The First Sunday of Advent 2001

The Revd Canon Daniel S. Weir preached this sermon on the First Sunday of Advent, December 2, 2001.

When I was a child, the town fair was one of the high points of the year for me. I remember the Saturday of one fair weekend when I was up early and ready to go a good half-hour before the rest of the family was. I went out to the driveway and paced, hardly able to contain my excitement - and my impatience.

Those who know me now might be surprised that I was ready so early, but they wouldn't be surprised that I was impatient. I don't like to wait - and I suspect that I am not alone in that.

But here we are at the beginning of Advent being called to wait and watch, to enter into the important spiritual discipline of waiting. We are to wait and watch for the coming of the Son of Man, to wait and watch for the signs of God's presence with us, the signs of Emmanuel.

This waiting is not like other waiting we may do - waiting in line at Tops or the bank, waiting in traffic, waiting for the end of the school day. This waiting is waiting for something that is already happening, already on its way towards completion, towards fulfillment.

Nearly thirty years ago, Jan and I had the privilege of getting to know Colin Winter, the Bishop-in-Exile of Damaraland, what is now called Namibia. He had been kicked out of the country by the South African government because of his opposition to apartheid and to their illegal occupation of Namibia. When we met him he was living in Oxford. One day, he told us a story about Bishop Robert Mize, who had been Bishop of the diocese before him. Bishop Mize was driving in the bush one day when his car ran out of petrol. He was far from any village and might have decided to set out on foot in search of petrol. Instead, he took out his prayer book and read Morning Prayer. After awhile, another car came along, driven, if I recall rightly, by a Roman Catholic nun. She had extra petrol in her car and was able to help the bishop. What was intriguing about the story as I was told it was that the nun had started on her journey long before the bishop had run out of gas. God had already set in motion the answer to the bishop's prayer before he even prayed and all that he had to do was wait patiently, doing what he did every day, reading the Daily Office. Had he not waited patiently for what God had already begun to do, had he taken charge the situation himself and set out to solve the problem, he might have missed God's answer to his prayer.

Bishop Winter, like Archbishop Tutu, waited for an end to the injustice that was apartheid. When the Archbishop visited Buffalo, he spoke with confidence about the day when South Africa would be a free non-racist democracy. His confidence was not based on some socio-political analysis of the situation, but on his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and his awareness of what God was already doing. He saw signs of God's working that many of us might have missed. He saw those signs and waited in patient expectation for the purposes of God for the people of South Africa to be fulfilled.

It is hard for us to wait, even sometimes when we're waiting for God to act in our lives. Hard, I think, because we're not sure that we can trust God to do what's best for us - or, to put it more accurately, what we think is best for us, what we want.  Our waiting often gets tied up with our wishes and we lose the ability to see beyond those wishes as we wait upon God. We're not waiting with an openness to what God has in store for us, but with our own narrow agenda. And we miss seeing what God is doing already because we are so focused on our wishes.

But how do we wait with that openness? We don't, I think, do it by denying our desires, by denying ourselves any right to a notion of what we would like to happen in our lives. I believe that what we want is often close to what God wants and if we want it with an openness to something more, those desires can be what leads us deeper into God's purposes for our lives.

I would suggest two ways in which we can improve our waiting skills. First, we can take time to read and meditate upon the stories of our ancestors in the faith. From Abraham and Sarah to Saint Paul we have men and women who waited for God's purposes to be fulfilled and were not disappointed. But in those stories the examples of those who waited is less important than the faithfulness of God. In our senior high Sunday School class room there is a hand-made sign: You are great. God is better. Meditating upon the sacred stories brings us face to face once again with the incredible faithfulness and generosity of God. Seeing how God's purposes were worked out in the lives of our ancestors equips us for the spiritual work of waiting expectantly.

The second thing we can do is to remember and meditate upon the stories of our own lives, recalling God's generosity to us in times past and looking for signs of that grace-filled generosity here and now. Remember those moments when you have experienced God's grace here in the worship of God's people, in the friendships with which you are blessed, in the simple blessings of each day. Look around this congregation and see the people whom God has given you to be with you on this journey of faith. We are, by God's grace, incredible people, gifts to one another.

If we can practice these two spiritual disciplines, meditating on scripture and on our own stories, if we can be attentive to the signs of God's generosity that are all around us, as they were all around our ancestors in the faith, if we can do these simple things, I have absolute confidence that waiting and watching will be for us a joy. God is faithful - has been faithful - will be faithful.

As God spoke to the children of Israel as they stood hemmed in between the Red Sea and Pharaoh's army, God speaks to us today: Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will accomplish for you today. (Exodus 14:13)