“What Are We Waiting For?”

 December 2, 2007

Scripture Reading: Isaiah 2:1-5

Rev. Dr. Carol  L. Kerr

 Blue Point Congregational Church

Rev. Dr. Carol Kerr

This is the season of Advent in the church calendar.  Advent is the four weeks the church has set aside to wait for the celebration of Christ’s birth.  The word Advent literally means coming in Latin.  We wait for the coming of Christmas.  We also wait for the 2^nd coming of Christ sometime in the future.  So what we are suppose to do during this season of Advent is nothing but wait.

Having said this, we in our modern society hate to wait.  We have cell phones because we can’t wait to get home and make a call.  We have fax machines because we can’t wait for the mail.  We have lots of fast food franchises so we don’t have to get out of our car and wait.  We have instant soup, instant hair color, instant photos.  If there is a product that helps cut down the time on something we buy it.  I suspect that there is an unspoken goal in our society that along with cancer, we hope to stamp out the scourge of waiting anytime, anywhere by the end to the 21^st century. 

However, have you noticed that no matter how much we try to cut down on the time we wait, waiting still seems to pop up.  Waiting happens sort of like weeds growing in my yard.  If not here, then there.  All these modern devises don’t’ get rid of waiting, they just change the kind of waiting we have to do.  Perhaps waiting is part of the fabric of the universe whether we like it or not.

Waiting seems like an utter waste of time.  How could the church set aside a whole season, Advent, for nothing more than waiting?  However, there are two kinds of waiting.  There is waiting that is empty and there is waiting that is full like the congregations hush before the benediction. 

Let me give you an example of the first kind of waiting, the empty kind.  One particularly memorable  time was when I once I found myself waiting in the check-out line at Walmart.  There were six registers open with about 8 people waiting behind each.  I thought I was lucky because I found one where I was only the 3^rd in line.  The clerk at the register was a kindly looking, elderly person who took her job very seriously.  So, she rung up the first 11 items of a woman’s and her daughter that were 2 people ahead of me.  Then there was the 12^th item.  It was a little glass jelly jar.  It was plain and clear.  Its gold top looked cheap.  It could hold no more than 3 tablespoons of jelly.  It was a stocking stuffer kind of jelly jar.  It rung up at a whopping $1.50.  The customer said, however, that it was suppose to be only $1.00.  Pausing for a minute to think, the clerk then got on the loud speakers and called for a “price check at register 7.”  After what seemed a very long time, help arrived in the form of an adolescent male clerk, with a couple of earrings and large tattoo on his arm.  The elderly clerk adjusted her glasses and explained to him about the jelly jar.  So, he disappeared.   We waited.  There were  10 people waiting in line behind me now.  It slowly began to dawn on all of us that this clerk was not coming back.  Did he step outside to smoke a cigarette?  Did he get a call from his girlfriend who was breaking up with him?  Did he quit?

Us waiting customers started shifting from one foot and then another.  We looked around.  We rolled our eyes.  Sighing started happening.  Silent alarm bells started ringing as our personal Christmas “to do” lists pressed in on us.  We had groceries to get, kids to pick up, decorations to hang, church fairs to prepare for, calls to make, appointments to go to…  We were flies stuck in holiday fly trap. 

After a long time the elderly clerk buttoned up her white cardigan and abandoned her register to check the price herself.  When she returned she said that the sign had been mistaken, it was $1.50 instead of a $1.00.  But, she would give the jar to them for a dollar.  We were all greatly relieved.  Until the clerk slowly walked over to another unused register #10, and retrieved two yellow pads of paper which had long columns of numbers on them.  She slowly started handwriting the prices onto them and the long ceriel number of the jelly jar.

At this point I simply and purely hated the jelly jar.  It filled me with a feeling of futility.  Not only the jelly jar, but the candy display, and the pink and purple Barbie cars stacked against the wall, the florescent lighting, the junk in my cart, mittens and a turtle neck, the whole store became a mockery of my life.  More importantly, I began hating the silent alarm in my head.  I reviewed my “to do” list and it seemed as worthless as the long line I was waiting in.   I wondered, “What on earth am I doing here?!”  I claimed my existence and concluded “There must be something more.” 

This is the empty waiting I spoke about at the beginning of the sermon.  We do it way too much during the Christmas season.  Indeed, in our whole lives.  Even with the multitude of time saving we invent in order to get rid of waiting, it happens anyway. 

It reminds me of an article that was once written in a parachuting magazine.  One year it offered some basic instructions on how to parachute.  The instructions said that at a certain level of fall “shout your zip code.”  Then there was a notice in the following issue that there had been a misprint in this introductory parachuting article.  It stated that instead of “shout your zip code” it was suppose to have read “pull your rip cord.”  (Adv in the Warrenton, (Va.) Fauquier Democrat.)

