7^th December 2009

Sunday 29 November 2009

Lessons -- Psalm 25; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-28

For thee I wait all the day long. Psalm 25:5,3,21 (RSV)

We humans are an impatient bunch! We don't like waiting for things to
happen. The anticipation of a significant event may be exciting but it can
make us apprehensive -- unsure how it will unfold and how we will cope.
Waiting for a serious operation, or news of its success or failure, can be
unbearable. We can become sick in the stomach at the thought of tackling a
difficult task. Few of us await the certainty of death without fear. We do
not like waiting.

We live in an age that wants instant satisfaction of physical, material
and spiritual needs. To delay gratification is seen as a weakness. Looking
to the future for happiness is regarded as irresponsible and futile. Why
put off until tomorrow what you can have now? Waiting is for the bored,
the lazy and those who refuse to seize the day.

Our society is saturated in this way of thinking. Advertisers, ideologues
and gurus play on our fear of the future in order to get us to buy, act or
commit now. In this scheme of things 'God' is thought to be useful only if
he / she grants us success or fixes our problems more-or-less immediately.
There is no future in waiting for God!

How different this is from how the Psalmist sees things. Waiting for the
Lord God may be unutterably hard but it is of the essence of a robust
faith and a lively hope.

Consider his lament! He pours out his heart to God: the God whose
steadfast love, enduring goodness, unparalleled righteousness and saving
mercy already have been promised and displayed (here and there) to him and
his people over centuries.

We don't know the exact circumstances which led him to pen this heartfelt
prayer. What we do know is that he is being shamed by people of ill-will
(who ridicule his faith in God) and that he is ashamed by the memory of
his own sins (through which he has ridiculed God).

The Psalmist is not a self-righteous fanatic who is blind to his and his
people's infidelity and invokes the wrath of God on the enemies of faith.
The covenant community is beset by many 'troubles' -- some inflicted by
others, some self-inflicted.

In the midst of feeling so God-forsaken the Psalmist, remarkably, waits on
God. He is no atheist railing against God, but a person of faith. He looks
forward to a time that God shall forgive his sins, shame violent and hate-
filled men, save him from their clutches and preserve his integrity. He
awaits a time that Israel shall be redeemed and all may live humbly in
'fear of the Lord' (vv 12,14): that is with a deep sense of awe and
responsibility that is faithful to the truth, turns away from evil and
glorifies God alone.

In waiting for God's future action the Psalmist, together with Paul (in
Thessalonians) and Jesus (in Luke), bucks conventional wisdom about the
significance of the present. They say that it is nonsense to put our
ultimate hope in whatever immediately satisfies our physical, material and
spiritual needs.

They remind the Christian community (and Israel) that present experiences,
including those of persecution (from outside) and sin (from inside) the
Church, must be put into proper context. Such events take place as we
await the coming of the Kingdom of God which already was promised to
Israel and has been embodied in Jesus as the sign and pledge of God's love
for all nations.

Thus, waiting for God is an essential part of Christian belief which
unfortunately has been largely ignored by mainstream Christians who are
often desperate to transform the world by their own good, just and
compassionate programs. We want to be relevant! What could be more
irrelevant than to await God's reign? It is thought to be useless,
irresponsible and impractical. What we need and must commit ourselves to
is action now!

In 'Hope in Time of Abandonment', the late Protestant theologian Jacques
Ellul describes such actions as betrayal of Christian hope.

'The treason of Christians and of the Church was to settle in, to wait
contentedly for something for which one hoped less and less, to organise
so as to wait as comfortably as possible, and finally no longer expect
anything at all, but to put oneself to sleep in the feverish activity of
organising society and the world.(p262)'

Neither Ellul nor the Psalmist nor Paul nor Jesus is suggesting that we do
nothing, wander around in a daze and abandon present tasks. You do not
make enemies, as they did, if you've not stood up for truth and goodness
or insisted that your primary responsibility is to put your hope in God.

They invite us to rediscover a lively sense of hope. As Ellul puts it:
'Christians must understand that the one thing useful to the world, and
indispensable, is to recover the fighting and the burning expectation.
(p263)' 'If you are not flayed alive by God's abandonment, if you are not
torn apart in the very depths of their / your being by the delay of his
return, then it is useless to play at waiting and to talk about hope.
(p264)'

It is useless to speak vaguely about hope if, instead of waiting on God in
this passionate and expectant manner, we actually put our hope in our own
commitments to urgent religious or secular causes, such as reforming the
Church, being socially just or saving the planet. There are many good
causes in which to be involved. But if we invest them with our whole being
or claim that they renew or redeem humanity, then hope is misplaced. Hope
for the end to idolatry and inhumanity is not to be found in our efforts,
no matter how necessary, well-intentioned or committed.

We can await the future which God has in store for the earth only when we
stop looking to God to fix our immediate problems and we believe the sign
and pledge of God's steadfast love disclosed to Israel and embodied in
Jesus Christ.

That does not mean that we should respond to ridicule or our own
shortcomings by just waiting around for something to happen. That is a
counsel of despair. As far as the Psalmist, Paul and Jesus are concerned,
'waiting for the Lord' means being full of hope, even in the presence of
unimaginable evil (like that suffered by Somali Christians and reported by
the Religious Liberty Network) knowing, contrary to popular wisdom, that
nothing as splendid as hope is to be expected from our deeds.

Yet we shouldn't shrug our shoulders, wallow in self-pity or 'hope against
hope' that something better will turn up. We can await God's future only
because God's steadfast love and mercy have been displayed already in the
history of Israel and the person of Jesus Christ. Thus we can wait without
imagining that hope depends on our efforts.

As we go about our many tasks we do well to remember that we are not asked
to be successful in renewing the Church, creating a just society or saving
the planet. We are simply called to act justly and with integrity, to do
what is necessary without drawing attention to ourselves, to stand firm
against evil without wallowing in self-pity, and also to acknowledge our
own shortcomings and to give thanks for the magnificence of God's grace.

Above all, we are called to wait with 'an inexhaustible perseverance'
(Ellul, 266) that is nourished by prayer -- prayer in and through the
Risen-Crucified One in whom alone there is hope for flawed humanity and
our tortured world. Ultimately it is because of him that we may await the
future with confidence!

Waiting for God can be unbearably hard, especially when, as members of the
community of faith, we feel God-forsaken. When God is ridiculed (in the
public sphere) or we pride ourselves or wallow in self-pity (in the
Church) it seems absurd -- to us and our detractors -- to wait expectantly
for God's future. In our strife-torn world we may wonder whether God will
come to set things right, to deal with evil and to make all things new. It
is after all 2500 years since the Psalmist's lament and 2000 years since
the crucifixion of Jesus and Paul's word to the early Church!

The only assurance we have is in what God has promised to Israel and
fulfilled in Christ. Without God's presence in these pivotal events, hope
in God would be an illusion and waiting on God would be absurd.

Nothing is more urgent today than that the Church should recover a sense
of hope that, being grounded in Israel's history and the person of Christ,
is pessimistic about our ability to build a better world but optimistic
about a future grounded in the righteousness and mercy of Almighty God.

May we await that future by persevering in hope and prayer, that we may
delight to take up our present responsibilities -- no matter how hard --
knowing that, ultimately, success and failure do not depend on us.

-----------------

Rev Dr Max Champion is minister in the St John's Uniting Church, Mt
Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is Chair of the Assembly of
Confessing Congregations within the UCA