How are you going to spend this Advent? In the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season, I pray you and I find time to wait. Time to wait for the Christ child. Time to renew our hope and trust that God is doing something new and wildly creative with our lives. In such waiting we join Zechariah, Elizabeth, Joseph, Mary, Simeon, and all the characters of the Christmas story. I cannot think of a better way to spend the season.
"A waiting person is a patient person."
In Christ’s Service,
Pastor Zac
Summertime is also the "Time after Pentecost". Here are some of Pastor Zac's sermons for that time:
These are not people who listen to Christmas music in November. These are people who truly know what it means to wait. These are people who understand that waiting is a spiritual discipline. My favorite author Henri Nouwen has this to say about waiting:
"A waiting person is a patient person. The word 'patience' implies the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Impatient people expect the real thing to happen somewhere else, and therefore they want to get away from the present situation and go elsewhere. For them the moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the growth of something growing within . . .
Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Simeon, and Anna were not filled with wishes. They were filled with hope. Their hope was something different. Their hope was trusting that fulfillment would come, but fulfillment according to the promises of God and not just according to their wishes. Hope is always open-ended . . .
To wait with openness and trust is an enormously radical attitude toward life. It is choosing to hope that something is happening for us that is far beyond our own imaginings. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life. It is living with the conviction that God molds us in love, holds us in tenderness, and moves us away from the sources of our fear." (Finding My Way Home)
The season of Advent is upon us. Advent, from the Latin verb "advenio," literally means "an arrival" (See, all those years of Latin in high school and college finally paid off for me). Whose arrival are we waiting for? The Messiah, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. What's the best way to prepare for the arrival of Jesus? Well, the best thing to do is simply waiting.
What do you mean, wait? Just sit around and do nothing? Yes, that's exactly what I mean. And waiting may actually be harder than it sounds. As Americans, we do not like to wait around. We like to do things right away. At the snap of a finger or the scan of a credit card, we expect instant service and instant connection. Even now when I walk into stores, I already hear Christmas music. Two of the main radio stations in town have been playing Christmas music for two weeks already (I need to talk to Julie Powell about that). We like to pretend the entire month of December that Christmas is already here. And even if it's not quite December 25th, we can still be in the "Christmas spirit."
But what about the Advent spirit? What about waiting? What about the fact that quite often in our relationship with God we do not receive instant communication and instant answers. In fact, more often than not, God speaks to us slowly. God expects us to wait-God does not give us the whole answer at once. To learn this about God, all we have to do is read the story of the birth of Jesus from the gospel of Luke. Luke's account is full of people waiting. In Luke 1 Elizabeth and Zechariah are waiting for the birth of their son. In Luke 2 Joseph and Mary are waiting to find a place to stay while Jesus is born. Later on in Luke 2 the reader meets Simeon and Anna, who have been waiting in the temple for years just to catch a glimpse of the newborn Messiah.