Waiting and Watching
Sermon Given August 7, 2022
Texts: Genesis 15:1-6, Luke 12:32-40
When was the last time you were in a period of intense waiting? While I’m not a parent, I’m sure those who have experienced the pull towards parenthood know this feeling well. You are expecting. You are hoping. You are fearing. There are those who go through the struggles of infertility, hoping for a positive test. Those who experience the birth of their children have due dates and relative certainty about when they will greet their child, but fears and uncertainty loom. There are always risks of complications. Adoptive parents may or may not have those due dates for their child. They may wait for years, going through long processes to bring children into their homes. Foster parents get calls at unexpected times to care for children for days, weeks, months, years, perhaps even adopting them, though adoption is not the expected outcome for most foster situations. Children come and go, foster children themselves live within the intense waiting, hoping for better, seeking stability and structure in an uncertain and trauma filled world. The intense expectancy of receiving children into homes and hearts brings hope, fear, trials. The expectancy does not dissipate once the child has come. It morphs into a new way of being in the world. It changes people.
Abram was familiar with the wait for a child. He moved away from his homeland based on the promise of God, the promise of a land filled with his descendants, a good land filled with the riches of God’s bounty. He was wealthy and prosperous, but the promise that had helped bring Abram to the new land remained unfulfilled and as he approached his nineties, that promise seemed lost and gone. He had much wealth, but a child remained elusive. Eliezer of Damascus was set to gain it all. God had said Abram would have a great reward, but without the child God had promised him, the earthly bounty felt hollow to Abram. He wasn’t looking for stuff, he was looking for an addition to his family and numerous descendants. He believed God could still accomplish this, and God eventually did help accomplish this. Shortly after the portion of Genesis we read today, Abram had his son, Ishmael, born to the servant Hagar. But it would be years even after this before Isaac, Sarah’s son, would be born. Abram would have two sons. Yet the period of intense waiting continued for the rest of Abram’s life. While he lived in the new land, he did not occupy it. He lived in tents, he was on the outskirts of the land, it was not his. But eventually after he died his sons would grow up and have kids. Those kids would have kids. It is said that his son Ishmael became the father of the Arabic nations and ancestor of the Muslim prophet Muhammed. Isaac became the father of Israel. Abram never saw the completion of the promise, but he lived hoping and trusting that it would happen. He looked up at the stars and imagined his great grandchildren and the generations to follow. The intense expectancy of Abram became his righteousness.
The hope and expectancy of having children is a good example of intense waiting, but not everyone wants children. Jesus did not raise kids. Yet we all have those deep longings that change us. There are hopes and desires that make us different people.Career changes, sobriety, moving to new places, even joining a new group can alter the course of our lives and make us different people. Once the initial task is accomplished, there is a new identity that is established. It needs to be fostered in order to grow. Our hopes, our dreams, become connected to these things. Because these things happened, we are different. We may never see the full effects of those changes, but they affect other people, they can influence the world long after we’re gone. It’s like the butterfly effect. Sometimes even small things alter the course of history, or at least our stories. Expectancy leads to new life.
Even after a year in this position, I’m still processing the experience of the job search that led me here. It began in late 2019 and was greatly altered by the pandemic. What I hoped might be a simple move from one congregation to another quickly became a national job search. The pile of rejections grew. The market flooded with more experienced priests as the pandemic created a flurry of clergy seeking new jobs. The experience changed me. It humbled me. It also bonded me to my priest friends who listened to my hopes, shared with me in my sorrow, and continually said, “Think of who will say yes. Pray for that place. Hold onto it. Dream of it.” That group that kept me going and continues to be my biggest inspiration and support. My intense expectancy turned into a call. The call turned into a new life, one that I cherish, even when faced with challenges. I am changed forever because I went through this process. My priestly community helped me live into the new reality I sought. We continue to shape each other as we hold onto our dreams and pray for the places that said yes to us. We hold out the hope that God still does use the Church, that it can be a blessing to the world, a place filled with love, laughter, justice, and hope. We still believe that the world can be made better because we follow the way of Christ. Our dreams may never see full fruition, but we hold on like Abram, looking up to the stars on the darkest of nights.
This is where our Gospel lesson is moving us. It feels a bit disjointed. We move from talking about treasurers to waiting for a master, to suddenly being confronted by thieves in the night. But this gospel asks us firmly and clearly, “What are you waiting for?” What does your heart desire more than anything? What do you work towards? Where do you put your time, your talent, your treasure? Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
That’s an important line. Our treasures, the things we devote ourselves to, change us, they affect the course of our lives.. Faith is not led by emotion alone, it lives in the tangible things of our lives. The things you hold closest to you show the nature of your heart. . That’s why Jesus comes down on wealth so much, why he rebuked the man last week who wanted more inheritance. Stability is good, greed isn’t. Greed can feed into our hopes, our desires, our vision for the world. Greed can have long lasting effects that affect generations to come. The majority of what we call systemic racism are the effects of the greed of white people in the past, making rules and regulations that benefit them over and above people of color. Their treasures built up inequalities that are experienced today.
These inequalities were built up by people who professed faith, but who used faith as a tool to possess what they desired. We still see that today in big and small ways throughout the entire Church. No one is innocent of trying to adapt the faith to fit their desires rather than God’s dream. We continually have to examine ourselves and explore our faults in order to find the freedom Christ promises us.
We have to make new purses, filled with God’s vision, not our own. We continually have to purge the desires for unjust power, seeking to use systems of power in ways that benefit all. There can be structures of hierarchy without domination, systems that help create order without denying resources or human dignity to any within the system. We can work together to take on the night watches, balancing things out so everyone has the benefits of food, shelter, rest, and play. We can be expectant and be whole, complete people, working within our communities to make the world look more like what God imagines.
We are working towards that day when Jesus will reign over the earth. This reign won’t be a way of domineering, of wiping out all the non-Christians or those who aren’t Christian enough. It’s not the vision of those who created the concept of the rapture or wrote the Left Behind series. It’s the way of the master coming back home after a wedding banquet, filled with love and joy. It’s Jesus wrapping a towel around his waist and washing our feet, serving us. Jesus’ reign will be a time of human renewal, of rest and peace and joyful feasting. It’s a time to look forward to, not a time to fear. It’s a time when the love of God and neighbor combine and suffering is relieved. We are told that God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, that injustice and sorrow will be no more. We are called to live into that vision, to hope for it, to claim it. We are being asked by God to imagine what that will be like, to pray for it, to hold onto it, to dream of it. Even if it doesn’t come in our lifetimes, we can help set up the world for that time to take place. We can watch and wait with expectation. We do not know when Jesus will break into the world.
May we live into and be changed by our watch. May we find ourselves different people as our hopes and dreams are shaped by this time of expectation, as we wait for Jesus to come to us. May we live into what we sing, as we raise our voices in our final hymn today: “Our hope and expectation, O Jesus now appear; arise, thou Sun so longed for, above this darkened sphere! With hearts and hands uplifted, we plead, O Lord to see the day of earth’s redemption, and ever be with thee!”
Amen.
