Rosedale United Church

‘Wait Loss’                                                                             November 29, 2009

 Audio                                                                                     Rosedale United Church

(Jeremiah 33:14-16,  Luke 3:1-6 )                                           Doug Norris

 

 

So, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, last Sunday I was on the road, preaching at my old home church in Port Credit.  I hadn’t been back in many years, and I was surprised to notice that as we got there and walked around a bit and went in, my heart was beating faster and I was genuinely affected by being there – I was moved by walking around in the place where we had so many family occasions and special events and I was reminded, on reflection about this, that there is a deep connection between spirit and place – it matters not only that we did certain things or knew certain people but also that this happened right here.  And the places carry the accumulated emotional weight of what unfolded there. 

 

This is why this season we are entering resonates for us – the season of incarnation – enough about distant abstract divinity, notions of God – let’s have a Saviour who is from a place – a Messiah who has a mom and a dad, and siblings who think he’s crazy and then eventually come to love him…   Jesus is perennially attractive because we can almost sort of believe that he was like us – and so, conversely maybe we could be like him.   Him enough like us and us enough like him that we can scrape together enough hope to get by.   If HE could walk through this kind of place and live with such wisdom and hope and bring light like he did – maybe we can do something like this…  Maybe we’ll be ok.  The incarnation.  God in a place…

 

So it was good to be there – and I saw a bunch of people I hadn’t seen in a long time – in fact I was surprised to see some of them were still alive because I recalled that when I was 19 and 20 they seemed really old, and thirty years later I found myself thinking things like ‘well, I’m surprised to see that you’re still around!’.   

 

At the end of the service there was a small lineup to say hello, and at the very end of the line a man I was pretty sure I didn’t know – which was the case.  He was new there, and he had a question for me. 

 

I like questions.  I have wondered sometimes about having a sermon where I just put out some ideas and then we dig in together with whatever questions you come up with…

 

He had a very good question.  Went like this :

 

Why did Jesus not write things down?  And the people who did eventually write things down – the apostles and St Paul – why did they wait so long?   We read just now from First Thessalonians – the earliest writing in the Christian collection – from about 51 – 20 years after Jesus died.    

 

Here’s what I understand to be the reason. Nobody even imagined that they needed to write anything down because the world was about to end anyway.  That is to say, the world they knew was about to end and be swapped for the world they were waiting for.

 

For the first crop of Christians this was the meaning of Jesus – he was a sign, a marker, the One they had been waiting for – the one John had told them about – and now that he had come God would act very soon to end the unjust and suffering conditions they were in and bring about the new earth and the new heavens.   ‘And we shall all be changed – in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye…’   And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed!

 

In one of the gospel passages we could have read today – also from Luke – they ask Jesus when all this will come – he says ‘Oh, you’ll see signs, you’ll know the end is near, nobody – even me – knows when it will come, but it will be before this current generation passes away.’

 

Uh oh.  You see the problem here.   The world of revival meetings is littered with the failed careers of evangelists who made the mistake of putting a date on when things would happen.   The trick apparently is to be vague.

 

Two ways to read this.   Read it literally, and Jesus was wrong.   That makes for a very brief conversation.  Or, read it somewhat metaphorically – our specialty – worlds begin and end all the time.   Not many years after Jesus, during the  lifetime of some of the people who knew him – the Romans crushed Jerusalem and the Jews were scattered to different lands.   A world ended.   A new world had to begin.   Happens all the time. 

 

A family is one their way to Toronto that not long ago had a life in another place and a violence erupted and now they are refugees and about to come into our care  and they don’t speak a word of English and we don’t speak a word of Arabic– a world has ended and a new world is about to begin.  

 

Darren and Jennifer – you used to have weekends to yourselves and quiet evenings to watch movies and now Kerrington is in your family and whoa! It’s not Kansas anymore, Toto, is it?   A world has ended and another, remarkably delightful world is beginning…

 

You get the point.  But to be Christian is to have this story in our family tree : we live in between two times – the old and the new.

