I’m not sure how many times—but more than once or twice in my thirty years in the ministry—my sermon title for the first Sunday in Advent has been “What Are We Waiting For?” I did not try to go back and look up those old sermons, partly because I didn’t have any time or any particular reason to, but partly maybe because subconsciously I didn’t think I would like what I found. Not that those sermons would have been bad…exactly. What I suspect I would have found them to be was not bad, but bland. That is, sadly, a temptation we succumb to quite often in the church, especially at Christmas, and it is a temptation I know that I have succumbed to more often than I would like to admit, even to myself.
It’s ironic to me. Theologically, Christmas is supposed to be about incarnation. It’s supposed to be about God, who can sometimes seem to humans to be more of a concept than a reality—and sometimes a rather distant or fuzzy concept at that…It’s about God becoming real, flesh and blood real in the person of Jesus. It’s about the love of God, which can sometimes sound like just words, taking shape and being lived out in very earthly fashion. “The word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”
That’s what the Christ event is supposed to be about, just taking traditional Christian theology, incarnation, spiritual matters becoming carnal, made into something substantial and worldly, embedded in our bodily life. And yet what have Christian churches often done, what have I often done? We (I) have, way too often, kept everything as “spiritual” as possible. We talk about peace on earth as though we were saying something meaningful, but in fact mostly we try not to say anything meaningful. We keep it as general as we possibly can, because if we said something specific, we might disagree, and then we wouldn’t even have peace in the church, much less peace on earth. So we Christians have often done our best to avoid anything that is very real, and as long as we are suitably spiritual about it, we can all wistfully long for peace on earth without actually having to do anything or even think too hard about it.
And, of course, the same thing applies to faith, hope, love, joy, goodwill. I shudder to think how many candles on advent wreathes I have helped to light, designating this to be the candle of hope, and that to be the candle of joy—without saying very much at all about how those words are to become flesh. We try to make sure that our words are like a well-made children’s toy. We try to give our words round edges, so that they won’t inadvertently poke anyone. And so, it seems to me, we inadvertently do much to deny the essence of incarnation, if incarnation is to be something more than theology.
I’m not sure I have anything to say today with a particularly pointy edge to it, but I at least want to ask a pointy question, that is, ask the question “What Are We Waiting For?” in a pointed way. Let’s not ask that question in just a broad, encompassing sort of way. Instead let’s give that Advent question a specific focus. With regard to the concern we have chosen as our leading concern, with regard to racial injustice: What are we waiting for?
When we ask that question—What are we waiting for?—in that context, it immediately makes clear to me that the question has a double meaning. On the one hand, it assumes that we are waiting for something and asks us to think about what it is that we’re waiting for, specifically with regard to racial justice or racial matters in general in our society. What’s the next big step we have to take as a society? What are we anticipating, looking for, hoping for, praying for? Those kinds of questions, that have to do with longing and neediness. What is it exactly that we long for, that is our greatest need? What is it that we’re waiting for?
On the other hand, “what are we waiting for?” can have almost the opposite meaning. It says, if you say it with the right inflection, that there is no reason, no excuse for waiting, that delay is not acceptable, not with regard to issues of racial justice. We may be waiting for all sorts of things in our lives, but we don’t have the moral luxury of waiting around on issues of racial justice. The challenge is to stop waiting, to do something, even if we don’t have all the information we want, even if we’re not through thinking through all our issues, even if we’re not sure it’s the most important, most effective, even if it’s not the perfect thing to do.
Both of those meanings—“what is it that we’re waiting for?” And “why are we waiting?”—both of those meanings are present in the words of John the Baptist recorded in the passage from Luke we heard earlier this morning. Quoting Isaiah, John refers to himself as the voice of one crying in the wilderness and preparing the way for something, someone yet to come. The sense of expectation and uncertainty and waiting for something to happen that will change everything—that sense is certainly present in John the Baptist’s words. He himself appears in the wilderness, and he implies that his people are in a kind of a wilderness or wasteland, and await the One who will lead them out of that wasteland. “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
When RM and I were talking about this recently, he made the comment that he thought many people are waiting for another Martin Luther King to come along. What are we waiting for? Maybe someone who will inspire again the kind of passion for change that Dr. King inspired, someone who has the ability to bring people together as he did, someone with the ability to focus attention as he did, someone to be an eloquent voice for justice as he was. And maybe so. I don’t think we should underestimate the importance of having such a voice.
At the same time I can’t quite repress the thought that the voice we need is our own—or rather that the voice I need is my own. And that, of course, brings me back to the other meaning of the question, What are we waiting for?—and the other part of what John the Baptist had to say. Even as he pointed to the coming of a Promised One, John also had some rather confrontational words, in effect saying that the time is not later, the time is now to “bear fruits that are worthy of repentance”, as he says. “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.” No such thing as business as usual around here. Don’t think you can just do a few things to make yourself feel good: get baptized, say a few prayers, sing some nice songs. In all of this I hear John challenging me to find my voice, and I suspect all of us in this room in some way have heard that challenge, and know that the question is always there, staring at us, right there, right here, not letting us alone: What are you waiting for?
Still, knowing that there is an urgency to this question that doesn’t go away, and knowing that the question, “what am I waiting for?” is there to confront me whenever I am willing to let my guard down enough to let myself be confronted, still the other meaning of the question is worth pursuing. What’s the big picture here? Where are we heading, or where ought we to be heading? What’s the next big step forward we need to take in the struggle for racial justice?
I had thought at one point of trying to formulate some kind of an answer to such questions for this sermon. I had intended to say in this sermon something about what I think we are waiting for with regard to racial justice, where I see us needing to go. After some considerable thought, and several abandoned efforts, however, I came to the conclusion that I am not ready to give an answer to the question. Obviously, I don’t have the answer. At this point I don’t even have an answer. I don’t know what the big picture looks like. I don’t know what comes next in terms of overall trends or big themes. I don’t know what we are waiting for, though I think we need to ask ourselves the question.
What I do know is that my voice needs to be stronger and clearer and braver and more consistent. There is no shortage of things to do. I can think of way more things to do than I am going to get around to. We may need some new ways of thinking about things, may even need a new leader to move us forward, but in the meantime I have more than enough to keep me busy. And one of the things John the Baptist’s call to repentance and bearing fruit means to me is to work on having my voice gain a little more strength, a little more confidence, and a little more urgency.
That’s something I know. I also have an observation, not an answer to the question of what we are waiting for, but an observation. It has to do with the word “we”. We have a long way to go, what often seems like a discouragingly long way to go, to achieve racial, economic justice in this society. We have an even longer way to go before “we” are truly “we” in this society, and there is an awful lot that needs to happen, out there and in here, for we to even become possible in any meaningful sense. As I say, that is not an answer, just a thought in the direction of what we are waiting for. For me, this season of Advent begins not with any answers, remedies, or prescriptions but with a confession. We are a long way from justice. We are an even longer way from being “we”. Amen.
Jim Bundy
December 3, 2000