What Are We Waiting For?

Rev. Peter Friedrichs

November 30, 2008

Have you noticed that retailers are offering layaway's again? I remember layaways from when I was a kid, but we haven't seen them around much until recently. Over the past couple of decades, when offers for credit cards have stuffed our mailboxes, we've been free to go out and buy whatever we've wanted. All we had to do was swipe that magical piece of plastic through the scanner and, voila! we were the proud owners of a new television set, or refrigerator, or even a car. But now, with banks in peril and our economy tipping on the brink of disaster, buying on credit seems far less attractive, both to us and to the banks. So retailers have brought back an old idea and made it new again. The Layaway. Instead of "buy now, pay later," layaway lets you pick an item from a store shelf, but leave it at the store. Then you make payments over time and when you've actually paid for the item you go and pick it up. Since we're now in the 21st century and we do a lot of shopping on line, there's even an "e-layaway" web site linked to hundreds of retailers, so you can use layaway for your online purchases.

So, what's the difference between buying on credit and using layaway? Buying on credit is about satisfying the demon of instant gratification. You know, that voice inside us that says "I know what I want, and I want it now," even when the balance in our bank account says we can't afford it. Layaway, on the other hand, is about patience and discipline. About deferring the demon and acting prudently. It's not that we're paying any less for an item when we put it on layaway. It's just that we're saying we're prepared to defer our desires, to curb our cravings, and to wait to enjoy something until we own it outright.

Patience. Discipline. Waiting. Those sound like really appealing topics, don't they? We're told that patience is a virtue, yet we live in a society where multi-tasking is the norm and instantaneous communication the expectation. Discipline implies rigidity and perhaps narrowness. Wouldn't we rather be gracious and fluid than disciplined? And waiting. There's something that really gets under our skin. Waiting in line for a cup of coffee at Starbuck's. Waiting at a red light. Waiting for a picture to download on the computer. I don't know about you, but I really don't like waiting for much of anything.

UCC minister Patricia Carque tells a story about waiting. When her daughter was young, they were preparing to go to visit her grandparents. As Pat took care of some chores around the house, her daughter, Erin, grew increasingly impatient. "I explained to her that we needed to do a few more things before we could leave and that she would simply have to be patient and wait," Pat writes. "Upon hearing that, she quickly rushed out of the room. Within a few minutes, she once again called to me, informing me that she was ready. Again I expressed the need for her to wait, and this time she informed me that she had waited and that we could go now. I went to see what she was up to and found her in the bathroom, sitting on the bathroom scale-'weighting.' She had gone to the quickest place she knew to "wait," that place where you stand and instantly know what your weight is-in pounds, anyway. And then the process of waiting is over and done with." Pat goes on to say that "Waiting is heavy. Waiting ties us down to some place when we'd rather be elsewhere. Waiting makes us impatient. Our whole lifestyle is one in which waiting means wasting time."

Today is the day on which most of the Christians on the planet begin the formal process of waiting. It is the first Sunday of Advent, beginning the period leading up to Christmas Day and the arrival of God on earth in the birth of the baby Jesus. For the Christian faithful, this is no simple period of sitting around and twiddling your thumbs, or counting down the days until Christmas. It is a time of preparation and expectation, a deeply spiritual time during which the distance between ourselves and God is explored, and a hoped-for future contemplated. "O come, o come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel" is a cry for deliverance, an expression of a longing for freedom from bondage and the end of suffering. It is a time of anxious expectancy, of the arrival of the day, foretold by the prophets, that a savior would be born to deliver all from evil. As one writer put it, "Advent is marked by a spirit of expectation, of anticipation, of preparation, of longing."^[1]

The theologian Henri Nouwen describes the nature of this kind of waiting. He tells us that this is "waiting with a sense of promise…[the people of the Gospel] who wait have received a promise that allows them to wait. They have received something that is at work in them, like a seed that has started to grow." He goes on to say that "we can only really wait if what we are waiting for has already begun for us. So waiting is never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a movement from something to something more…The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun."^[2]

For Christians, the Advent season isn't simply about waiting. It's waiting in a certain way. It's waiting with expectation and preparation. With the seed of the savior's return planted, Christians are called to prepare themselves, to nurture the soil of their souls for the birth of the Christ child. Knowing that God came to earth two thousand years ago, Christians around the world take this time to contemplate the future, when, as promised, Jesus will return again to claim his kingdom.