 

Our people have forever understood the dream of God for the human community –  goes like this : there will be a Day, when swords will be beat into plowshares, and when women won’t be beaten by their partners, a day when we will build houses to live in and we won’t build new weapons to blow them down…  All this is in Isaiah – you can read it there…  A magnificent Day is coming, a feast on the holy mountain for all people, sorrow and sighing flee away…

 

I sometimes call this the ‘Cheque is in the mail theology’.   Just wait.  I promise.   It’s coming.  Just around the corner.  Hold tight….    This is the traditional message of the season of Advent.   Longing, yearning, expectation.  A Messiah will come.   Soon.  Then we will be OK.

 

And we know where we really live – if Jesus thought that Great Time of God was coming very soon and it didn’t, then are we not foolish to expect it now?   Was that old story so much pie in the sky?  Should be not just knuckle down and make the best of this day?

 

Maybe this day is what we get and we should learn not to dream and to wait but to be mindful, to be present in the moment…

 

So to live in the Christian tradition is to live in this tension between two times.  To live presently in the future.   The future we seek and which we believe is the dream of God is conditioned by the present – we call out with Micah Let justice roll like a mighty river! precisely because we see injustice rolling over people, and we call out, with Isaiah : Come, all you who are hungry, come to the banquet! because we are stunned by how much hunger there still is…   The future we long for is shaped by the present we are experiencing, and so we position ourselves in the present as those who are shaped by a future that is different.

 

Let me coin a phrase :  people of faith are ‘bi-chronic’ – there are two times we live in and they are wrapped around each other.

 

So when Bob Wilton and his massive crew go through the neighbourhood each November gathering 20,000 lbs of canned food – this is a commentary on the present in which people are hungry that ought to make us wince and it is a marker of the future in which there is a feast and everyone is at the table and it ought to make us hopeful.  Is Bob and this team living in the present, or in the future?  Absolutley!

 

Here’s my read : 

 

If we fail to long – fail to expect – fail to stare at the far horizon , if we fail to always understand that we  are becoming new people , then we undermine God’s future.

 

And, if we fail to notice the moment that is at hand, fail to adequately look around right now, then we discount and undermine the Holy Presence and we miss the bilingual God who fluently speaks about both tomorrow and about today.

  

 

I am, I know,  still the ‘old man’ Paul wrote about, the unredeemed – full of sin, and, I am the ‘new man’ Jesus knew I could become – turned toward light and full of life.

 

And while I do believe that I am (we are) on a somewhat linear journey from the old ways to the new ways, on nay given day I never know who is going to show up, or in what order.

 

 

And all of us taken together – this congregation, which some of you have joined today, we are a community of garden variety humans, trouble and beauty,

 

And, at the same time, we are the Church, gathering ourselves together, in from the world, not because we think we are better than the world but because we believe that when we come together we see a light, that is otherwise difficult to see, and we come together into this light which is light for the world and then we are sent back out into the world differently.

 

And at any given time we can’t be sure which is going to show up, but we understand that we speak both languages.  So while we wait to become the un-mistakably redeemed we will continue to wait as those who are in the posture of the future that will come.

 

 

So what is it we are waiting for – each of us in our Advent – our own expectations and longings?  We are waiting for work, for love, for justice, for peace, for clean air, for cures, for more life, or for death… We are waiting for success and fulfillment and for meaning….

 

The things we wait for will inevitably fail us, and in with all the delights we will be disappointed often.  Deaths will stun us and even God will disappoint us by failing to act like, well, like God.

 

So what will be defining for us, then, will not be outcomes – it will be the character of our waiting.   If we will live as those who long for a future, and who live in the present day, with all its ambiguities and losses, as though the future is real and true.

 

C S Lewis – in ‘Perlandra’ :  “The great dance does not wait…we speak not of when it will begin…It has begun, from before always…”

 

So in these days of waiting now, in your longings and in everyway  – prepare the way of the Lord who is coming and who is here…