02/12/2023
FROM THE PASTOR'S DESK
Waiting on Jesus
by Rev. Dr. Durrell Watkins
Advent begins Dec. 3, 2023
Advent suggests something is coming, and until it arrives, we wait. I believe, however, that waiting need not be as passive as we tend to make it.
For what, exactly, are we waiting? Are we waiting for Christmas, a time to recall the birth of Jesus? Well, that’s happened, and we make a much bigger deal of it than Jesus ever did. Jesus’ birth is only mentioned twice in the bible and Jesus never mentions it as a big deal. The only thing St. Paul ever said about Jesus’ birth is that he was “born of a woman.” We might have figured that out!
So, if we are just waiting for the party to celebrate a birth that happened in Palestine some 2,027 years ago, then we are waiting for the past. There’s never much power in worshiping the past or longing for its return.
Some will say that the wait isn’t for Jesus’ birth (or the commemoration of his birth), but for his return. Well, that wait is already a couple of millennia in process. Maybe that just isn’t going to happen the way our ancestors imagined. The writer of Mark’s gospel thought it would happen in his lifetime, and so did St. Paul. They, apparently, were mistaken.
Waiting for some future event to make everything alright mostly keeps us from doing what we can now to make things better. While we are waiting for a superhero to appear in the skies to save the day, we ought to be addressing climate change, poverty, racism, homophobia and transphobia, war, and women’s right to bodily autonomy right here and right now. The mythic return hasn’t happened and may not, so we better get to work,
But wait! (I couldn’t help myself). The past and the future won’t fix our messes, but we can make things better in the present, in the now. And maybe that’s what we are waiting for…the realization that we have the power to make a difference, today.
Some believe (I am among them) that the Pentecost narrative in Acts 2 is a story about Christ’s return. Jesus ascends into the unknown and the spirit that motivated his work descends upon the church days later, raising them up to be the body of Christ on earth, the Christ presence meant to continue doing what Jesus did: heal, empower, encourage, bring together, and cast a vision of what is possible for people who live in the in the power of love.
We are the return of Christ! We don’t need to wait for the return, we need to wake up to the fact that we are it, and then get to work being Christ in the world.
And that brings me back to the word “wait.” Waiting doesn’t just mean sitting around until something turns up. When we wait “on” someone, we are serving them. A waiter brings coffee or food or drinks, someone “waiting hand and foot” on a sick loved one is actively caring for them. To wait on Jesus could mean to serve Jesus’ mission and we do that with our worship and also with our acts of kindness, generosity, compassion, and justice.
Something is coming and we are waiting for it. Maybe what is coming is a better world, and it will happen as we get busy waiting on the wounded, disenfranchised, lonely, degraded, forgotten, and oppressed of the world. Rather than waiting FOR Jesus, let’s try to be like Jesus and wait ON those who are hurting, and that is what can transform the world. And for that, we are all still waiting.
