The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made.
And so we begin again, this season of Advent, this new year, at least liturgically speaking, this new year of the church, this season of quiet waiting in the midst of a world that is not quiet, in the midst of a world in which waiting is often not quiet, but frustrating and anxious. And so much of our time we spend waiting.
Waiting for the turkey to thaw.
Waiting for the grandparents to arrive.
Waiting in the security line at the airport.
Waiting to board the flight.
Waiting in line at the grocery store or the DMV.
Waiting for the school bus.
Waiting for the weekend.
Waiting for grades to be posted.
Waiting for the doctor to call with test results.
Waiting for the birth of a child.
Waiting vigil with someone who is near the end of life.
Waiting for election results.
Waiting for what comes next.
Waiting for the first snow.
Waiting for spring.
Waiting for a phone call from a friend.
Waiting for the end of a prison sentence.
Waiting to leave the hospital.
Waiting for the next bomb to fall.
Waiting for there be to Christmas.
Waiting for there to be peace.
And today, as we begin a new year in the church, Advent invites us into a different kind of waiting. And while every time we turn on the television or check our e mail or walk into the grocery store, we’re told that we are supposed to be spending these 24 days waiting for December 25, preparing, shopping, wrapping gifts, baking cookies, writing cards, planning parties, booking tickets – we are reminded when we step into this space that this time is sacred for a different kind of preparation, a quieter and reflective, profound preparation that anticipates both past and future, a baby born in a manger who became the Messiah, and the eventual return of that Messiah to
welcome us home at last. Advent is a different kind of waiting, in which time both comes together and stands still.
British theologian Paula Gooder, in her book “The Meaning is in the Waiting,” which some of you may be reading for Women of Faith, writes that she didn’t really understand what waiting was about until she was expecting her first child. From the outside looking in, she writes that pregnancy may seem passive, she writes, but it’s anything but. She writes that “the waiting of pregnancy is about as active an occupation as one can hope to engage in.
Pregnant waiting is a profoundly creative act, involving a slow growth to new life,” a “never-ending action,” she compares that with the kind of waiting we do in Advent. Advent, she says, “is not so much a season as a way of being.” It’s about existing in the now, instead of in the past or the future, holding space for, being part of, the creation of something new.
If Advent is about waiting, then it is by necessity about time, and it’s about time that doesn’t act the way we think time ought to act. In Advent, we are looking backwards and forwards simultaneously, remembering the nativity and Mary and Joseph’s long journey to Bethlehem, the impending birth of a child to a pair of poor refugees – and we are looking forward to what is to come, to Jesus’ return that he talks about in today’s Gospel reading.
“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars… the powers of the heavens will be shaken,” Jesus tells his disciples, and his words echo the even deeper time of Creation. Just as we heard a couple weeks ago in the “Little Apocalypse” of Mark , Jesus is not prophesying the end of the world as we know it, but describing our world as it was then, as it is now, and as it has been over the 2,000 years between then and now – a world where nations and peoples are distressed and confused, fainting from fear and foreboding. Has there ever been an time in our history when we have not?
He tells them, pay attention to the signs, though we will not know the day of his return. We are to be ready, and to be in a state of readiness, ready to invite Christ back into a world that is waiting.
In fact, the Advent wreath that we light each week of Advent – and if you made a wreath during this morning’s Advent Event to bring home with you, or perhaps you have one already – each of those candles also reflect that long arc of Biblical history, in some traditions. Paula Gooder says that those four candles – one traditional way of thinking of them is that they represent figures from our Biblical history, from the history of our faith.
The first candle, Gooder writes, acknowledges our patriarchs and matriarchs, the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible fathers and mothers of our faith – Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, Sarah and Rebekah and Rachel – the journeys they took, waiting and trusting in God over generation after generation of exile, journey and homecoming.
The second candle, she writes, represents the prophets, those voices who waited for the voice of God, who devoted their lives to listening to and channeling God’s voice, offending and stirring up and inspiring the people of their day to act with love and compassion and justice – just as modern-day prophets inspire us today.
The third candle she says represents John the Baptist, the last of those ancient prophets who was the turning point, the voice in the wilderness announcing the incarnation, the Messiah, Jesus’ first coming – his cousin.
And the fourth candle represents Mary, called by God, visited by an angel, who waited through that holy waiting of pregnancy, of journey, of childbirth – and 33 years of Jesus’ life, knowing the work he came to do.
So I invite you to notice, today and in the coming weeks, as we wait through this time, to think about how those themes of waiting and listening wind through the stories behind all four candles, and how those candles illuminate in the lives they reflect, they illuminate our lives to come, connecting the faith of our past with our faith of the presence and our hope for the future.
“There will be signs,” says Jesus to his disciples.
United Methodist pastor Jeremy Troxler suggests another way of thinking about signs: “We’re not so much looking for signs,” he writes. “We are signs” – signs pointing toward God’s kingdom, he writes. “… We are signs of the change that is coming, of the beauty that is about to follow. We can shine that brightly and be that beautiful. We don’t wait for the world to change … We can go ahead and be changed. We can point others to what is coming and live the heavenly life now. We can be a sign of God’s shalom,” of God’s peace.
So what can that look like in these weeks and beyond? Prayer, intentional time with family, with friends, with strangers. Listening, setting aside time to let prayer speak to us and nudge us in new directions. Finding out, discovering how we can be God’s shalom.
I’ll close with a few words from Mother Theresa that I had not read until just a few days ago. She wrote:
“I used to pray that God would feed the hungry, or do this or that, but now I pray that he will guide me to do whatever I’m supposed to do, what I can do. I used to pray for answers, but now I’m praying for strength. I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things.”
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light. Amen.
Sermon preached by The Rev. Cara Ellen Modisett on December 1, 2024, at Trinity Episcopal Church, Staunton, Va.
