Isaiah 64:1-9
1 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the
mountains would quake at your presence-- 2 as when fire kindles brushwood and
the fire causes water to boil-- to make your name known to your adversaries, so
that the nations might tremble at your presence! 3 When you did awesome deeds
that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 4
From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God
besides you, who works for those who wait for him. 5 You meet those who gladly
do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we
sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed. 6 We have all become like one
who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all
fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7 There is
no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have
hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.
8 Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we
are all the work of your hand. 9 Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do
not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.
I got an email about a week ago
(maybe some of you got the same email). It was from Amazon (the online retail
giant) informing me of some changes that are coming with my Amazon Prime
membership. You see, I became an Amazon Prime member years ago, primarily for
the free, two-day shipping and access to streaming movies and T.V. shows. Well,
this email informed me that I may no longer have to wait an agonizingly long
two days to receive my orders anymore. In fact, if I happened to live in one of
5,000 cities and towns, I could get free one-day or even same-day shipping. Imagine that: I could possibly get whatever I
found on Amazon the same day I ordered it without paying a dime for shipping!
Of course, we don’t live in one of those 5,000 cities or towns, so I guess I’ll
just have to settle for the snail-like two-day shipping option.
That email from Amazon did cause me
to think, though, about what has happened to our collective patience. Do we really need same-day shipping on most
things we buy online? Do we really need drones dropping off groceries at our
door-step? Do we need immediate access to television shows and movies without
waiting for their air dates or release on DVD? Are we spoiled by the
instantaneous nature of the ways in which we consume things these days? Of
course we are!
It’s hard, though, because we live
in an “instant” world. In fact, we’ve become so accustomed to the nearly
instantaneous speed of life that we complain when things are even slightly
slower than what we’re used to. Don’t believe me? Less than a decade ago, I can
remember thinking that 3G data speed on my Blackberry was incredible, but now,
if I have to wait on an email to load on my smartphone I get frustrated. Take a
beat to think about that sentence or any other similar sentiment you’ve had: I
get frustrated waiting on an email to load on my phone.
Of course, along with this
instantaneous satisfaction comes the specificity with which our desires can be
met. In other words, it’s not just about how fast we can get something, but how
precisely we can have our wants and needs met. This is so common to us that we
don’t even realize it’s happening all the time. For instance, just yesterday
(December 2nd), we were at the grocery store. Now, there’s nothing
odd about a family going grocery shopping on a Saturday in December—well,
except for the fact that in the grocery store there were fresh ears of corn,
tomatoes, avocados, and all other sorts of fresh produce. Why is that odd?
Because these things don’t grow here this time of year; some of them don’t grow
around here at all, yet there they were, in boxes, packages, and bags, ready to
be bought for a ridiculously low price, and we acted like it was nothing along
with the other shoppers in the store (especially the woman who nearly bought
all the avocados!).
We get things when we want them and
how we want them, and we rarely (if ever) stop to think about how
semi-miraculous it all is, how much it might actually cost us or someone else,
how much it just might be spoiling all of us. We live in a world where our every
want can be met almost instantly, where we can travel to almost anywhere on the
globe in less than a day, where we can communicate with anyone, anywhere,
instantaneously with a device we carry in our pockets or wear on our wrists! We
don’t have to wait on things to grow in our gardens or on farms anymore; we can
have full-grown chickens in weeks, tomatoes year-round, and guacamole on the
table at Christmas! With all of this speed and efficiency, with all of this
productive possibility, is it any wonder that one of the things that frustrates
us the most, the very thing that will cause our blood pressure to rise and our
tempers to flare is having to wait? Slow internet connections, stalled traffic,
waiting too long for our dinner at the restaurant, standing in line behind
someone with a wad of coupons at the grocery store—all things that can unnerve
us in a world that has trained us in the art of instant gratification.
