Waiting
a sermon based on Luke 2:22-40
by Rev. Thomas Hall

A childhood scene that I always recall during the first Sunday after Christmas is that of Pa--my grandfather--sitting awkwardly around a metallic silver tree on Christmas Eve. We would each open a single gift while the rest waited, flashing their cameras flashed cheering on the gift-opener. But when a gift was handed to Pa we all knew the ritual. He would take out a pocket knife from his bib overalls and carefully select the adhesive-cutting blade. He would turn the gift on one end and bring blade to scotch tape and sever the two. To everyone in the room and especially to the one who sat next in line, such slow mo- was painful. One side done, Pa would turn the gift 180 degrees and perform the same slow dismemberment of tape and paper. Now belly side up, the final operation began-cutting the final piece of tape. Carefully peeling the wrapping the paper away so it could be reused, Pa would finally remove the lid to discover a new cotton flannel shirt-the gift that was always appropriate for west-central Minnesota farmers. Waiting, I soon discovered, is not a gift but a virtue.

How well are you with waiting? It’s never easy to wait for anything of importance-for Christmas, for United Airlines to finally land with gramma, for morning to relieve a sleepless night, for healing after a harsh word wounds, for labor to be over, for the child to be born, for death to come. It is never easy to wait.

Morris Weiser is also used to waiting. He was among the few who survived the Janowska concentration camp in Poland. After the war he had spent his career as a butcher in New York’s lower east side. Until his death, he had one consuming passion: to keep his local synagogue alive. The synagogue has few Sabbath worshipers now, but Morris put all his savings into this place, and succeeded in keeping it alive by sheer determination. "When God saved me from Hitler," he said, "I promised that in any country I come I will do something for God."

Can’t miss the synagogue today. Peeling paint, deteriorating floors, falling plaster. "I’m broken down like this synagogue," he confesses. He had begun life as a rising med student, but now his youth and money are gone and all he has left is the synagogue. So old Morris Weiser does what he can and he waits. "Looking at the empty pews he says, "Someday there’ll be a lot of Jews here."

Meet two other another people did the same thing Morris has done for years. Luke adds Simeon and Anna to his tableau of the Christmas story. Both had clung to hope and waited and waited as the decades passed. They both lived in Jerusalem and both anticipated the Messiah’s coming. God would surely come-eventually-to save his people. So they had waited. Luke describes Simeon as "a good man, a man who lived in the prayerful expectancy of help for Israel." And about Anna he says, "She never left the Temple area, worshiping night and day with her fastings and prayers."

Can you imagine? Every morning getting out of bed, cupping a mug of coffee and going out to the porch to wait? Boring life, I think. Not many could bear such harsh discipline. We either want it while its still hot, still wet, still shiny, or fresh, or we grow disinterested and look elsewhere for something more engaging. But to stand around and wait for decades? No thanks. Gotta go.

Not many can attain the balance between action and hope. I think it was Richard Foster who once remarked that what our world needs today are not more clever people, but deep people. Waiting for God, waiting in hope produces few clever people, but it make us deep people. People deep in wisdom. Deep in endurance over those long and dark hours. It’s not surprising then in light of the demands of waiting for God, that many are lured by the temptation to settle for something else, something less.

Jesuit William F. Lynch says that there are two kinds of waiting. One kind waits because "there is nothing else to do." That’s true. We can wait for God by becoming passive toward our world. We’re waiting for God, we might say, which means that it’s all up to God to come on the scene and right the wrongs. Peace-making, people-feeding, and any war on drugs are best left to God, or to the government-provided it doesn’t come with too high a price tag on the tax-payer dollar.

That kind of waiting around is more like loitering in the mall. Nothing really on the agenda except window shop, hit the arcade maybe or pick up a few items that happen into our line of vision.

That kind of waiting around is like sitting in a darkened theater watching those endless blurred and faded slides about movie trivia flash before our glazed eyes until we finally get to the trailers and then the main movie.

Lynch says that the other kind of waiting is born out of hope. The decision to engage in this hopeful kind of waiting . . .

. . . Is one of the great human acts. It includes the enlarging of one’s perspective beyond a present moment . . . it simply chooses to wait, and in so doing gives the future the only chance it has to emerge.

This kind of waiting seems to me to be more like the moments before our guest is to arrive. There’s work to be done. Did you get the floor vacuumed? Good, how about the bookshelves dusted? Can you get a fire started in the fireplace? Sweep, sweep, sweep, bake, bake, bake. Every sweep and every cookie is done in the expectation of the guest who is about to ring the doorbell.

Or how about being down at the gym? It’s a good thing, we’ve finally convinced ourselves, to be down there. So we’ve picked out the wardrobe and are walking around the new body-building machinery. Hopeful waiting demands that we do the crunches, press the peck decks and burn the triceps as a way to look beyond the present and to give the future a chance to emerge.

Simeon and Anna did not wait because "there was nothing else to do," but because they nourished hope. Therefore their waiting was not a vacuum of activity. They continued to work, to worship, to anticipate, perform acts of justice, to pray and to live life according as a way to honor God. Luke says that they served God-what a way to defy the darkness! They cherished a hope that the light of God would come. So they waited by doing what they could.

The end of their story is that God did come to them. But not exactly in the form or size they were expecting! They probably envisioned a slightly larger than human Sampson to walk in and save the day; instead, they saw God in the baby borne by two poor parents. So poor were they that they couldn’t even afford the normal price for temple services, but rather opted for a pair of birds. So there they came an odd sort of parade-a man, a womyn, two birds, and a baby. And Simeon’s and Anna’s wait was done.

So hear the good news of waiting in hope. Pray for God to fill the pews with young people, but don’t be surprised if instead God comes, not bringing more people but more mission. Pray for God to bring us renewal and spiritual growth, but don’t be surprised if God comes first bringing another struggle. Pray for God to come and bring healing, but don’t be surprised if God comes to the graveside saying, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." Pray for God to come with comfort, but don’t be surprised is God comes walking through the doors with uncertain parents carrying a baby and two birds.

Old Anna and old Simeon knew when God finally came. It was worth the wait for they had seen the fulfillment of Israel’s hope. They knew that God had indeed come-fulfilling, yet defying all expectations. Aged Simeon lifts up his eyes and says, "My eyes have seen your salvation, O Lord," to which he added, "This child is set for fall and rising of many in Israel." Every coming of God will meet our needs, yet violate our lives.

The God of Simeon and Anna will God will come to us also. And when he comes he will both fulfill our yearning, but explode our expectations. So until then, let’s just wait . . . and see. Amen.