Written in joyful response to The Very Rev. Lucinda Laird’s Sunday sermon at the American Cathedral in Paris, Sunday, December 2
What are you waiting for?
Whispered into my ear, gently prodding me, cajoling me into contemplation— what am I waiting for? What is missing? What am I pinning my hopes on? What is holding me back? What am I longing for, yearning for, what would it be like to be whole?
In rest, this question pulls me deeper.
I am imperfect. I hold back because I don’t want to fail; I have the ideas to write, bristling bustling under my fingertips, but don’t want to start because first drafts are too painfully raw and poorly written. I don’t want to see myself making mistakes in real time. If I don’t try, I can’t fail. If I didn’t try, I didn’t lose. If I don’t put myself out there, I can’t fall on my face.
Except, that’s false. I still miss out if I sit by the wayside. I still stay where I am, stuck, waiting without a point.
Sometimes, in this advent season of life, when the world is groaning as though in the pangs of childbirth, it can be hard not to be overwhelmed by the problems, the mistakes, the glaring injustices as well as the daily annoyances. So often, it is clear that there is something deeply wrong, out of order, around us. One more sharp word, one more terror-filled headline, one more aggressive guy at the metro stop, one more mean comment piles on, and the day has barely begun.
We are waiting, longing, yearning for a time of restoration, when justice rolls down like waters, and the oppressed are set free. We are waiting for the return of the Christ Child. We are waiting for things to make sense, for our lives to work out, for our goals to align in a clean, understandable life plan, for all people to have empathy for one another, for power to be taken back by the powerless.
I am waiting to be accepted by my church family for all of who I am. I am waiting for the gender of the person I love to matter less than their character. I am waiting to be paid as much as a man. I am waiting for Black women and other women of colour to be paid as much as me. I am waiting for Black men to stop being murdered by police. I am waiting for our earth to be taken care of. I am waiting to not jump to conclusions. I am waiting to not bite people’s heads off when I’m having a bad day. I am waiting to stop comparing myself to others, to stop feeling envious instead of inspired.
But what are you waiting for is not solely a contemplative question, an invitation to sit around a coffee shop gazing at our navels and complaining about the current state of affairs: it is also an energizing demand—
Stomping on your doorstep, banging on your windows, waving banners in the streets: What are you waiting for?? Get out there! The Kingdom of God is Here, Breaking In!!
We taste and see that the Lord is Good by assisting with the break in, by pointing out pin pricks of light to each other, by reenergizing one another in the fight towards justice and restoration. We work for good, knowing that somehow, someday, all the brokenness in this world has been beaten, subdued, by an unassuming Jewish carpenter, who preached rampant, wild, ridiculous Love in the face of the Roman Empire.
We know that somehow, sometime, as Mary proclaimed, the proud will be scattered in the imagination of their hearts, the mighty put down from their seat, the humble and meek will be exalted, the hungry filled with good things, and the rich sent away empty: balance restored, the planet green and blue and lush. Somehow, someday, by the grace of God who sustains and nourishes this universe that Love created, we will be put back in right relationship with everything and everyone.
This is not a someday maybe kind of promise. This is a right here, right now, in our lives kind of promise. The world made whole, the “kingdom of God”, is at hand. Advent is a time of holding God and ourselves accountable to this upside-down way of living.
The light is coming, and the light is here. It may seem dark now, it may really be dark now, but darkness is where the light is born. It is the holy space of creation. God is in the dark, as much as the light.
Right now, as we are, we are fully known and fully loved. Secure in this knowledge, illuminated by this light, we are able to recognize the image of God present in one another, able to go to bat for this imago dei.
What are we waiting for? What is holding us back? What are we longing for, and how can we bring it about? We live in the tension, in the now but not yet. We are waiting and longing for restoration, but also living it out, bit by bit, step by step, tiny chinks allowing the glorious light to seep into this advent season, reminding us of the hope Christmas brings.
How do you live as though what you are waiting for is here? How do you balance the tension of recognizing our very real wounds while holding the promise that there is more to this life? How do you shine light into others’ lives, how do you recognize light and celebrate it? How do you appreciate the darkness as a creative and restorative time?