This acclamation to such immediate
satisfaction, I believe, has also led us down a path of inevitable frustration,
depression, and blame. When we can get just about anything we want almost
immediately and almost exactly the way we want it, it can be hard to hear the
doctor tell us the radiation is going to take 6 weeks or we’ll need rehabilitation
for 100 days. In a world that offers us immediate delivery on whatever our
heart desires, it can throw our world into chaos when we don’t hear the phone
ring for days after that interview we had. When a pregnancy doesn’t happen,
when a tumor won’t go away, when the medicine takes too long to work, when the
addiction won’t let us go, when pain hangs on longer than we want it to—the
immediacy of everything else in this world seems to mock us, to only add to the
weight of our frustration and pain. After all, when everything else can be
delivered in an instant, why not hope, peace, joy, and love? Why do these
things take so much time? Why does it always seem that God takes so much time?
Can’t you hear the same sentiment—that
sense of frustration in waiting—in the words of the prophet? “O
that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would
quake at your presence—as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water
to boil—to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might
tremble at your presence! When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,
you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.” The people of
God have been through the perils of exile, have (possibly) returned to their
homeland, and now they cannot help but wonder where God has been. They want
some immediate assurance, some great sign that God is indeed with them. The
prophet cries out, wishing God would rend the sky apart, shake the mountains,
make his presence known among the people in a real and undeniable way, but when
God doesn’t show up the way the prophet (and the people) want God to, the
prophet turns inward and blames himself and the people for God’s apparent
absence: “From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen
any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. You meet those who
gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and
we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed. We have all become like
one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all
fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no
one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have
hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.”
The prophet does what we all do when
it seems that God tarries, when it feels as if God is not answering our
prayers: the prophet blames himself, looks in the mirror and says, “the problem
is that I’m just too bad to be loved by God; we’re just too sinful to have God
among us; God has turned God’s back on us because we’re just so wicked.” I
suppose it’s an easy place to go when we get bad news, an easy place to hide
when it seems as if God isn’t listening anymore, when things aren’t going our
way, I suppose it’s just easier to give into more superstition than faith, to
say that God doesn’t answer our prayers or join us in our lives until we get
all of the bad out. That, however, is just another excuse we tell ourselves,
because admitting that we’re awful, sinful, no-good people is apparently easier
than waiting.
I think the prophet even comes to
understand that truth before the words even leave his mouth, because right
after he says, “you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand
of our iniquity,” he says, “Yet,
O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all
the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember
iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.” It is as if
the prophet needs to remind himself and the people of God—as if he needs to
remind us—that silence from God is not abandonment, for we are now and forever
shall be God’s people, clay in the Potter’s hands, and like a potter working
clay on a wheel, it takes time for the work to be complete.
I think that’s why we need Advent, a
traditional season of the universal Church that can sometimes be overlooked by
newer traditions and churches. There is so much in our culture that feeds our
need for immediate satisfaction, and it is that same drive that causes us to
hum Christmas songs the day after Halloween, to get the tree out the first week
of November, to binge-watch our favorite Christmas movies beginning the week of
Thanksgiving. We want Christmas to be here now—right now, but deep down, we
know we have to wait. It’s that waiting that can be holy, that waiting for
Christmas, waiting for the revelation of God, waiting for the Good News,
waiting for appearance of the divine—it’s that waiting that can motivate us to
do more in the meantime, to gather more together in anticipation, to tell as
many as we can about what’s coming, to bring a small portion of that hope,
peace, joy, and love to as many as we can with the time we have to wait.
You see, it’s while we are waiting for God’s arrival, for Christ’s
arrival, that we are to be about the work of proclaiming and living into the
reality of God’s arrival. It’s while we wait that the Potter shapes and molds
the clay; it’s while we wait that we are being transformed into something
wonderful and holy; it’s while we wait that we are called to transform the
world into something wonderful and holy; it’s while we wait that we truly
experience the work of God, though it may not be in ways that split the sky or
shake mountains. No, in fact, it might be in the most surprising and otherwise
unnoticed ways, like giving a plate of hot food to someone who’s hungry, like
taking the time to listen to someone else’s struggles, like slipping a few
dollars in a red kettle. Yes, I’m more and more convinced that God moves among
us while we wait, and God works in the most surprising and unexpected ways,
why, God even works through a scared, young, unwed woman and her betrothed to
literally bear the Good News to the world, while they wait, while we all wait.
How will you be a part of the works of God, while we wait? Amen.
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