The question for those of us who do not believe in the miracles of the virgin birth or God becoming man, is what are we to make of Advent? I suppose one option is to ignore it altogether. To go on with our holiday plans and our decorating and caroling and not give it a thought. But like religious holidays of other traditions, such as Rosh Hashanah and Ramadan, Advent does offer us an opportunity to explore our spiritual selves, if we just accept the invitation. Which brings me to the question that is the title of this sermon: What are we, what are you, waiting for? This question can be asked in several ways.

The first is something like, "What are you WAITING for?" As Unitarian Universalists, we don't put much stock in waiting. We are a culture of "do-ers," and to wait implies that some pressing need will go unmet. One of our favored readings from our hymnal, written by W.E.B. duBois, tells us "Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done…"^[3] Waiting is the embodiment of inaction. It renders us impotent and useless, and as Marge Piercy reminds us, like vessels made for carrying water, we want to be of use.^[4] "What are you WAITING for?" is more of an exhortation, a cry of exasperation than it is a legitimate question, isn't it? You might translate it as "Don't just sit there. Do something."

Another way we might phrase this question is "What are YOU waiting for?" This, too, is a kind of call to action, but one directed at a particular individual, perhaps one who is standing on the sidelines and hasn't entered the game. Another way to ask this question might be "What's holding you back?" or in its more compassionate incarnation, "Is there something wrong? What's the source of your reluctance or your fears?" There's an element of judgment in this particular question. It seems to indicate that I've got it together and you don't, that I'm somehow better than you.

The third way we might state this question is "WHAT are we waiting for," or, to be more grammatically correct, "For WHAT are we waiting?" If not the birth of a savior, then what? What can we find, in our action-oriented faith, that justifies, that legitimizes our holding back, our quiet contemplation, our watching and waiting? British Unitarian minister, Simon John Barlow, gives us a clue, and he couches it in the language of the season. Barlow invites us to consider Advent a time of preparing for the birth, or the rebirth, of what he calls our "inner-Christ child." He defines our "inner Christ-child" as "the spark of holiness that lies deep in us all." Listen to his advice around Advent:

Seek the signs of hope and promise in your life. Bring your life's gifts, your thankfulness and contentments. Seek physical comforts. Surround yourself with your joys and your loves, the beauties of your life. Isn't that beautiful? Don't we just breathe a sigh of relief and release, feeling the tension flow out of our bodies when we think of the Christmas season this way, in stark contrast to the images of marauding shoppers stampeding into shopping malls?

If we choose to make it so, Advent can be a time of personal and spiritual renewal. A time to contemplate the gifts we already have, rather than the gifts we need to get. Imagine sending Santa a Christmas list like that! This can be a time to actively seek out the joys in our lives, to acknowledge the beauty that is all around us. To prepare room in our hearts for unknown gifts yet to come. Like all spiritual practices, maintaining this attitude during the onslaught of the commercial Christmas season is difficult work. And so I return to the words of Macrina Wiederkehr's poem that we read earlier today. Like the tree in her poem, we must first let go. We must be prepared to stand empty and silent. Let go of petty concerns and all the "have-to's" of the season. And then like the tree's need for its partner the sun, we need to become part of a community of others who can support us in our journey. Those who will watch us with tenderness, who will stand with us in silence, and who will celebrate with us the sacrament of waiting. Together we can create an environment of waiting that is life-affirming and renewing.

And so, for the next four weeks, I invite you to give yourself permission to wait. To stand like the trees, empty and silent. To seek the signs of hope and promise in your life and the world around you-the stars that point the way to the Light of God. To prepare for the birth of your inner Christ-child. Instead of running headlong in your life, using up all your reserves and then continuing on credit, I invite you to savor what you have, and prepare yourself for what is to come. Think of it, if you wish, as a kind of spiritual layaway plan.

May it be so.

Closing Words: (by Fra Giovanni, the 14th century priest and mystic)

^[1] http://www.cresourcei.org/cyadvent.html
^[2] Watch for the Light, Readings for Advent and Christmas, p. 30-31.
^[3] Singing the Living Tradition #502
^[4] SLT #567
^[5] Quoted in a sermon by Rev. Diane Teichert, First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church, Canton, Mass., December 3, 2000.

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