Hurry Up and Wait!

Jeremiah 33:14-16

            More and more it seems to me that life is moving at a faster pace than ever before.  Like little ants marching, we are always going and going; we’re on the move traveling in all directions at once.  It’s a frantic, frenzied pace we run full of angst and anxiety. 

The irony of it all is that no matter how fast we move or how fast our technology evolves, we still find ourselves waiting; going nowhere fast.  In the car, we find ourselves waiting for the light to change: did you know that there are eighteen traffic lights on Old York Road between our church and the Turnpike?  That’s a lot of lights and that’s a lot of waiting. We wait for buses, planes and trains to take us where we want to go: there is nothing quite like standing on a hot and humid subway platform sweating through your shirt waiting and praying that the train will come real soon.   For home repairs, how many of us wait for the plumber, the electrician, and the cable guy to come on their scheduled day anytime between 8:30am and 5pm.  We wait in line at the supermarket, Target & Marshall’s waiting to check out and get on with the day, especially on Black Friday and during the weeks leading up to Christmas Day: lots of lines and lots of traffic equals lots of waiting.  We wait to ride the latest amusement park ride at Great Adventure or Dorney Park or Disney World.  We run and hurry from one ride to the next to wait one hour in line for a two minute ride.  Hurry up and wait!

    In today’s text, the ancient Israelites are waiting, too; not for the light to change or to buy Christmas presents or to ride the Hydra at Dorney Park.  They are waiting to return home, for they have been living in exile in Babylon for what will be almost sixty years.  They lost their temple, their homeland, and everything they once knew.  Put yourself in their shoes: imagine being taken away from your home and all that you know, to live in another country and not knowing when you may return home.  The Israelites are oppressed by the Babylonians waiting for God to help them.  Their situation appears hopeless.  They may be wondering, “What’s God doing?  Has God forgotten about us?”

Jeremiah’s prophetic words speak to the hopelessness amongst the exiles who are waiting and waiting for God to act.  These words are words of salvation promising the restoration of the lineage of the Davidic line of kings and the Levitical priesthood.  The promised leadership of the future will render justice and righteousness in the community; a community that understands itself to be delivered, redeemed and cared for by the Lord; a community committed to all the ways God has defined as right living in relationship with God and neighbor.  These verses from Jeremiah set before us a detailed picture of complete economic and social renewal.  The vision of the future of God’s blessing is not simply a spiritual, personal one.  It is all-encompassing, richly material, life-enhancing, socially sustaining, and enjoyable where politics and religion play a special role in the restoration.  The exiled Jews are hoping, dreaming, praying and waiting for this; to be delivered from exile and Babylonian oppression to live in their homeland a new and restored people.

What hopes and dreams have you been waiting, praying and longing for?  Today is the first day of the season of Advent, the time when we look to the past and remember the birth of Christ.  It’s also the time when we look to the future in an attitude of expectancy over what God has yet to do in the world; a future when the resurrected Jesus comes again to claim the world as his; a future when Christ will rule the world with compassion and power in a time of restoration and salvation.  The baby Jesus who came will one day come again.

Advent is a season of waiting; a season of nearly but not yet.  The coming of Advent nudges the church out of “ordinary time” with the persistent good news that God’s grace and redemption is just round the corner; that it is about to present fresh possibilities for deliverance and wholeness.  We wait for the new things God is doing in our lives and in the world.  We wait for the still, small voice in the quiet, solitude of our hearts to tell us who we are and what we are called to do.  For things in our lives are not necessarily what they appear to be because there is something big happening on a grander scale that we see dimly in the distance. 

Waiting is hard work because other things in our lives distract us and get in the way.  The responsibility of taking care of a family, whether it’s providing enough food to eat or paying the mortgage or the rent or for buying clean clothes to wear is hard work.  We may have difficulties related to our work and careers.  Maybe you’ve just been laid off and you’re looking for a new job.  Maybe there is a tremendous amount of stress and pressure in your office, where the threat of layoffs looms overhead and dominates your thoughts.  You find yourself waiting not knowing exactly when & where the axe will drop next.

Both things worthy and things trivial can obscure our vision, serving as a barrier to block the view of the approaching Kingdom of God where it remains just out of sight.  For things are not necessarily what they appear to be; we need to see the forest from the trees; take a macro-view rather than a micro-view.  To only focus on the things that are close at hand and right in front of our face is to miss the larger, broader picture. 

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah…a righteous branch will spring up for David.”  This promise, once intended for judgment by God, is now reconfigured as a message of hope and salvation for God’s people.  It is a promise that brings hope and assurance for a better future for which they wait for with great expectancy and faith.

Are you willing to wait for Christ to act in your life?  What will it take for you to wait on Christ?  When you get right down to it, the Lord our God is the one in control of our lives and the world. 

What I want may or may not be what God wants for my life.  When I look back over the years and recall all the career aspirations I had I realize that God is always steering us in the direction he wants us to travel.  After three years of Little League I realized I wasn’t going to play shortstop for the Yankees.  When I graduated from college, I realized that I didn’t want to go to law school as badly as I had thought.  And in those times I wondered what I was called to do; what was the purpose of my life.  I did a lot of praying, longing and waiting to discover what my calling was.  I waited for God to act and reveal his purpose for my life.  And I believe I am answering that call right now as I stand in this pulpit, when I write an email of encouragement, and share the Good News with people young and old.

As we wait for the coming of the Living Christ, may we live each day with an attitude of expectancy and excitement knowing that in the midst of our fast paced lives and frenzied schedules, the Lord God, the one who was, who is and who is to come, is always present and trying to get our attention. 

Beginning today, I pray that during Advent each of us commit ourselves to make time each day to wait upon the Lord; a special time without the distractions of everyday life; a time when we look beyond what’s in front of us and see the big picture; the macro-view; to see the hand of God at work in our life and in the world.

What are you waiting for, praying for and longing for?  What is getting in the way?