Sermon 12/3/06
The Promise: Waiting - Jeremiah 33:14-16, Luke 21:25-36
(view lectionary notes for this text)
Promise. One of those complicated words that has different connotations depending on how you use it. 1) To promise to do something means to commit yourself to something, to declare that you won’t change your intended plan of action, regardless of what other things change. If you promise you will take me out to dinner, you’re saying you will do so even if you get a better offer later on, because you’ve promised. 2) We can also say that something has promise, and by that we mean that something has potential, even if that potential is not yet fulfilled. It isn’t a done deal, but if all the right things are done to follow through on the potential, we can expect thing to turn out in a good way. You might say that several of our young people are promising dancers – what they do with their promise is up to them, but the potential is already there, waiting for them to use it. 3) But promise is a word that can also have the connotation of threat. A common exchange in a heated argument might have one person asking, “is that a threat?” The other would respond, “No, it’s a promise.” Here, promise is used as a word that is full of negative meaning. It implies fulfillment of intended or planned action, but the plans, the intentions, are for harm and not for good. If you promise someone that they’ll get what they deserve for hurting you, you’re saying you are vowing to carry out some kind of revenge against them.
Advent is a season of promise. I think we most easily think of Advent as promise in the sense of potential. Nothing about the process of preparing for a new child is a sure and certain thing. We might have expectations, ideas – but we know that nothing is certain. All the plans in the world won’t guarantee labor goes a certain way, or guarantee that a child has a certain personality, or even that a child is born on a certain date. How many times have you heard of parents planning to induce labor on a certain day, only to have the mother go into labor in advance of the time anyway. In some ways, Advent is about promise – about potential – about all that yet might be. But we’re not able to map it all out, to plan what God will bring to us down to a T. We know that Christ will come, and we suspect that there is potential for peace, for change, for transformation. We make our plans – for caroling, for parties, for pageants, for candle-lit services. But though there is promise, none of our plans can guarantee just how God will move among us in Advent.
We’re also able, I hope, to understand Advent as promise in the way that promise is a commitment that will be fulfilled. Our reading from Jeremiah this morning is clear on this point: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. The language is future imperative – a guaranteed future happening – “I will cause” says God, “he shall execute justice,” “Judah will be saved.” In Advent, we have a promise that Christ will come, that God will be made known to us in the form of this human child Jesus. In this is not just potential but certainty. Whatever other plans you may have this Advent season, whatever you get done and whatever is left undone, whatever you deserve and whatever is more blessing than is your fair share, either way, Christ is coming. That’s the promise of Advent – the certainty and sureness of it.
I wonder, though, if Advent is also a promise with any negative weight to it. Is there a threat implicit in the message of Advent? Is there any threat in Advent? Does the coming of Jesus imply a threat? And here’s where our gospel text today comes crashing into our holly jolly preparations. What a way to begin – with distress, confusion, fear, foreboding, and heavens shaking. This whole scene takes place right after the widow gives her offering – her last pennies – to the temple treasury. Jesus begins talking to the disciples about the destruction of the temple, and he warns them about the persecution they will face from all quarters because of their commitment to following him. It is then that we get to the words from today’s lessons. Jesus talks about signs that people will see that will let them know the time has come. Jesus compares the signs to the way that we see signs of a changing season even before the new season has truly arrived. He concludes by urging us to be on guard and to be alert, so that we might be strong enough to stand before the Son of Man.
Frightening? Anxiety-causing? Maybe, at first. But there’s more there in this passage. Can you see in Jesus’ word the hope of Advent? Can you see the potential? Can you see the certainty of fulfillment? Instead of seeing words of death and destruction, can you see words of life? No matter what way we look at promise, a promise always implies both a sense of meaning “right now” and a meaning “yet to come.” A promise is something you make in the present, you hold onto in the present. But a promise is never finished at the time it is made.
