“Waiting”

Advent 1

December 2, 2012

Jeremiah 33:14-16

 

It’s happened once again, we’ve come to the beginning of a new church year.  It has seemed a little different this year with Thanksgiving having been so early that there has been a slight disconnect between the Thanksgiving holiday and the beginning of Advent.  If you think about it, though, the way in which things fell this year is very appropriate for the spirit of Advent.  It is the time of the year when, as the church, we are called on to be totally counter-cultural.  Instead of the Christmas rush, we are called up to hurry up and wait.  To be patient in our preparations, to take our time as we take in the sights and sounds of the season.  It’s also a time when we are called to go against the clutter of the Christmas season and take some time to do some “Advent cleaning” and simplify how we do things while we wait for the celebration of the birth of Christ. 

But why would we do this?  What is the point of going against the current that is trying to pull us into the mad rush of Christmas?  Well, first, in the middle of the jam packed calendars that come with the month of December, isn’t it nice to have someone suggest that maybe we take a time out to slow down and enjoy what this season is all about? And second, we’re preparing to celebrate a birth, which takes some time and patience…but we’re also taking part in a story that has involved a lot of waiting and preparation.  So why not jump in and make ourselves fully involved in this story rather than just being bystanders who look in and say “oh, isn’t that nice?” 

When we talk about waiting, the prophet Jeremiah, and the Israelites in exile give us a good perspective on that this means.  Jeremiah conducted his ministry during a time filled with lots of waiting in the life of Israel.  The people were waiting for freedom from their Assyrian captors, who although they had been peaceful, were captors none the less.  143 years after the people had become captives to the Assyrians, however, King Nebuchadnezzar II and the Babylonians defeated the Assyrians and took control of the kingdom of Judah.  When the Babylonians took control, the king of Judah and other major leaders in Jerusalem were taken to live in exile in Babylon.  Meanwhile Nebuchadnezzar named a new king to rule over Judah, and in doing so, tore apart the kingly line that had been promised to David.

When the Babylonian captivity began, Jeremiah had been doing ministry for 30 years.  He was called by God into ministry in a time when many felt that God was silent and holding a grudge against them for the wrong doings of their ancestors.  Jeremiah was not a very well liked man, however. He preached to the people around him about their need to turn away from the worship of idols and return to worshipping God…and he did so to the point of being obnoxious.  The people didn’t listen, in fact they disliked what Jeremiah had to say so much that they threw Jeremiah into jail because of his prophecies.  Little did they know that these prophecies that were beginning to come true. 

It was not known at the time, but soon, Zedekiah, the king whom King Nebuchadnezzar II had placed on the throne in Judah, would rebel and in response, the Babylonian army would lay siege to Jerusalem, destroying the entire city, including the temple that king Solomon had built, and take more people into exile.  

This is the context in which Jeremiah was living.  The people in Jerusalem were living in fear, they had lost the promise of the Davidic line and now they were about to lose their families, their homes, their livelihood and many would lose their lives.  On top of all this, the holiest place in all of Jerusalem, a place that was thought to be invincible by the people of the time, would be destroyed.  The people in Jerusalem were in desperate need of hope in the midst of great loss…and they were waiting…waiting for deliverance from the situation in which they were in…waiting for deliverance from God.

2600 years after Jeremiah, it seems like we’re still doing a lot of waiting and that we’re still in need of some hope.  We’re waiting for the economy to bounce back, we’re waiting anxiously right now to see if congress is going to let us fall off that fiscal cliff, we’re waiting to see how that blood work turns out, or if a loved one finally got that job they’ve been struggling to find for a couple years, we’re waiting to see if the predictions surrounding the Mayan calendar are right…which, I can pretty confidently say they’re not…just ask a descendant of the Mayans.  But there is so much waiting that we do.  Maybe Advent makes us uncomfortable because we do so much waiting that the Christmas rush and getting things checked off our list sometimes bring us a little comfort, as if maybe there is something that we have control over. 

But there is something else which can bring us great comfort and hope in the midst of all the waiting.  “In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.”  In the midst of the destruction of the kingly line of David, in the midst of the impending destruction of Jerusalem, there is a promise.  There is a promise that the line of David will be restored to the throne.  A righteous branch, meaning a legitimate heir to the throne of David, will spring up and bring forth justice and righteousness, restoring Judah and Jerusalem.  These are words of radical hope in the midst of impending disaster, words that brought comfort to a people in the middle of waiting.  And though this prophecy was not fulfilled in the time of Jeremiah, or the exile, we have seen the fulfillment of this hope coming into our midst. 

This is the hope for which we wait and prepare for in this Advent season.  A hope in one who rose up from the line of David and brought justice and righteousness with him.  We have seen this hope realized in the birth of a child.  A child born in an unlikely place to unlikely parents, a child that did unlikely things and died in an unexpected way.  This is our advent hope.  One that grows each week, symbolized by the lights on the advent wreath, each week bringing more and more light into our midst until all five candles burn brightly together. 

A manger is probably the last place that one would go to as a place where hope comes from.  And yet, each year, that’s where we go to, to a feed trough, and from this most unlikely and unpleasant place, we find the source of our hope, wrapped in swaddling clothes.  Jeremiah didn’t know it, but this child would be one who would execute justice and righteousness, redeeming Jerusalem and Judah through the sacrifice of his own body and blood.  This is the hope that Jeremiah clung to.  A hope that endured through the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, the holiest place in the kingdom of Judah.  It is a hope that endured through the years of waiting during which Judah lived under the captivity of Babylon, it was the hope that brought Simeon and Anna to the temple each day to pray and wait for the Messiah, it is a hope that brings light into the midst of the all the waiting that we seem to be doing. A light that will never fade, even in the midst of all the waiting and hoping. 

This Advent we have a great opportunity.  We have an opportunity to wait, to slow down and prepare ourselves for the celebration of the birth of Christ.  It is the perfect opportunity for a New Year’s resolution or two.  Maybe it means taking more time to just be, or not rushing to get Christmas over with.  Or maybe, it means scheduling in some extra time to spend with family at home, away from the rush of the world, where you can slow down and together prepare for the celebration of the birth of Christ.  Let’s see if this year we can find hope in the midst of the waiting.  Blessings to you in this new year. Amen