14^th December 2012

Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley Advent 1 Sunday 2 December 2012

Lessons - Psalm 25:1-10,21,22; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36

'I wait for you O Lord all the day long' - I wait! (Psalm 25:3,5,21 RSV)

We are an impatient bunch! We do not 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 or how we will cope. Waiting for a serious operation, or for news of its outcome, can be unbearable. We can become sick in the stomach at the thought of tackling a difficult task.
Few of us await 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 pleasure is seen as a weakness. Looking to the future is widely thought to be irresponsible and futile. Why put off until tomorrow what you can have now? Waiting is for those who are bored, lazy or refuse to 'seize the day'.

Our society is largely shaped by such thinking. Advertisers, ideologues and gurus play on our fear of the future to get us to buy, act or commit now. In this scheme of things 'God' is thought to be useful only if he fixes our problems immediately. There is no future in waiting for God!

How different this is from how the Psalmist sees things. Waiting for God may be hard, particularly when one's faith is mocked (v2) or the memory of one's sins is overwhelming (vv7,11,18). But it is the essence of a humble, robust and heart-felt faith that yearns to experience the steadfast love, truth and righteousness of God, and a lively, expectant hope - that anticipates the 'redemption of Israel from all their troubles' (v22).

We do not know the precise circumstances faced by the Psalmist. Clearly, though, he is beset by various 'troubles'. Some are inflicted by others, some are self-inflicted. Some affect him and some affect his people as a whole. It is remarkable that, in the face of persecution, affliction and wrongdoing - when there is no basis for optimism about the future - the Psalmist confidently 'waits' for a future in which God's redemptive purposes shall be revealed.

Meanwhile, anticipating a future that is free of 'troubles', he prays that God will forgive his sins, teach him the ways of truth, goodness and integrity and strengthen him to withstand temptation and ridicule.

Clearly therefore as the Psalmist, and Paul (in Thessalonians) and Jesus (in Luke) indicate, waiting for God's future is not to be confused with idleness, resignation, complacency or procrastination. Waiting is not an excuse to ignore the needs of our neighbours or the many threats to God's righteousness and mercy. Nor is it a sign of weakness to be overcome by flinging ourselves into so-called 'practical action' in a desperate and futile attempt to bring in the future.

Waiting bucks conventional wisdom. The immediate satisfaction of our physical, material and spiritual needs is not ultimate. The future of humanity does not ultimately depend on us. We need not ultimately despair at the parlous state of the world. We are not to sit around waiting to die but to abound in hope!

We are called to anticipate God's future in a spirit of expectation that commits us to engagements with others now. Waiting in this sense means being committed to shaping communities of hope in a broken world. It also means being distressed by the refusal of leaders and people - including ourselves - to do or to stand up for what is right according to God's good purposes.

This word of hope is a present comfort: to persecuted Christians; to those whose lives are blighted by sin and guilt; to those who are victims of abuse and neglect; to those who have known affliction, tragedy or untimely deaths. It does not minimise their suffering. Indeed, like the Psalmist, they may experience a heightened sense of the absence of God! At the same time, stripped of illusions about their own ability to bring about a better future, they may experience a deeper confidence in, and a more passionate commitment to, God's eternal purposes.

Waiting in hope should be the watchword of a Church that is enthusiastically committed to the glory of God. Unfortunately this future dimension of faith has been largely ignored by mainstream Christians. It seems to be so impractical, irresponsible and useless when there is so much to be done now. What could be more irrelevant than to await God's future reign?

Properly understood, however, the invitation to wait on God's future is just what the Church and community needs to hear. Anticipating what is to come saves us from pride in our own ability to create a better world and despair from our inevitable failure to do so. At the same time, waiting unsettles us. It saves us from becoming comfortable with church life, prods us to stand up for the truth and encourages us to shape communities in the light of that future!

It may seem strange and fanciful to talk about shaping the present by anticipating what is in the future! We usually think that the past informs the present and the future can take care of itself. It would be wishful thinking if it were not for the glimpses of God's goodness and mercy in Israel's history and their embodiment in Christ. God's self-disclosure in these events enables us to await the future in hope. So we may anticipate (future) what has been foreshadowed in them (past) and so be energised to act boldly today (present).

In 'Advent thoughts' (Crosslight No. 228 December 2012, p13), Prof. Chris Mostert puts it well:

'We experience [the future] in an "anticipatory" way, when we gather around Word and Sacrament, when we are "peace-makers" and practise reconciliation, when we act justly and mercifully, or when we effect healing and liberation.

'This "anticipation" is not merely our thinking ahead, our imagining. It is like the bud anticipating the flower; the gust of wind on the subway platform anticipating the arrival of the train; the expectant mother already anticipating - not only in her mind but in her very being - her motherhood; in each case the future is already present in an elusive but real way.'

In the 1983, when I was chaplain at Ormond College and minister at College Church, Parkville, Fr Malcolm Crawford, the priest at St Carthage's Roman Catholic Church and an enthusiastic ecumenist, left to go to Northern Ireland. At the height of bitter sectarian conflict between Protestants and Catholics, and between the British Army and the IRA, he left the security of Australia and the University to join a small experimental community of Catholics and Protestants near Belfast.

I do not know whether the venture was a success. But it was a sign of what it means, in practical terms, to anticipate God's future. They awaited the future when all nations shall be reconciled to God and evil and death are no more, not by 'waiting around' or feverishly trying to bring in the Kingdom of God, but by quietly shaping a community to embody the reconciling mercy of God revealed in Christ. In a small but significant way this little community was a beacon of hope in what seemed to be a hopeless situation. Who knows what impact this bold and future-oriented community had on the end of hostilities?

Waiting for God means to be full of hope - even in the presence of great evil. We are not asked to be successful in renewing the Church, creating a just society or saving the planet. We are called simply 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 to acknowledge our own shortcomings as we give thanks for the splendour of God's grace.

Waiting for God can be unbearably hard, especially when, as members of the Church, we feel bereft of God. When God is ridiculed (in the public sphere) and we are tempted to wallow in self-pity it seems absurd - to us and our detractors - to wait expectantly for God's future. In our strife- torn world we sometimes 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 grounded in Israel's history and in the person of Christ.
Therefore we can anticipate the future that God has promised in him and so be encouraged to wait in such a way that we are energised to worship God, to participate in the foretaste of that future in the Lord's Supper and to shape our common life to reflect the end for which we have been created and redeemed. May we await that future by persevering in hope, knowing that, ultimately, success does not depend on us.

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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.