Wait
Advent 1B
Isaiah 64:1-9, Matthew 13: 13-27



One of my favorite books from my childhood is Ramona the Pest. Remember her?
She had the doll with blue hair named Chevrolet (because she loved the word), a big sister named Beezus, and a best friend named Howie. When she first went to kindergarten, her beautiful, sweet teacher, Miss Binney, told Ramona to “sit here for the present”...and Ramona, not very good at waiting, would not budge from her seat, because if she didn’t, she would receive the present. She tried to imagine how the present would be wrapped--with curly ribbons? a big fat bow? Would the wrapping paper be shiny?
What would the present be?
A new doll, a friend for Chevrolet?

It was hard, this waiting. Ramona had scraggly hair, and one of her classmates, Susan, had blond shiny curls that Ramona was dying to tug to see if they would spring back, like a real spring. It was hard to resist, but she noticed that Miss Binney did not promise any one else a present, so she was going to sit tight. The class went outside for recess, and Ramona stayed in her seat, because she wasn’t budging until she got the present. When Miss Binney saw her glued to her chair, she asked Ramona about it.
“I am waiting for the present”
Miss Binney was confused.
Then she realized that Ramona had mis-understood. She tried to explain to Ramona that “for the present” really meant, “for now”.
Poor Ramona.
She tried hard to forgive Miss Binney, since it was her first kindergarten class,
but she was devastated.
She had sat so still, and waited, for nothing.

Has that ever happened to you? Waiting for nothing?
I am not great at waiting myself.
Waiting makes me anxious.
It’s not that I am necessarily an impatient person, but rather, I am the kind of person who needs resolution.
So, I don’t wait around. I am the kind of person that opens Christmas presents early, and can’t wait for others to open my gifts.

I think the outcome of the waiting for me is the crux of the issue. What if what I anticipate, like Ramona, turns out to be nothing? What if my beloved DOESNT think the gift if perfect? I want to know, now.

I have to hand it Ramona, however. Even though waiting was hard for her, she clearly actively waited. She dreamed about the many possibilities of that present. She remained in the tension between the present, and the future, full of an anticipation and wonder. Waiting, is an Art.

Today, we begin a new church year, and a new season, of Advent.
And we, are called to Wait.
Advent gives us the space, and the time to wait with intention for the miracle of Christmas, to happen all over again.

But this isn’t easy, when the stuff of daily life urges, presses us toward the resolution of our waiting. Our commercial culture shouts at us to MAKE Christmas happen. Black Friday yells at us to shop and get a good bargain; Buy Local Saturday stills tells us to go out and shop, Cyber Monday tells us to get online and browse and buy.... Even if we don’t participate in any of these shopping extravaganzas, it’s still hard to avoid the noise of it. Half my newspaper on Thursday was advertisements. It was hard not to notice them.

I am lured, though, by the marketing schemes--hurry up, decorate, wrap gifts, write all the bulletins--get it all done now, so Christmas can happen on my own terms.

And there is the crux of the matter. No matter how hard I might try, I can’t make Christmas happen. God makes Christmas happen.

Advent is the art of waiting for God to show up.
Advent is the time where, in spite of everything else, we are invited to wonder,
and to search for a renewed hope in the simple crazy story of god stealing into our world through the laboring cries of an unwed mother.

Advent is a time of lament, even. Our reading from the prophet Isaiah reveals the ancients crying out to God to rip open the heavens and make the mountains tremble before their adversaries. This is post-exilic Israel, when God’s people were no longer under Babylonian rule, and were invited to return home, to Jerusalem, by their new dominators, the Persians. As it turned out, after years and years and years of waiting, going home wasn’t all that easy. There was tension and unrest, within the community and against the community. There was a terrible reality of the absence of God.

Tear open the heavens, the cries heave forth!

And even in the cry for God to break through the skies, there is confession. “We sinned, our iniquities, like the wind, take us away...” Waiting for God requires a bit of self-reflection.

It’s a bit gloomy, I realize, this text from the ancients.
Yet, in some ways, it gives shape to the distance between now---and the unknown future where we trust that God will break into our world. It provides the setting for why we might actually NEED God...
Christmas is a long way away, and where is God now?
Where is God, when the economy crumbling,
and people pepper spray others in Wal-Mart so they might get the last x-box?
Where is God, when my cancer returns bigger than before,
or when the polar bears are drowning because of climate change,
my God, where are you?
Tear open the heavens, God,
and save them,
give them relief,
light in the darkness,
hope in the hopeless.
We know you can tear those heavens apart...
We know that we aren’t always perfect,
and yet, o God,
Remember us.
Remember us,
Your people.

Indeed, in our Advent waiting, time of listening to the stories of our heart, to come to terms with our own shabby selves, where we turn away from God, and yet still want God. Advent is a time where we recognize, in spite of our questions and cries to an absent God, we still claim to be God’s beloved. “We are the clay, you are the potter, we are the work of your hands, we are ALL your people...”

So we pray, we pray for God to tear open the heavens, because the world needs a kiss of heaven, and yet in Advent, we give over the temptation to make God show up in our image of how we think God should show up.

Our gospel reminds us of this very fact.

Our Mark passage is a piece of a longer text in which Jesus has described a time of terrible suffering and persecution and war. It is “apocalyptic” literature, meaning that the current events and political situations are interpreted cosmically. The setting for those hearing these words from Mark would have lived through the siege of Jerusalem which ended the Jewish Roman war of 66-70CE. These Jews and Christians Jews were expecting God to tear open the heavens, and provide a Messiah, a great warrrior who would lead them to freedom from Roman domination. They expected that God would fight the war with them, and for them.

But Jesus says otherwise. It is AFTER, after the suffering is when I will return. War is not the means by which God’s intentions for fullness of life will come about. Jesus will not exercise power like the world, nor will the world change with conventional tools and tactics...
Keep Awake...
because I will come most unexpectedly...

That’s the hardest part of waiting, don’t you think?
Staying alert, staying open, setting aside your expectations, so when God does show up, we might recognize Her, instead of feeling like we waiting for nothing...

Advent.
Have any of you ever had an Advent Calendar? They come in all shapes and sizes.
I like the ones that look little house, and there are lots of doors on it, one for each day of Advent. Behind each door, there is a surprise--either a question or candy or a Bible verse---that leads one deeper into the wonder of waiting and anticipating God coming to us...
Today,
We have opened the first door,
and behind it,
we are reminded to wait....
To wait like the ancients of Israel,
Knowing our shortfalls and yet being bold enough to demand God to show up and kiss us with heaven...
And to wait like the first century Christians,
Awake and open to the unexpected,
and of course,
to wait like Ramona, a child on her first day of kindergarten,
full of dreams and wonder and imagination
for the many ways God might be born into our world, again, this year.
Amen.