Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Paul reminds those first Christians, in the tiny church at Corinth, that they have been enriched in Jesus "so that you are not lacking," he says, "in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ."

One "absolute" in Christian theology, one unchanging fact, is that we do not discover God. We cannot download God, or conjure him up, or figure him out. No, God reveals himself to us - when, and where, and as he wishes. That makes for a lot of waiting. God revealed himself supremely in Jesus, but only after the world had waited a very long time. The Advent season symbolizes, among other things, the pleadings of all those centuries. "O, Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear."
Of course, God had revealed himself to Israel many times in the years before Jesus. First was his call to Abraham. ("Hey, Abraham. I'm the only god that's real, and nobody's ever heard of me, or heard from me. And I say pack up your stuff, leave the old home place and move to a distant land you've never heard, of but which I have in mind." And Abraham moved.) God revealed himself in Jacob's ladder dream, in the burning bush and the Ten Commandments, and the voices of the prophets. Even in disastrous misfortune, the Bible says, God revealed himself: in Egyptian slavery, in military defeat, in humiliating exile. It seems that God was revealing himself all the time. But the Bible telescopes these events. There was, in truth, a lot of waiting in between. Waiting, and watching, and yearning for God, as we wait, and watch and yearn for Christmas and the Christ Child - not just for the day, but for all that it means. It's not just ordinary waiting, as one might wait for a bus. It's a holy waiting characterized by hope.

The early Christians were actively and consciously waiting, waiting for the second coming, "for the revealing" as Paul put it. They waited, and they suffered, and they hoped. They put communion (the Eucharist) at the center of their worship, and communion is, after all, a ritual of hopeful waiting: "For as oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." Jesus had told his disciples at table, in that upper room, not only to remember but also to look forward. (A religion that only remembers is a dead faith.) He promised he wouldn't drink wine again until they all drank it together in heaven. The early Christians waited for that, with great faith and hope.
We can wait in hope or in despair. I've said before that hope is hearing the music of the future and faith is dancing to that music in the hear and now. But in between there is waiting. As we dance, we listen hard, and wait to hear God's tune. We only want to be in step with God. We don't care if we're in step with the world. It's that anticipation, that hope, that makes the dance good.
But, let's face it, sometimes the waiting is too much. At times it seems that God will never reveal himself. And we despair. Harry Emerson Fosdick hardly knew the man who had arrived for his appointment, except that he recognized him as a member of his congregation. The man sat down in front of Fosdick's desk and began to tell how his wife had died two years ago and left him with four small children, and how he had just lost a wonderful nanny it had taken him forever to find, and how his boss was cutting his commission - and he was hardly making ends meet as it was - and how now his aging parents were ill and were beginning to require his care. Clearly a person at the end of his rope. When the man finished his story, Fosdick rose behind his desk, leaned over at the man and said, "Hold on." The man said, "Gotcha." Shook Fosdick's hand, and left. He said later that it was just what he needed: a reminder that today is not all there is, that there is tomorrow, and tomorrow will be better.

Many people today wait in despair. When will God show me his plan for my life? When will God send me a wife or husband? When will God stop my loved one from destroying his life and other lives, too? Oh, God, when will this depression pass, when will this pain go away? They say God answers prayers in three ways: "Yes," "No," and "Wait." The worst is "wait," unless we can find some way to wait in hope.
Some people wait for Christmas without much hope. In truth, they dread that first string of colored lights, or that first "musack" carol in the elevator. "It's just going to be another commercial orgy," they say, "a travesty." (And, there's some truth in that. Have you noticed that, already, the news people are measuring the success of this Christmas in terms of retail sales?) I don't have a "perfect" family, they say, like the families I see on television, sitting happily around their Christmas trees. When my family gets together for the holidays, we don't laugh and sing, we fight. Everyone else has money to buy expensive presents, they say, and I don't. I'm the only one who's not happy at Christmas. The suicide rate is highest around the holidays, a sad irony. The season that is suppose to bring joy brings despair to some.

Let's begin our wait for Christmas this year, our Advent, with certain understandings: First, as a good doctor reminded me years ago, "The only perfect things are in heaven." Men and women will profane Christmas as they profane everything else. Nobody has a perfect tree, or a perfect home, or a perfect family. Nobody wraps a perfect present or cooks a perfect meal. That's just for storybooks. But we can still love the traditions, the lights and the tinsel, and we can still "wait for the revealing," the birth in this case, with hope. We know the promise of new and better life, here and hereafter, which God made to the world in Jesus. We know that in Christmas Christ blesses the ordinary - the shepherd, the stable, poor people. We know that in Jesus God reveals himself most intimately. What is God like? God is like Jesus. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," Jesus said. Could there be a better God? In spite of our perversions, that's still what turns the lights on at Christmas.