First Sunday of Advent (Isaiah 64:1-9)  11/27/2011

I have just returned from enjoying some restful time with my family over the Thanksgiving holiday. Throughout the past week, as I was reflecting on the coming season of Advent (the season of waiting for the coming of Christ), I noticed that there can be quite a bit of waiting involved with taking vacation. The practice of waiting begins fairly soon into the vacation, perhaps waiting at the ticket counter of the airport or at the security line. There can be waiting for a rental car; waiting for a table at the restaurant, or waiting for your favorite part of the vacation to finally begin. And if you are even a little bit like me, waiting can sometimes become a frustrating exercise. As I waited in the security line at the airport, I was finally the next person to have my boarding pass checked by the security person. But due to the backup in the scanning line ahead I was just out of reach of the security person and so I needed to wait a bit longer. After a few moments had passed, I noticed that the line to my right was completely empty, so I quickly dropped below the boundary and walked the final three feet to hand my pass over to be checked. The security person did not appear too pleased with me, but checked my boarding pass and allowed me through the gate. As I was moving on he raised his hand to someone behind me and said, “I am sorry but this lane is the Priority Security line and you must go back to where you were unless you have a Priority Pass.” You see, there was no waiting if you had a Priority Pass.

Waiting, however, was exactly the challenge that faced the people of Isaiah’s community in ancient Jerusalem. As we hear the words of the prophet this morning, we listen to the frustration of the Israelites as they wait for the coming of the Lord in Jerusalem. A remnant of faithful Jews had returned to Jerusalem after the long days of exile in Babylon and they waited for God to restore their city. They waited and waited; they suffered continued frustrations and their days seemed futile…no Priority Pass to avoid the long days of waiting. We hear Isaiah cry out, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence.” (Isaiah 64:1) The glory of the Lord appeared to be absent in their sight: try as they might; wish as they might, there was no relief from their days of waiting. Again, we hear Isaiah call out, “There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us.” (Isaiah 64:7) The faithful remnant had returned to Jerusalem and they wait, but they discover that their days of waiting do not yield what they wished for; each day like the one before, filled with a longing that seemed to be only more of the same.

There is, however, more to the story of Israel’s waiting on the Lord. We hear in the words of the prophet Isaiah more than a simple wish of the restoration of the glory of the city of Jerusalem; more than the desire to end the waiting on God’s favor. Isaiah recognized that beyond the waiting for the restoration of Jerusalem, there was a time of waiting for the restoration of Israel’s relationship with God. Although each day of waiting may have appeared to be the same, there was an important difference in each day. There was and is an element of the waiting that speaks to our relationship with God. Isaiah speaks of this relationship with God as he says, “O Lord…we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” (Isaiah 64:8) We might spend our days waiting, but we are waiting on the One who made us; we are waiting on the One who knows us better than we know ourselves.

As we now undertake this season of waiting we must ask ourselves: is there more to our waiting as we enter into this season of Advent? How can Advent be more to us than just another time of waiting before Christmas arrives? How can this busy holiday season be a fruitful time of preparation as we wait for our Savior, Emmanuel, to be with us? The late Henri Nouwen, a priest and well-known author, provides two thoughtful elements of waiting for us to consider in his Advent reflection, “Waiting for God.”[i] First, Nouwen reminds us that we wait for the coming of Christ in the same way as did Mary and Elizabeth; in the same way as Zechariah and Simeon waited – we wait as people who have been given a promise. Nouwen writes, “People who wait have received a promise that allows them to wait. They have received something that is at work in them, like a seed that has started to grow…We can only really wait if what we are waiting for has already begun for us. So waiting is never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a movement from something to something more.”[ii] Nouwen’s insight that we are a people waiting on the promise of God reminds us that we are not simply in line at the department store or at the airport security line; we are a people growing in to the full stature of the promise of our lives with Christ. And to grow in Christ is a future that is filled with promises that are certain but quite unknown to us. Many of us enjoy uncertainty about as much as we like to wait, but Nouwen’s second element of waiting is that our time of waiting is a time that must be filled with hope, not wishes. Waiting filled with hope is an open-ended type of waiting. “Open-ended waiting is hard for us because we tend to wait for something very concrete, for something we wish to have,” says Nouwen. He continues, “Hope is something very different. Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes…Hope is always open-ended…(and) to wait open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life.”[iii] Nouwen’s insight points toward an important element of our waiting on God: our time of waiting is not simply a “time out” as we await the fulfillment of our wishes; our time of waiting is an active and productive time of waiting for the action of God to be present to us.

Today we enter the season of Advent: the season of waiting for the coming of Christ; the season filled with the promise and hope that comes from Christ’s bursting into our world. As we travel through this season of preparation, may your days of waiting be filled with joyful expectation, knowing that Christ’s promise of love is already at work in each of you.