned, which I did not know either, that after conception, there is what she came to call a "blank week" – a period of 7 or 10 days time when a tiny fertilized egg drifts along towards the uterus, having sent no word yet to the mothership about what is about to come. There are no hormones yet, no body changes, no signs of the huge change about to ripple through the mother’s body, the family’s life, and the world when this unique soul implants itself, announces its presence and begins to make all sorts of demands.
During this blank week between conception and implantation women hold two possible futures in their hearts. Although the future, at least for this month, is already set, the mother is still in the dark about it. Anyone who has been through the longing to have a child, and the accompanying blank week, knows how long and confusing this week can be, how tempting it is to let ones mind run way out ahead, to plan for college for a child who is only, maybe, composed of a few cells. And for those couples whose hopes are dashed month after month, the blank week is a mountain of waiting to be climbed each month only to be disappointed again. To me this blank week must be something like what the disciples experienced in the upper room, holding many possible futures in their hands, their minds reeling with what was to come – would they be arrested, killed, would they see Jesus again, would the world end? They waited, and like God knits together an immortal soul in its mother’s womb, so too did God knits together a band of believers and give them the power to create a Christian community from the bare bones of their direct experience of Jesus.
Rienstra writes:
"Perhaps we should consider the special holy work of pregnancy as the truer picture of all that human beings do, all of our actions in this world. We fuss and flurry about anxiously to build and achieve and secure, thinking that the successful results redound to us But all that we are and are capable of is a gift, ultimately. All things are brought into being by God. I do not mean to imply that free will is an illusion; out individuals wills are real. But our actions are caught up in God’s patient and elastic plan. We can damage or destroy God’s direction, or we can participate willingly and attentively. But the outcome does not belong to us. Pregnacy, with its disconcertingly unconscious progress, may be the truer picture of our histories, individual and cosmic. Ultimately we simply watch in wonder for God’s work to unfold in its vast and intricate completion."
She refers to Henri Nouwen’s awareness of the deep lessons in pregnancy and birth and writes that: "Nouwen observes that all who trust in God are waiting for the completion of God’s work in themselves and in the world. This understanding allows us to wait with an active attentiveness and trust that the seed has been planted, that something has begun. We do not need to think of waiting as the world does – as a bad state to get out of as soon as possible – but as a condition of life filled with hope and joyful expectation. She quotes Nouwen who wrote: ‘this spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us. New things that are far beyond our imaginations, fantasy or prediction. That indeed is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.’"
So waiting, like pregnancy, is a gift from God, with which God shapes and molds us to be born into new challenges, opportunities, and usefulness. But it is difficult. I find myself at a place in my life where I have gained certain kinds of experiences over the last few years, and change has come, in the form of children and their needs, and is coming, in forms I do not yet know. It feels like there are decisions ahead but I am not sure what they should be. I am overwhelmed with the complexity and demands of life and I wish I knew what the next steps were. I guess I didn’t fully understand the long-term ramifications of certain decisions I made, and if I had would have been paralyzed and unable to make them. Decisions I have made in my career have lead into areas I never dreamed, but have also cut off other paths. The decision I made to get married to the man I married created a wonderful and unique relationship with unique children that mix up our DNA, but the marriage decision certainly cuts off the chance to make a different choice. If we knew at the time the paths that open and close to us based on certain decisions – like the decision to get married, to have children, to buy a house, or to get a degree – how could these decisions be made at all?
I recently celebrated a birthday and realized that I am at the stage of life where I will probably not live much longer after today than I have lived before today. In other words, at least half of my life is over and possibly, because who knows what will happen, much more than half of my life is over. It feels like there is so little time and so much to do. So, what does God want me to do? Ironically, God wants me to hurry up and wait.
I seem to be in a rather long "blank week" while I wait to see what is in store. Like the apostles, I have lots of evidence of what God is capable of and, like them, I feel inadequate and like something isn’t quite right , but I hold lots of futures in my hands right now and none of them are clear. I have gifts, we all do, gifts given by God, to be used by Him. But I feel like they are going to waste as I change diapers, as I cook dinner, as I endlessly scrounge around for someone to take my kids so I can to a meeting, as I rub my tired eyes because I have stayed up working after the kids go to bed.
One of the other great biblical heros of waiting is Joseph. Joseph’s tale on the one hand appears to be one of hope deferred and talent wasted. Joseph has everything going for him, but he ends up a slave and in jail for years. Though the text claims that God was always with him, if I were Joseph I would have had a hard time seeing how God was with me as I waited around in jail, interpreting the occasional dream of a butcher, or baker. Of course Joseph’s dreams came true, and he was ultimately used mightily by God, but only after a significant period of waiting through which, it appears, Joseph remained faithful and used his gifts where he was placed. Sometimes God says yes to our desires. Sometimes God says not yet. And sometimes God says no.
As we make these decisions and determine what the longings in our hearts are for, we wait for clarity – what is the right path? Seeking God’s answers to what is next and how he will use us is like shaking one of those magic eight balls when you have to wait for the little cube inside to float up through the dark liquid inside. Sometimes it takes a while to float up, or we can’t quite read it. We get impatient, want to shake it again, want to ignore it and rush headlong towards what we think we want. We fuss. We get anxious. We hate having to wait and sitting with the confusion and the blank screen. But until God lights the road ahead, gives us the green light, and gives us the power to push the petal and move forward, all of our efforts will be in vain.
I am currently reading a book called Living the Simple Life and the author of it starts out by talking about all the things that she used to want to do in her life. She kept all of her goals on a list in her planner and assumed at some point, she would get to them. They included things like learning to speak Italian and taking painting classes.. Mine would be similar in many ways and would include traveling, homeschooling, delivering babies, speaking Spanish, and going on missions trips, and writing poetry. But I am getting to a point in my life, as the author of this book did, where I realize that life is very short, and I had better focus on what I REALLY want and forget the rest. I am beginning to realize that some dreams will remain just dreams. And I need to be OK with that, and savor the dreaming for what it is – a reflection of who I am and how I see myself – even if I never accomplish these thing. I need to let go and let God show me how I can be of use in my short life. Some things I will need to wait for, others I will never do. But at the end of a "blank period", if God says Yes to the longing in our hearts, and we step our of our period of waiting and say "here I am, Send me!" like the prophet Isaiah – then we will be filled with the power of God. Like the apostles we will understand that it is not for us to know all the times and all the places, but with the power of God we can work towards the completion of God’s work on earth and the birth of the New Creation. So, like the prophet Micah I say ""As for me I will wait for the God of my fathers, the God of salvation will hear me." Amen.
KIDS SERMON
Put popsicles in a paper bag with a question mark. Have someone e in the congregation get out of the freezer and hold on to them. Tell kids we are waiting for a package to be delivered. Talk about how hard it is to wait. Tell them that there is a special treat for them in the bag – it is delicious and worth waiting for. Have the package brought up. Tell them that it is mouthwatering and just what they need on a hot day. Do they know what it is? Everyone close their eyes and imagine what it might be. Imagine tasting it, savoring it, enjoying it, feeling really happy about it. Have them share their guesses.
Ask, is there anything they have had to wait for that was really hard? What about something they were trying to learn to do but they just weren’t ready to do yet (Quincy and the monkey bars) and how happy they were when they finally learned.
God often makes us wait for things. And usually there is something to be learned in the waiting. PRAY. Now one thing they have learned is that treats that they imagine and anticipate are even sweeter than the ones they get right away. Hand out Popsicles.