Zip codes aren’t important.  Rip cords are.  During the Advent season it’s all too easy to confuse one for the other.  Standing in line at Wal-Mart waiting for the jelly jar was like parachuting in a free fall and realizing that shouting my zip code as loud as it could was not opening the chute.  The “zip codes” of the season – the replacement bulbs, the four sticks of butter, the fruit-by-mail catalogs, the party shoes – have our attention, and before we know it, we’re picking up speed and shouting those “zip codes” without ever asking why. 

How do we lay hold of the rip cord that we need so badly during this season of waiting?  How do we wait in a way that is not empty but full.  There is an ancient story about Adam and Eve.  It is a legend spun off of the biblical story.  It is a legend that is really talking about a spiritual truth.

Adam and Eve woke up.  They were hungry and thirsty.  Later, on reflection, they did not know if they woke up and were hungry and thirsty, or if hunger and thirst had awakened them.  But they ate and drank, and they were full.  It was good.

Six hours later they were hungry and thirsty again.  They said to one another, “We must not have done it right.”  So they ate and drank very carefully, savoring every sip and chewing every bite, and they were full.  It was good.

Six hours later they were hungry and thirsty again.

So a 3^rd time they ate and drank, taking even greater care in chewing and sipping.  It was good.

Six hours later they were hungry and thirsty again.

Then it dawned ont hem.  That is the way it was going to be.  Hungry and thristy, then eating and drinking.  Then once again, hungry and thristy, then eating and drinking.  Then once again…

It was not enough.

They shouted out their frustration.  “What are we?  Asses tethered to a feeding trough?  Oxen tied to a manger?”

God heard this shout and took their protest as a prayer.  He sent an angel named Gariel to a town named Nazareth to a virgin named Mary.

Gabriel said, “Adam and Eve hunger and thirst and you must prepare a feast.”

Mary then gave birth to the Son of the Most High.  Shepherds attended his birth and found new flockes to tell what they had seen and heard.

One day they came upon Adam and Eve roaming around outside the garden.  The shepherds knew that what they had to say Adam and Eve wanted to hear:  “We bring you glad tidings of great joy meant for all the people.  There has been born to you a child, the Messiah and the Lord.  Go to Bethlehem and you will find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.”

Adam and Eve were not sure of all that the invitation entailed, but they decided they needed some direction to their roaming.  They set out for Bethlehem, the house of Bread.  When they arrived at the birth, they were surprised to see and ox and an ass grazing around the manger.  As they walked past them, Adam and Eve nodded.  Did they know these beasts?  Then they looked down at the child wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.  Before long they knelt.

Mary took the hand of Eve and placed it on the chest of the child, over his heart.  The eyes of the child opened and Eve drank from his eyes.

Then Mary took the hand of Adam and placed it on the chest of the child, over his heart.  The mouth of the child opened and Adam ate from the mouth of the child.

Then Adam and Eve spoke as one:  “We tie ourselves to this manger.” 

A strange legend in a way, isn’t it?  A funny juxtaposition, Adam and Eve at the manger with Jesus?  What are they doing there?  You see Adam and Eve the first man and women were driven by a nameless need.  They were searching for something they did not know what.  They wanted something more.  More than eating and drinking, eating and drinking, endlessly.  They cried out loud complaining and God heard it as a prayer.  So too, standing in an endless line at Walmart, we hit a limit and want something more than shopping and spending and rushing and shopping and spending, and buying more stuff and doing more things.  We cry out, “Why am I not happier with all this stuff?”  Like Adam and Eve,  God  hears our cries at Walmart as a prayer.  We had come looking for something we want and realized that we were trying to fill a nameless need.  If standing in the line at Walmart doesn’t drive you completely in sane, you will realize a core piece of your soul which is you have a need to be real - more real than the physical world can offer.  It’s not “zip code” it’s “rip cord.”

Adam and Eve bumped into the Shepherd who told them the glad tidings of great joy about the new Messiah born in Bethlehem.  And even though they didn’t know where Bethlehem was or even exactly what the shepherds were talking about Adam and Eve risked the journey.  Adam and Eve ate and drank endlessly and began to think that they were no better than asses tethered to a feeding trough or an ox tied to a manger.  And so to solve their problem they were sent ironically to a manger where instead of hay there is a baby and  they are feed upon his eyes and mouth. 

What is touching the heart of the child?  It is nothing but some more waiting.  Kneeling there, looking into his eyes and feeling the breath from his mouth.  It is a waiting.  But it is not empty but full.  It is the second kind of waiting, the waiting that Advent calls us to do.  Once we come to the manger and touch the heart of the child we will be able to see what he sees (drink from his eyes) and realize the truth of his words (eat from his mouth).  This is the bread that comes down from heaven.  It feed not the beast in us, nor the jelly jar consumer.  It is the kind of waiting wherein we become what we wait for – a beloved child of God.  (John Shea, Starlight, page 129)