A Waiting Place

A sermon preached at Old South Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Hallowell, Maine
December 2, 2007.
Text:  Isaiah 2:1-5
The Rev. Susan M. Reisert, Minister

            Waiting.  Not exactly my strong suit.  Waiting.  Not a big fan of it at all.

            Mention Advent and one of the first words that comes to mind is:  the dreaded word, waiting.  Waiting for Christmas.  Waiting for the Second Coming, to some.  But, it’s all about waiting.  And, certainly for the younger set, and perhaps a few of the not so young:  waiting for the jolly fellow in the red suit and long white beard and the big bag of presents to make his visit.

            The subject of waiting makes me think of when we were living in London a few years ago.  We didn’t have a car and we never rented a car during the several months that we were there.  We got around on foot and on public transport.  We spent  a lot of time—I mean a lot of time—waiting.  Waiting for trains, above ground and underground.  Waiting for buses.  Once or twice waiting in the queue for a taxi.  Waiting to get tickets for a train.  Waiting under a tree or under some other shelter during a horrific downpour that would occasionally show up unannounced—almost always when the kids and I were in some park or open air space.

            For some lines of the London underground and even for a few bus lines, station platforms and waiting areas would have these large electronic displays that would tell you when the next train or bus would be coming along—10 minutes, 9 minutes, 8, 7, 6 minutes and so on.  The big countdown.  It made the wait at least a little more tolerable.  At least you knew that your ride was on its way.

            Waiting.  Not exactly an aspect of life that I relish.

            But, waiting is a traditional theme of Advent; a traditional topic for one of the Advent candles when they are lit, usually at the beginning—reminding us of the long, long road ahead.

           The problem is that when we engage Advent waiting, our posture often seems much too passive.  We wait—whether it be for the Christ child or for the Second Coming of the Christ—and we tend to sit back and get passive.  Let God do the work and all that.  Who are we to interfere?  Just like our experience in London.  It’s not like there was anything we could do to make the train or bus come any faster.  We just passively waited.

            But, when it comes to Advent, this passive posture is a problem.  Our level of activity may have risen—extra rehearsal time for the choir, a crew of church folk that come in to decorate, the CE program gears up for the Pageant, not to mention everything that must be done in our personal lives.  But, most of that is focused on Christmas and not so much on Advent.  For Advent, we are mostly passive.

            To illustrate my point this morning, I’d like to have us consider one of the critical parts of Advent and Christmas, an aspect that is often reduced, at best, to metaphor.   And that is, pregnancy and childbirth.  We sometimes refer to the pregnant anticipation of Advent, we might consider the situation of Mary and her cousin Elizabeth—two pregnant women in the most unusual of circumstances—but when’s the last time you really thought about the relationship, the connection, between our Advent waiting and pregnancy?

            Whether you are pregnant or ever have been, whether your wife has been pregnant, or a sister, a relative, a friend, or co-worker, etc., pregnancy, in reality, seems anything but passive.  Pregnancy, in the real world, does not seem to have anything to do with just sitting back and letting God do the rest, waiting around for the big event as if we have nothing to do with it, as if we are just waiting for that train finally to arrive.  Pregnancy, in real life, is full of activity.  There are things to do, preparations to be made.

            Have you ever heard of a young family waiting until the birth of the child to buy a car seat, a crib, some little pieces of clothing, diapers, and all the rest of the stuff that those little creatures require?  Hey look, we just had a baby!  Well, I guess it’s time to think about a name, and figure out where the child will sleep.

            Now, I realize there is the rare case of the woman who arrives at the hospital in terrible pain, who doesn’t seem to know that she’s pregnant, but she’s ready to give birth—seems to be a favorite story line of those television hospital dramas.  I’m talking today not about the rare and absurd, but about the average situation.  Couple finds itself pregnant and a whole new bunch of things need to get done and a whole bunch of preparations need to be made.  And, everyone around the couple gets into the act in some way.

            In addition to this preparation mode, there is, importantly, the pregnancy itself—the woman’s shape slowly begins to change, her level of feeling well changes (some feeling great and some feeling not well at all).  There are doctor visits and tests and vitamins the size of a horse pill.  Maybe her diet changes to accommodate the growing, and demanding child.  Eventually, movement is felt—sometimes not at the best times.  Why does it seem that the kid is up all night?

            So, it is odd that we fail to make this significant connection between Advent waiting and pregnancy.  It is as if Mary is just floating along without a care in the world—just a pleasant visit with her cousin and a little road trip on a donkey to an unfamiliar place just to be counted.

            It is strange that we don’t connect these two more closely.  It’s hard to avoid the whole business of pregnancy, even if one experiences it only from a distance.  Especially these days, when women continue to work right up until their due date (Margaret, by the way, was born one day BEFORE my last day of work before maternity leave, so I didn’t get to lead that worship service on December 8^th of that year) and pregnant women are not expected to cover up, wearing those billowing jumpers and maternity frocks.

            So, what are the most valuable of the lessons that we might learn from bringing Mary’s actual pregnancy into our Advent waiting, waiting as she might have, and waiting still for what is yet to come?

            It seems to be that one of the most important lessons is that in our Advent waiting, we live in the midst of a very real, and very crucial tension.  On the one hand, we know what the outcome will be, at least to some extent.  The child will be born.  Just as we recognize the significance of the babe in the manger, so too we recognize the reality of the child that grows in a woman’s womb.  That child will have something of the mother and something of the father in his or her person, in the physical body and personality.  That child will be recognizable, a human being, with fingers and toes and ears and a nose.

            Yet, the other part of the tension is that we know that even though the child has something of the mother and something of the father, that child will have a life all its own.  That child will be unique, not like anyone else—even if it is a multiple.

            This is the tension with which we live and struggle during the Advent season:  the tension between knowing full-well who and what is being born and the recognition that this life continues to be born in us and in others in ways that are unexpected and surprising.

            So, this Advent, it is a time to create a waiting place.  It is a time to be waiting in a special way, waiting for what we know and for the unknown, all at the same time.  This is a waiting time, not a passive time, a time to reflect, consider, prepare, and do all of those things that are necessary for our hearts and our minds to be ready to receive this wonderful gift, this gift of new life.  What do you need to do to get ready for the gift?  What do you, what do we, need to do to prepare?

            The significance of our taking seriously this time of waiting, of being pregnant not only with anticipation but in that tension between the life that is familiar to us and the wonder of promised new life is made even more apparent in our scripture lesson this morning from Isaiah, in the vision from Isaiah of a time when the peoples will gather in the presence of God and be ready for instruction and will learn peace:  “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

            To be in Advent waiting is not to be passive, nor is it simply to skip to the big event of the story and to think only of the image of Christmas.  To be in Advent waiting is to be pregnant with anticipation, pregnant with possibilities, pregnant with the reality that our God is at work in our midst, in ways that are known to us and in ways that are not yet known to us. 

            Could it be that Advent is really about God waiting, God waiting for us to prepare our hearts and our minds for what is really and truly possible—for justice and peace and hope to reign?

            This is a waiting time, a waiting place, a special time of possibility, a special time to be hopeful, a special time to be in God’s presence, to be waiting for the familiar and the unfamiliar and to be in the practice of allowing the shape of who we are to change, and to care for that new life, that new, young life—yet to be born—that it may grow.

            This is a special time to be pregnant with possibilities and hope, pregnant with the assurance of God’s great love for us and God’s desire for us for the future.

            Praise be to God.  Amen.