27.11.05 - Waiting

I have such a short memory. It was only six years ago when I was on long-service leave that I piously congratulated myself on learning an important lesson. I spent a month at the Uniting Church of Australia Theological College based on the outskirts of Paramatta, Sydney. Whenever I wanted to go into Sydney it meant planning ahead and being sure of my timetables. It was a ten minute walk to a bus stop, but I had to get there early to make sure that I didn??t miss the bus. A fifteen or so minute bus ride into Paramatta city centre, a wait at the railway station, then the train trip into Sydney. I felt very proud of this new, slower pace of life I was learning. I had time to look at my surroundings, to notice people, to smell the air, to read, even to be attentive to myself. It was, I thought at the time, something to be taken back into daily life at home. It would be a more gentle and receptive rhythm of life when I got back to St Lukes.

Well, of course, it lasted all of about ten minutes when I got back. Rush, rush, busy, busy, sitting muttering to myself at traffic lights tapping my finger irritably, glaring or swearing at other drivers who are, of course quite deliberately and maliciously, impeding my important journey and wasting my precious time.

Standing in queues, sitting in waiting rooms, wondering when the plumber or the electrician will deign to turn up ?± how we hate waiting. It is hardly ever seen as a gift of time to savour life, to soak in the surroundings, to just ?´be?? instead of always ?´doing?? like I persuaded myself I had learned six years ago.

Waiting for the lights to change, or to reach the front of the queue at the supermarket checkout, is laughably trivial compared to what some people wait for.

Most of the human race goes to bed hungry, waiting for the next meal which for many might well be the last. Thousands of children die each day because their little bodies can no longer wait for food which does not come.

Millions of peasant farmers wait for the day when they will get a fair price for their produce, instead of the inadequate amount they receive because Europe subsidises its farm production, other wealthy countries impose tariffs, and multi-nationals control prices anyway.

Millions wait for the day when they won??t be terrorised by a despotic government, a brutal army or a corrupt police force.

Millions wait for an undignified death as they waste away with Aids because they are denied access to the antiretroviral drugs so readily available in the West. Drug companies are more concerned with shareholders and profits than dying Africans.

Israelis and Iraqis both wait for the next suicide bomber, while Palestinians wait for the next Israeli missile. Vulnerable Westerners wait to see when and where the next terrorist bomb will explode and how many lives it will take.

In our privileged, affluent country also, there are people waiting, like the elderly person who has been in hospital care for ten years and who has been waiting to be freed by death for most of that time, or the infertile couple waiting to see if the latest expensive procedure will produce the longed-for pregnancy.

There is the seven year old child from a dysfunctional family who has already had six foster families, waiting to see if the seventh will also give up, and there are students waiting for examination results.

People are waiting for the outcome of an interview for that job they really want, waiting for medical test results, waiting for the phone call from the estranged partner or child or friend; waiting for death, waiting for life?ñ

I think it is fifty years since I first heard the great "O" of Advent sung in our little suburban church in Wellington. It was at an ordination service, which must have taken place in early December because we sang "O come, O come Emmanuel", and the sound of singing ministers ?± all male, of course, in those days ?± gave me an enduring love of plainsong. It is probably a safe bet that I have sung the O??s of Advent every year since - "O come, O come key of David, O come, thou rod of Jesse?ñ O come, thou dayspring, come and cheer?ñ" And before me, and before us, millions have sung them each Advent since the thirteenth century when they first emerged to be sung incrementally on the days leading up to Christmas, expressing ancient Israel??s longing for the Messiah, but also everyone??s longing for a safer life, a better world, an end of suffering and pain and loneliness and despair and confusion and guilt and ?± whatever it was that afflicted their life and made their future bleak.

Long ago, further back than that, somewhere around five hundred and twenty years before the birth of Jesus, a poet waited and got so tired of waiting that he cried out as if with an Advent "O": "O that you would tear open the heavens O God and come down. O that you might break out like fire in dry kindling?ñ  O that your enemies would quickly learn your name, and the nations tremble at your approach."

The anonymous poet-prophet who wrote under the name of Isaiah pleaded with God for an end to God??s silence ?± "you have hidden your face from us". He reminded God of how God used to act, that "of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God like this one, who acted like this towards those who trust him, who guided those who acted with integrity."  The prophet asked his God to remember that the nation's sins had blown them away like the wind, into exile, and now that the exile was over that God should not let his anger run away with itself.  The nation was still in ruins, the Temple was desolate, and yet the prophet and the people were waiting for God to act.  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian executed by the Nazis just days before the end of World War II, wrote in his Letters and Papers from Prison that being in prison was a good way to understand Advent. Bonhoeffer says that waiting in the cell in which the door must always be opened from the outside, where the way to freedom is always in someone else's hands, is a good image of the way in which the believer must learn to wait upon God, the way the Church waits in the time of Advent for the deliverance, the liberation, that is to come. That is one strong image of waiting.

To ?´wait?? is not, of course, a passive thing. In the gospel passage the waiting analogy is that of servants waiting for their master to return from a trip. In those pre-internet, pre-telephone and pre-postal days, the master could come back any time, and so the house needed to be kept dusted, pantry stocked, beds made up and kept fresh as if they knew he would return that day. Waiting is active.

New Zealand biblical scholar, the late Very Rev Dr Ian Cairns, writing on today??s gospel reading in a commentary on Mark, says this about the ?´waiting?? and ?´keeping awake?? language of Mark??s gospel for we who regard the notion of Jesus?? "second coming" as mythological language:

"The call to ?´keep awake?? is an invitation to openness and to reverence. One should be constantly on the alert for life??s ?´new thing??, never assuming that ?´what has been is what will be??; or that new insights, new ventures into a more complete inclusiveness and a fuller humanity, are no longer possible. It is a call to cherish the total environment, in the awareness that this nurturing environment is our father-and-mother, the source of our past and of our future, in whom we live and move and exist, and who may yet ?´surprise?? us with exciting new opportunities and new departures." (1)

It was when I was not cocooned in my motorcar, as I was six years ago in Paramatta, that I was able to savour the world, to taste the goodness of fresh air, to observe the endless variety of people on bus or train. There was far more opportunity to be alert for life??s ?´new thing?? as Ian Cairns called it, to cherish the world, to be able to be surprised.

Another image, one that Isaiah used in today??s other passage, is the image of clay in the hands of a potter.  God??s people are like a lump of moist clay waiting for the hands of the great artisan of the universe to pick it up and mould it into a vessel of beauty and honour and usefulness. Advent Sunday is the beginning of the season of pliability for us, the season of waiting for the hand of God to shape and with finesse bring about our future. It is a season that reminds us we do not control time, no matter how much we try, and although in many catastrophic ways we can determine what some of the future may hold, we ultimately do not control the future either.

To those who put up the Christmas tree early in November, as friends of mine did, the season says, WAIT!   To all of us who want what we want when we want it, the season says WAIT! To those of us who want to be able to heal the world and end all wars, preferably before supper today, but at least before the end of the year, the season says WAIT!

Not passively, not sullenly or angrily waiting, but actively, being alert and open to what can be done and what we can do, savouring and cherishing, and open to where we can see God happening, in our world, even when we don??t expect it.