Whenever Jesus talks about the kingdom of God, including this passage today, he lets us have a sense of the “both/and” nature of the kingdom – the kingdom of God is both here right now in our midst already and on its way, almost here, just around the corner, about to arrive. Here, and not quite here, both at the same time. This is the paradox, the tension we live in the midst of as people of faith. Jesus talks about these signs that let us know the kingdom is coming, and we look around and think, “These signs are already here. These signs have been showing themselves for thousands of years. Generation after generation sees these signs Jesus describes.” To me, the conclusion then is that if the signs are here already, the kingdom is here already too. Our redemption has arrived. God has come. Christ has come again, and again. That’s the promise fulfilled – our waiting finally over. Christmas has already come, and we’re living in the celebration of Christmas, as part of the Christmas story, as members of the kingdom already and always.
On the other hand, we can read a passage like this, where Jesus talks about these signs that let us know the kingdom is coming, and we look around and think, “Clearly, not everything he’s talked about has happened yet. We’re still waiting. We’re waiting for Jesus to return, waiting for Christ to be again in our midst.” To me, the conclusion then is that the kingdom of God is on its way but not fully here. We’re still alert, on guard, waiting. We can even sometimes sense that we are just on the verge of something. But not quite yet. Like the day when you can smell spring in the air but spring hasn’t quite actually arrived yet. That’s the potential of the promise. That’s the promise Jeremiah describes – we know we are still waiting for righteousness and justice to rule in the land – we know that the world isn’t yet the place that God hopes for it to be, the place that the prophets envisioned it could be – the place that Jesus first came to help it to be. That’s the potential in our promise. Christmas hasn’t even fully arrived the first time around. J. Ellsworth Kalas, author of Christmas from the Backside, which we’re using in our Saturday worship this Advent, writes “when I watch the late news this evening, or look at the faces in passing traffic tomorrow . . . I will know that although Christmas has come to our world, it still hasn’t come, in any deeply effective way, to vast numbers of people.” (22) We’re still waiting. Christmas is just around the corner, but not here, not completely, not quite, not yet.
Is that it then? We’re stuck somewhere between a world of perpetual Christmas – this apparent already-here presence of the kingdom – and a Christmas that never seems to completely arrive – a kingdom always a bit beyond our reach, like the carrot on the end of the stick? Thankfully, I don’t believe our story ends there, that God leaves us stuck in the middle. But I also think that here’s where we take a more active role in the Advent story. Advent is a season of longing, of hoping, of waiting for something to come. But there is more than one way to wait for something. We can wait with heavy hearts, with anxiety, with worries and fears that weigh us down so that we can’t do anything, enjoy anything, live any kind of real life. We can wait and in the meantime look after only our own interests. We can wait in silence and solitude, in our own little worlds, and hope we’ll measure up.
Or we can wait in a different way. Jesus tells us to “be on guard so that your hearts on not weight down with . . . the worries of this life.” To me, those words are freeing, not burdensome. He tells us that the signs he’s talking about mean our redemption is near. Redemption, too, means being set free. These are words of promise, and Jesus tells us to wait with alertness, yes, but not with worries that amount to nothing. We can wait in hope. We can wait and work. We can wait while remembering that our actions can help usher in the kingdom of God. We can wait while readying our hearts and homes for the Christ-child. We can wait while working to see that righteousness and justice are brought into the land. This way, we become part of the promise – we become part of the potential – we are part of what the promise can be – and we are part of what is necessary for the promise to be fulfilled.
Christmas is just three weeks and one day away, and I can hardly wait. I can’t wait for God’s kingdom to be fully revealed, fully realized on earth. I can’t wait for the kind of justice and peace and promise that the prophets will describe to us each week. I can’t wait for this freeing redemption that Jesus speaks of. But if I must wait, if waiting is indeed part of the promise, part of the process of allowing the full potential of God’s kingdom to be realized – if I must wait, I hope I can wait with the strength that Jesus encourage in us.
Twenty-two days to go. How will you wait?
Amen.