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Christmas Meditation 2006
Waiting for God
December 24, 2006

This past week, Bob and I were musing over a question you often hear in conversation this time of year…"Well, are you ready for Christmas?" How does one get ready for Christmas? It has got to include more than the yearly ritual of unconscious obligatory gift giving I wonder if some of us have missed the whole point of advent? Doesn't it have something to do with reflection and waiting for God to make God's-self known to us in some new way?

My meditation this morning summarizes some powerful words from Henri Nouwen that recently spoke to my condition, as we Quakers like to say. I was headed in another direction earlier in the week but by Friday it became clear to me that this is the message that I need to give this morning. Maybe, Nouwen was the messenger God used to get my attention showing me what it means to get ready for Christmas.

Waiting is not a very popular attitude. Waiting is not something most of us aspire to. In fact, some folks would consider waiting a colossal waste of time. Perhaps this is because the culture in which we live is basically saying, "Get going! Do something! Show you are able to make a difference! What is wrong with you? Why would you want to just sit around and wait!"? For many of us, waiting is an awful desert between where we are and where we want to go. And most of us are not content in such a place. We want to get out of our discontent by doing something. (I liked Karen's insight that the opposite of contentment-anxiety.)

I think that waiting is even more difficult when we are anxious and afraid. In fact I happen to think that one of the most pervasive emotions in our world today is fear. Lots of people are afraid - afraid of feeling their feelings - afraid of other people - afraid of the future, afraid of not having enough…you name it. And fearful people have a hard time waiting, because when we are afraid we want to get away from where we are.

So much of the aggression that we see in the world today stems from fear. People who live in a state of fear are more likely to be chaotic, hostile, and destructive than people who are not frightened. So the more afraid we are, the harder waiting becomes for us.

How intriguing that all the figures who appear on the first pages of Luke's gospel, are waiting. Zechariah and Elizabeth are waiting. Mary is waiting. Simeon and Anna, who were there at the temple when Jesus was brought in, are waiting. The whole opening scene of the good news is filled with waiting people. And at some point, all those people in some way or another hear the words, "Do not be afraid. I have something good to say to you." Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary, Simeon and Anna are all waiting for something new and good to happen to them.

What are you waiting for this morning? Maybe you are feeling anxious and afraid? Do you believe that it is possible that something new and good is about to happen to you?

Waiting, as we see it in the people on the first pages of Luke's gospel, are all waiting with a sense of promise. "Zechariah, your wife Elizabeth is to bear you a son." "Mary, …Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son." (Luke 1:13,31)

I happen to believe that these timeless stories have something to teach us about what it means to wait for God.
So first, people who wait have received a promise that allows them to wait. They have received something that is at work in them already, like a seed that has been planted and is starting to grow. I think that this is crucial for us to recognize and affirm. We can only really wait if what we are waiting for has already begun for us.

Henri Nouwen says, "waiting is never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a movement from something to something more." I like that thought. And from my own experience I think that it is true.
Zechariah, Mary, and Elizabeth were living with a promise that nurtured them, that fed them, and that made them able to stay where they were. And in this way, the promise itself could grow in them and for them.

Secondly, waiting is active. Most of us think of waiting as something very passive, a hopeless state of mind, determined by events that are totally out of our control. We are victims of our circumstances, we are stuck… we are powerless.
We become active rather than passive in our waiting when we realize we have choices about how we will wait.
We don't see passivity in these gospel stories. Those who are waiting are waiting very actively. They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing. That's the secret. The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has already been planted, that something has already begun to grow. There is movement, even if we can't see it.

Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it. A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment.

Thirdly, a waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will make itself known to us in due time.
Nouwen says, impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her.

Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary were very present to the moment. That is why they could hear the angel. They were alert, attentive to the voice that spoke to them that said, "Don't be afraid. Something is happening to you. Pay attention."

And lastly, and I think most importantly, our waiting must be open-ended. Open-ended waiting is very hard for us because we have the tendency to want to wait for something very concrete to happen. Much of our waiting is filled with wishes like: "I wish that I could have that job, or that relationship, or that house, or that experience." We are full of wishes, and our waiting easily gets enmeshed in those wishes. For this reason, a lot of our waiting is not open-ended. Where we run into problems is when we become attached to our desired outcome. We try to control our future, which we all know is impossible anyway. But we want our lives to go in a particular direction, and if it doesn't we become devastated and begin to slip into despair. Here we can see how our wishes tend to be connected with our fears.

But Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary were not filled with wishes. They were filled with hope. Hope is something very different. Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to a promise and not just according to our wishes. Therefore, hope is always open-ended.

Recently, I have found it necessary in my own life to let go of my wishes and just start to hope. It is only when I am willing to let go of my wishes that something really new, something beyond my own expectations can happen for me and to me.

Think about what Mary was actually saying in the words, "I am the handmaid of the Lord…let what you have said be done to me". She was saying, "I don't know what this all means, but I trust that good things will happen."
She trusted so deeply that her waiting was open to all possibilities. And she did not want to control them. She believed that when she listened carefully, she could trust what was going to happen.

I think that open-ended waiting is an enormously radical attitude toward life, don't you? Are we willing to trust that something will happen to us that is far beyond our own imaginings? Are we willing to give up control over our future and let God define our life, trusting that God will mold us according to God's love and not according to our fears?

The 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 own imagination, fantasy, or prediction. Maybe this is what we should be thinking about the next time someone asks us if we are ready for Christmas.

So as we come to an end of a year and are about to begin a new one, may we learn the freedom that comes in waiting for God to do God's thing in each of our lives. May we have the courage to wait for God.
Amen.