STILL WAITING
Rev. Dr. Robert R. LaRochelle
First Sunday of Advent 2008

My friends---

One of those things that I have just come to expect in life and I don’t like when I don’t have it is the simple pleasure of driving my own car. And in my family it always seems that when someone else’s car is in need of service ,or in last week’s case when my son Brian’s well worn 200,000 plus miles driven Volvo is having its biweekly breakdown, that I’m the one who ends up depending on other family members, including whoever happens to be driving MY car, for pickup and delivery! Now, I suppose we could subject my displeasure to rigorous psychological analysis and perhaps determine that anytime I am without MY CAR, I am therefore feeling a loss of control and, as general rule, we human beings aren’t very fond of losing control. Yet whatever the deep seated intra psychic dynamic might be, there I was one day last week standing at the curbside of the school building in which I work. There I was WAITING for my wife to come along and pick me up, waiting a bit longer than I might be if this were a sunny September afternoon, waiting longer because on her way to me from Bolton, Trish had to wait herself as she navigated that Buckland Hills traffic, traffic which has perpetually transformed once quiet Connecticut roads at Holiday time, leading me to my annual November thought that, with all of this frenzied traffic, maybe I’m really living in Paramus, New Jersey!

Yet, all kidding and snide remarks about New Jersey put to the side ( you  know....” God’s being permeates everything that exists, EXCEPT certain sections of New Jersey’), as I stood there in what was rapidly becoming bitter cold, I started thinking back. Do you ever have those moments, my friends, those moments when you are experiencing SOMETHING and feel deep down that you’ve been in this place before? Well, that was me on that South Windsor curbside last week as in my memory I went back to when I was 14 or 15 years old and I would stand WAITING for my Mom or Dad to pick me up at school, to those times when I was in college without a car and I would wait, packed, overflowing bag of dirty laundry in hand, waiting for my father’s little Volkswagen bug to climb the first of seven Worcester hills and meet me at the gate of the College of the Holy Cross!

And, interestingly enough, as I stood there waiting, I realized, as I have many, many times before, that in this journey of life, we are ALWAYS WAITING! Think about it with me if you would. As little children, we wait to go off to school. WE wait to be like those grownups one day, those big people who, through our eyes, are the ones with all of the power and control, the ones with all the freedom. Then one day we become grownups and often find ourselves still waiting for all of that freedom and control we yearned for long ago. We wait to go to high school. After enough of that, we wait to get into college ...and then, whether it be in high school or college, we wait to get out...to get a job...to get on our own....We wait to find that job and, if we don’t like that job, we WAIT to get another job or then we wait to retire! We wait to find that ideal relationship until, for about 50% of us, we wait to get the heck out of it! We wait for months and years for children to come into our homes and then some of us will tell you they wait for years for them to finally leave! We wait in doctors’ offices and sit by the phone awaiting the results of tests. We wait in hospital rooms, waiting for someone to do something to help us feel better, or, in those same rooms, we just wait, waiting at someone’s side hoping that, in our waiting WITH them, maybe somehow they WILL get well.. And, I think you know where all this is going, don’t you? When all is said and done, alas we wait ...We wait to see what is on the other side, the other side of this great mystery that goes by the name of life. In the end, my friends, we wait to experience that great unknown, the great unknown that is life.....AFTER death!

Everything about this morning, the music, the Bulletins, the way this beautiful sanctuary looks reminds us that this is now ADVENT! Advent is a season of WAITING. If you were to ask most Christian folk what Advent is about, I think they would tell you that Advent is a time in which we wait for Christmas and, of course, sure, they’d be right.  But a simple, flippant answer about Advent falls short of the whole story and when we miss the whole story, we miss the opportunity to experience Christmas in its appropriate depth and with its most powerful meaning.

You see, for hundreds of years, those Jewish ancestors of Jesus, those generations dating back centuries, those many descendants of Abraham, Isaac , Jacob, David, Solomon, Sarah, Rebecca, Moses, Miriam, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and many, many more, all the way up to teenage Mary of Nazareth ----ALL of them were WAITING. They were waiting for SOMEONE, someone who would come and be a Messiah, whose presence would usher in a world in which the presence of God would be obvious, in which peace and forgiveness and justice would rule the earth as they knew it. This is a vision laid out in these beautiful Biblical writings of what we call the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, in which we read, in Isaiah, of a lion laying down with a lamb, of swords being beaten in plowshares, of preparation for war just falling by the wayside. They waited for SOMEONE who would restore the reign of David, who would bring them out of exile and into their own land, and whose power would effect change-positive change- and effect it forever!

And then Jesus came along and somewhere along the way, some began to believe that here was the Messiah while others did not. Yet for those who did, guess what happened? There was still more WAITING involved. For in those very early days after Jesus walked this earth, these ancestors of ours, these early Christians, believed what we read about in the Gospel of Mark this morning. They believed there would be a Second Coming , that ‘ the Son of Man would come in clouds with great power and glory’ and would gather up those He had chosen to be with Him forever. Not only that, but, as expressed in this earliest Gospel, they expected that it would happen in their lifetimes, that it would come like ‘a thief in the night’, the Bible says, and that their task was to stay awake so that they would be ready when it did.

