What Are You Waiting For?

What Are You Waiting For?
By Greg McDonell
December 4, 2011
Reading: Isaiah 40:1-11

So here we are. It is another Advent Season in the ever-cycling liturgical year. It seems to come and go so quickly only to return again and again. Last Wednesday night we celebrated our annual Hanging of the Greens Service. And on Christmas Eve we will, again, gather for our Candlelight Communion Service of Lessons and Carols.

I have come to believe that these seasons are important to us precisely because we do things basically the same way each year. The steadiness of our seasonal traditions become more and more important as the world we live in moves ever faster…whirling and twirling at a dizzying pace. We love these times of the year because they offer to us some constancy in life. (Pause)

We are asked at this time of the year to wait, and watch and prepare ourselves for the coming of… WHAT? What is it exactly that you are waiting and preparing for? Why is this Season so important? What draws us to its possibilities?

O, we can talk about the Christ Child…the babe in the manger wrapped in swaddling cloths. And we can lift sweet voices to sing…Away in a manger no crib for his bed…. We can hang the Chrismons and offer gifts and drink warm cider…….but what are we waiting for?

I believe we are waiting for the same things the people of Isaiah’s time were waiting for…we are waiting for Comfort and a Tender Word because all of us live in some form or fashion of EXILE. And I am convinced that unless we get in touch with what separates us from God and one another we will miss the very thing for which we wait. You see it is so difficult to comfort the comfortable. That may be the very reason the sinners seemed to recognize Jesus and the righteous were blind.

Today’s text from Isaiah is, apart from Jesus himself, the clearest scriptural revelation of who God is and who we are. For Thirty-Nine chapters we have learned that the People of Jerusalem found themselves in EXILE because they had turned their backs on God. Their exile was God's punishment...how else, some will say, can it be explained. Little doubt some of that was true.

But here we get this marvelous picture of a loving and gracious God. We hear God say, “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, and that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all their sins.” No call for repentance here! No pre-conditions set out! Abundant GRACE…..Freely Given……double for all their wrong-doing! Compassion, not condemnation for the exiled ones…for you and me.

God has not abandoned the people. The divine is coming to them. But the pathway is not through the cities and towns like a conquering warrior but through the desert and the wilderness. And so we are reminded of the wandering Aramean and the Exodus journey of deliverance through the wilderness of the Sinai, and our Lord’s 40 days in that tempting place.

Little question that this coming of the Almighty is comfort, not withering judgment, as “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.” (vs. 4)

This marvelous Isaiah passage offered hope to an exiled people whose hope was growing deathly dim. A clear message about God must be seen in today's passage........Hope.... their hope and ours lies in our understanding of the Sovereignty of God and in the Grace of God.

You see what they were waiting for and what we still wait for is an overturning of our present situation. In their case they were released from their captive state, from the lethal effects of empire domination not by a repetition of military strategy. Here is good news for the poor, the joy of God's kingly return to Zion, but neither for a Davidic monarchy nor its temple priesthood. No, here is sight for the blind, where blindness means something more than simply physical inability to see. Here we find the true shepherd of Israel, leading and carrying the sheep producing an ethos of trust, gentleness and love.

Isn't that what we are waiting for? Are we not looking and waiting and hoping for that Servant of God to come who will startle nations and render kings speechless and oppressors impotent......the One who will give his/her life and does not retaliate, and yet somehow brings all prior history and culture to a shattering halt?

God has asked the prophet to cry out and the prophet says, What shall I cry? Listen closely to the answer: “All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. (A second time for emphases) The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand for ever.”

My dear friends, this passage does not simply reveal to us a Sovereign, Gracious and Compassionate God; it also reminds us that we are finite, flesh is grace and the grass withers. It also points to the fact that we are sinners who receive double for all our sins.

We are constantly moving between the depth of human nothingness and the great heights of divine creativity. There is an order beyond the order of human history.

“The order beyond the order of human history is the divine order. And it is paradoxical: people are like grass, but the word of God spoken to them shall stand for ever. People stand under the law of sin and punishment, but the divine order breaks through it and brings forgiveness. People faint, falling from the heights of their moral goodness and youthful power, and just when they have fallen and are weakest, they run without weariness and rise up with wings as eagles.” Paul Tillich, “The Shaling of the Foundation”

So what are you waiting for? Herman Cain? Governor Perry? Newt Gingrich? Barack Obama? ALL flesh is like grass and the grass withers!

What I hope we are waiting for this Advent Season....with pregnant expectation...... is a rebirth, a new birth of the Word of God writ bold upon our hearts. The word ….The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

From the wisdom of Paul Tillich allow me to try to help us understand how this Divine Order can indeed bring us Comfort in our own misery. How can we listen to the words of the prophet which announces the end of our warfare?

First, we have to understand that the divine order is not the historical order and we should not confuse the two. The Historical Order reminds us that no life is able to overcome finiteness, sin, and tragedy. We simply are not able to achieve security in our own existence.

But the second answer is that there is another order to which we, as humans, belong....an order that always makes us dissatisfied with what is given to us. For you see we participate in something....in an order that is not transitory, not self-destructive, not tragic, but eternal, holy, blessed.

You know what I am talking about. When we listen to the prophets words, when we hear of the everlasting, steadfast, gracious power and mystery of God's acts.......a response is awakened within us....deep down in our souls. When that happens we must know that the infinite within us is touched. Every one of us gathered here today knows that is true and has felt that stirring from within.

So the third answer is that the two orders, the historical and the eternal, although they can never become the same, are within each other. The historical order is not separated from the eternal order. What is new in the prophets and in Christianity, beyond all paganism, old and new, is that the eternal order reveals itself in the historical order.

This Advent Season, as we sing our carols and light our candles, moving toward the birth of the Christ Child...let us not forget that the Revealing One became the Suffering Servant. The strong in history fall; the strength of each of us is taken from us. But those who seem weak in history finally shape history, because they are bound to the eternal order. One only has to look to such souls as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu...and so many more.

We are not a lost generation because we find ourselves going through difficult times. Each of us belongs to the Eternal Order. And so we can be at peace as the prophet speaks to us as well:

Comfort Ye! Comfort Ye, my people!