Wait
For It
Then they returned to Jerusalem from the hill
called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city.
When they arrived, they went upstairs
to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James
and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus
and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. They all joined together constantly
in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his
brothers. Acts 1:12-14
Psychologist Kim Hall writes:
Waiting is interpreted as pain. ... People walk into
my office and say they are Christians, but I see no difference except that
they want to be happy and now expect God to make it so. The problem is that,
in this country, you can have what you want when you want it most of the
time. ... People like the fact that they can buy a 50-foot tree and instantly
plant it in their yard. Why on earth would anyone want to wait on relationships
or wait on God?1.
Waiting is hardly ever a favorite passtime. I don't know if our generation
is more impatient than other generations, but I read a while ago that engineers
who produced music CDs were concerned about the (at that time) three second
interval between songs on a typical CD. Young people espcially thought the
pause was too long and became impatient waiting for the next tune.
Waiting can be difficult, partly because we lose control of the process
when we have to wait.
On a sabbath following his resurrection, Jesus takes his disciples to the
Mount of Olives.
In the discussion, they ask him, "Lord are you going to restore the kindgom,
NOW?
This is what they have been waiting for and what better time?.
"Lord, when are you going to act?", is their question.
I have prayed that prayer, more than once.
Not to restore David's kingdom, but that would be welcome, but to answer
whatever was my pressing need at the time.
Jesus does not debate whether he will or will not do what they are impatient
about. The timing of God's purposes are God's alone. In Mark's gospel, Jesus
says that even he does not know when this will happen.
But he tells them they have two tasks:
- To be his witnesses at home and abroad.
- To wait for the power of God to accomplish this task.
Jesus doesn't say to them, "make sure you get together on Pentecost because
that is when God is going to come."
He says, "wait".
When are you going to act, God?
The answer is sometimes "wait".
Not long before
his death, Henri Nouwen wrote a book called Sabbatical
Journeys. He writes
about some friends of his who were trapeze artists, called the Flying Roudellas.
They told Nouwen
there's a special relationship between flyer and catcher on the trapeze.
The flyer is the one that lets go, and the catcher is the one that catches.
As the flyer swings high above the crowd on the trapeze, the moment comes
when he must let go. He arcs out into the air. His job is to remain as still
as possible and wait for the strong hands of the catcher to pluck him from
the air.
One of the
Flying Roudellas told Nouwen, "The flyer must never try to catch the catcher."
The flyer must wait in absolute trust. The catcher will catch him, but he
must wait. 2.
I suppose that is part of the difficulty of waiting: we are not the actors.
We wait in faith.
Sometimes it's preferrable to be told a straightout "no".
Waiting calls on us to do something that is hard for us.
We are called on to let someone else be in control both of the acting and
of the timing.
Waiting is an act of faith.
It presumes that we will not be allowed to fall.
We want to reach out and grab hold, whether it's of answers or results.
In her book,
Nouwen Then, Luci
Shaw writes:
I'm an impatient,
restless person. Slowing down and waiting seem like a waste of time. Yet
waiting seems to be an inevitable part of the human condition.
Henri Nouwen
said, "Waiting is a period of learning. The longer we wait, the more we
hear about him for whom we are waiting."
Eugene Peterson's
paraphrase of Romans 8:22-25 resonates with Nouwen: "Waiting does not diminish
us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged
in the waiting" (The Message).
During a time
of waiting, God is vibrantly at work within us.3
But what waiting does is requires us to still the inner clamor for action
and gratification.
A classic of devotional literature is Practicing
the Presence of God by bother Lawrence.
Brother Lawrence wrote of
the importance of the heart left vacant. He then added two words that make
all the difference: for God. The heart left vacant for God, the soul emptied,
swept clean, and ordered for God will become a fertile ground for the growth
of God's grace.
Yes, at
first this is very difficult. Anything that creates a vacancy in our heart
is painful. We ache with emptiness. We long to fill the void. We are emotionally,
mentally, and physically weakened and 'the flesh' is vulnerable. Waiting
for God, especially if this is new to us, conflicts with our patience and
self-will. And waiting for God without expectation of the outcome, especially
when we ache with emptiness, pushes our faith to the limit. 4
There is another way to frame our waiting.
From our side of the experience we feel alone, perhaps even abandoned. Is
God really with us when we wait, or too busy elsewhere to notice. Or has
He turned away from us because either we or our prayers are unimportant.
Neither.
God lets us wait because in the waiting we demonstrate the value of what
we wait for.
Waiting is an act of worship.
It is one way we put our ego aside and focus on God, our source.
Waiting allows us time just to be with God, to let God be with us.
It gives us the time to quiet our clamor and prepare our spirits to hear
from our creator.
And waiting is a way of valuing.
A man and woman spotted each other on the morning
New York-to-Washington air shuttle. Sparks flew, but no words were exchanged,
even as they stood together in the taxi line at Washington National. She
got in a cab, looked back, and saw him running after her. She begged the
cabbie to stop, but he kept going. In desperation, she scrawled her phone
number on a piece of paper and pressed it against the back window. But she
knew the man was too far away to read it.
So she went to her meeting. But she couldn't
stop thinking about him. So she feigned illness and returned to the airport
to wait for him to catch the shuttle back to New York. She waited all day
and got on the 9 P.M. flight alone.
In New York, dejected, she stepped into the
gate area—and he was there. "What took you so long?" he asked. "I've been
waiting all day."
According to Dini Von Mueffling in her book,
The 50 Most Romantic Things Ever Done, the couple married and
have two children.
The author says she heard the story from a
friend of a friend. Whether this is an urban myth or a true story, it pictures
something wonderfully true about God. In his great love, God waits for us.
5.
Jesus says, behold I stand at the door and knock.
Jesus waits for us.
If nothing else, we wait on God as a sign of respect.
So when you pray and you hear no immediate answer, wait.
It will do you good, and it shows respect for the King.
Preached May 4, 2008
Dr. Harold McNabb
West Shore Presbyterian Church
Victoria, British Columbia
Notes
1. Psychologist Kim Hall, interviewed in The Door
(Sept.-Oct. 1992). Christianity Today, Vol. 37, no. 9.
2. John Ortberg,
from sermon "Waiting on God," Preaching Today #199
3. Luci Shaw, in
Nouwen Then, edited by
Christopher de Vinck (Zondervan, 1999)
4. http://www.practicegodspresence.com/reflections/gospel.html
5. Dini Von Mueffling, The 50 Most Romantic Things Ever
Done, (Doubleday, 1997)
Resources Consulted
Preaching Today
Return to Main Sermon
Page
Email Harold McNabb
