Amy Yoder-McGloughlin

Something Worth Waiting For

Isaiah 40:1-11 and Mark 1: 1-8

 

Listen for just a minute—do you hear it?  Do you hear Handel’s Messiah echoing in your ears?  After reading and listening to Isaiah and Mark, I have the urge to break out into song.  I’ll spare you any of my attempts to sing Handel’s beautiful tenor solo.  The classic work begins with a three and a half minute symphony, then begins a quiet string section and when they are nearly silent and the booming male voice calls out—Comfort ye my people.  I get tingles and goosebumps every time I hear it. 

Out of the silence comes a voice of hope.  Be comforted, people of God.  Take heart, people of God.  From the desert this voice of hope sounds.  From the desert—a place where life does not exist with ease, a place of dryness, and historically, a place of great danger.  The desert—a place where people were robbed, beaten, and left to die.  Out of this place a voice of hope arises.  Be comforted people of God.  

 

When the prophet Isaiah says these words, the Babylonian empire that is enslaving the people of Israel is already beginning to shake.  The wars and fighting were taking their toll on the empire that destroyed the nation of Israel, and enslaved their people.  Those that had destroyed the temple were themselves beginning to be destroyed.  Out of the desert we hear a voice calling—Be comforted people of God.   

These words of hope and comfort are offered to the people who have been through more than their fair share of drama.  In fact, the Isaiah text says that Israel has more than paid for their sins.  They and their ancestors have paid with their bodies and their spirits, the desecration of their land, their property, their pride, their hope.  They are being told by the prophet Isaiah—be comforted people of God. 

This is good news, right?  Help is on the way!  God is going to save you, O people of Israel!  Hold on for just a little while longer—you will soon be comforted. 

The problem is—we hear John the Baptist say it again.  To the people of Israel.  A new generation of Israel, who are once again under the rule of a foreign government—this time the Romans instead of the Babylonians—and while they are not enslaved by the Romans, they are still feeling and acting as a people in exile.  They still have to follow some Roman rules so that they can live their Jewish faith and tradition.  They are still spread out, and suffering from the results of being in Diaspora, and not in control of their own political destinies.  John the Baptist says the same words to the people of Israel that Isaiah said to the people several hundred years earlier—Be comforted people…of…God. 

Suddenly this doesn’t sound so comforting.  In fact it’s downright disturbing.  These Israelites have been holding onto this idea of comfort, this promise of hope for a long, long, unbelievably long time.  Yet John the Baptist says it once again—be comforted people of God!  Woo.  We haven’t heard that before.  Thanks John the Baptist.  Real helpful. 

Or maybe this is me reading my own disgust about the waiting onto the text.  I’ll admit it—I have a history of being a pretty impatient person.  If something is coming I want to know what it is.  As a child, I used to sneak into my parent’s bedroom and find my Christmas presents.  Then, I’d spend the rest of the holiday practicing in front of the mirror how I would react when I opened the gift for which I was not surprised. 

Later, when my parents figured out my evil tactics, they solved this problem by wrapping presents immediately.  But I figured out how to open presents, and re-wrap them so my parents could not tell I had opened them. 

When Charlie and I were first married, Charlie used to have to hide my presents in his parent’s house so I wouldn’t find them.  And then, I turned to new, more sinister tactics—to mentally exhaust the giver of the gift until they gave me enough clues that I figured out what the gift was.  And I won’t even get into the tactics I used to find out about a recent surprise party. 

Clearly, I don’t like surprises.  I don’t like to wait.  I want to know—right now—what will happen.  I want to know how it will happen, when it will happen—I want all the details. 

In the words of Tom Petty—“the waiting is the hardest part.”  And my experience with waiting is a testimony to that.  Watching children wait for Christmas is a testimony to that.  Our impatience for what we want and what we expect testifies to the difficulty in the waiting. 

 

The word esperanza comes to mind.  It’s that beautiful and familiar Spanish word means in noun form “hope” and in verbal imperitive form“wait”.  That’s not some sort of accidental linguistic occurrence—it is intentional.  To hope for something is to wait for it.  To hope for something is not to protest that it is taking too long, or beg for clues as to what specifically you are waiting for, what it might look, sound or feel like.  That’s not hope.  Hope is patiently, prayerfully, and earnestly waiting for the arrival of God’s gift. 

Hope is waiting, but it’s more than just sitting around, waiting for something to happen.  The act of waiting (if done in a spiritual sense) is a kind of preparation.  When we wait, we listen, we clear our heads, we meditate, we clear out the cobwebs and distractions in our minds.  We prepare our heads and hearts.  We hope.

In Africa, the Christmas tradition is markedly different from ours here.  There’s no Santa Claus, and no focus on gift giving.  In fact Christians in Africa do not understand this tradition we American Christians have—what does Santa and Christmas Trees and all this shopping have to do with welcoming the Messiah? 

The focus for Christians in Africa is to prepare for Christ to be born in the hearts of the people.  They prepare spiritually.  They sing, they march, they dance in the streets. 

The prophet Isaiah tell us, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”  The comfort is coming people, but you have to prepare for it!  The prophet Isaiah wants us to know that we need to lay the tracks for the hope that comes.  God’s promise is coming, but we have work to do—get your house in order, get ready, prepare the way!

Hmmm.  This sounds a lot like Lent, doesn’t it?  Prepare your hearts.  Prepare the way of the lord.  I think back to passion Sunday, where this congregation, with the leadership of the children, sang Halle, Halle Halle while they laid palm branches down for Christ to walk on.  Prepare the way of the Lord!  Make his paths straight! 

The early church employed similar practices for Lent and Advent—fasting and prayer—this as a way to prepare the hearts of the people for the coming of Christ, and then for the death and resurrection of Christ. 

The church parents saw both Lent and Advent as times of reflection and contemplation. 

So much of Advent has become about preparation for giving stuff and doing stuff.  We’ve gotten sucked into the sales, the deals, we have a list of things to buy and things to do.  We make lists.  We check them twice. Even those of us who proudly proclaim that we’ve bought nothing on buy nothing day—we get sucked into the frenzy of the season. 

But where is the time for contemplation?  The time to listen, the time for waiting for Christ, for hoping for comfort?  What has happened to it?  Did it get lost in the rush, the incessant Christmas hymns (that begin way too early!), the unending commercials? 

While our culture is calling us to shop, we are being called by God to wait.  While Christmas songs are proclaiming the coming of Santa and his reindeer, a voice is calling from the wilderness—Prepare the way of the lord!  While commercials entice us with promises of comfort in consumerism, God promises us that comfort—spiritual comfort—is coming—soon. 

During this Advent season, our preparation involves learning to enjoy the anticipation of Christ’s arrival, taking the time to rest in the goosebumps of advent, the tingles of excitement about something wonderful that is coming.  The real letdown of Christmas is rushing through Advent, only to discover that Jesus is just a baby.  Taking our time through Advent, resting in the waiting and anticipation of advent brings us with joy to the infant—the savior of the world, vulnerably born in a barn, amongst common farm animals, in a smelly stall.  Christ, the child conceived outside the bonds of marriage.  Christ, the child born into questionable heritage.  This infant is the savior of the world. 

That is tingles and goosebumps.  That is exciting.  But we don’t get the irony, the joke, the tremendous miracle unless we slow down, meditate, hope and wait. 

Comfort, o comfort people of God!  Esperanza!  Hope is coming.  The promise of Christ’s arrival is just around the corner!  Listen!  Do you hear the song?