But, guess what? It did not happen! The world DID NOT, as anticipated, come to an end and we are still here! This fact changed the entire course of Christian history and of theology and if this were a Christian history class, I’d explain...but, for our purposes here this morning, let’s just say that as a result of all of this, the season of Advent we have begun with candle lighting here this morning thus operates for us on three levels. Now, follow me here. On one level is that simple answer: Advent is a time of waiting for Christmas. On another level is what Advent has always been in the life of the Christian church: a WAITING for the ultimate fulfillment of God’s purposes ........might I suggest both at the end of time, the end of the world as we know it, AND the end of our own personal lives. And finally, there is that third level, that level I experienced on the South Windsor curb waiting to be picked up, that level we have all experienced over and over again and will until the day that we die. ADVENT is the RECOGNITION OF THE REALTY that if you are going to live you are going to WAIT! Advent’s a natural expression of our lives as human beings for we who live are ALWAYS WAITING, waiting to be fulfilled, waiting for something more. As the novelist Gertrude Stein once wrote about this earthly life:  ‘ We spend time just waiting to get there and then we get there and realize there’s no there there’

You see, Jesus came and because of His life and the work He did, great things have happened to us. We have an understanding of and access to God we would never have otherwise had. Because of Jesus, we can experience life eternal, eternal life in all of its depth and power. Yet, even though this great Messiah came hundreds of years ago, this world continues to be less than perfect. You don’t need me to rattle off our problems. If I were to ask you right now what’s still wrong with our world, it would not take you long to come up with one heck of a list!

This is a less than perfect world, imperfect because of sin and simple human frailty. People will get sick. Loved ones will die. Bad things will happen. People will hurt others. Even those among us who invest time and energy working for changes in government have to admit that even when the changes we want come, the world does not become perfect. No politician or political party has the power to bring forth the Kingdom of God. There’s no other Messiah on the horizon.  Never was. Never will be.Even when bad laws are overturned and financial circumstances improve, perfection doesn’t just happen. I, for one, am grateful that our country, through law, has abolished slavery and insured civil rights for people regardless of skin color, disability, gender or sexual orientation. But those changes in LAW, good as they may be, have NOT removed from the face of our earth, racial prejudice or unhealthy stereotyping or nasty jokes told in private. In other words, even when progress IS made, FULFILLMENT still lags far behind. Homelessness somehow INCREASED during the 1980’s, a time of acknowledged economic prosperity!  WE the people are a people in waiting and we continue to be a WORLD IN WAITING as well, a world for whom this season of Advent resonates so clearly and makes such perfect sense.

Now, before we wrap up here today, one final note is in order: Here in this place this morning, as we begin this Advent observance, we are surrounded by the sights and the sounds and the smells of Christmas. Enjoy them! You see, in this sanctuary, Advent and Christmas are juxtaposed before our very eyes. Juxtaposed? What am I talking about? THEY ARE PLACED SIDE BY SIDE because in real life they LIVE side by side. As the old song goes, with my own translation, we who live our lives WAITING......WE all need a little Christmas right this very minute...We need a little Christmas now....

That great American poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in his magnificent work so aptly titled I AM WAITING, repeated over and over again his signature line, a line which I’d suggest might speak to us all be we in 2008 BC or 2008 AD.....’ I am perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder’....

A REBIRTH OF WONDER!.............The lights of Christmas, the tree, the candles...green and silver, red and gold......These are all glimpses of the FULFILLMENT that IS to come......BUT THEY ARE ALSO MORE.....

In a moment, we are all going to sing an old Christmas carol . As I was flipping through hymnals and selecting carols for the Christmas season, I somehow got to thinking of the physical therapy I’ve been going through for the last three months, time spent waiting for this right hip of mine to feel better. As I prepared this service, these words struck me as they never had before: ‘ And  you....who toil along the climbing way, with painful steps and slow..’  And then other words: ‘Look now, for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing.....and the conclusion....’ O rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.’

  REST BESIDE THE WEARY ROAD....HEAR THE ANGELS...In our preparation for Christmas, in this imperfect, unfinished world, may we take the time to catch a glimpse of God’s eternal promise. In the chaos and BUSYNESS of this frenzied world, may we ‘rest beside life’s weary road’ cherishing the time we spend with family and friends, sensing that the most deeply spiritual, the most truly extraordinary things really happen in life’s most ordinary moments.

This Advent, as you await the future God has in store for you while knowing fully that it’s not completely happening now, knowing rather that yes, you are still waiting----REST BESIDE THE WEARY ROAD- sing a carol, light a candle, bring a gift to someone in need, give food to the hungry, console someone who is sad, forgive someone, make peace, do something  you just might not usually do------catch a glimpse of Christmas, a foretaste of that which truly is to come....

In your WAITING, dear friends, in your ADVENT....REST BESIDE THE WEARY ROAD...............................and hear the angels sing!

AMEN+