Readings (Track 1)

So, what might the Spirit be saying to God’s people in these readings? This time around that repeated exhortation “wait” in our psalm got my attention. The Gospel stories illustrate the obvious payoff, whether for the woman suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years, or the parents with their gravely-ill twelve-year-old. Both are stories of waiting longer than we might think reasonable (“Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?”). In both Jesus talks about faith, a faith that’s expressed by waiting.

This morning we’ll take this theme of waiting in three directions. First, acknowledge that waiting is unwelcome, unwelcome enough that we have various strategies for avoiding it. Second, noticing that waiting is not disengaging, and not only the Gospel stories, but also the Joseph stories, help us see that. Third, wondering: we certainly wait; does God ever have to wait?

Wait! Outside of “love your enemies,” hard to think of a more unwelcome exhortation. Recall the “Please wait” on an otherwise blank computer screen or the automated voice on the phone assuring us that the wait time is only x minutes. When waiting on someone currently or always more powerful, most of the possible reasons why we’re waiting are not encouraging. We like to be in control; waiting’s the antithesis of that.

So it can be a bit unnerving to notice how often waiting shows up in the Bible’s stories: Abraham and Sarah waiting for that promised son, the Judean captives in Babylon waiting for something—anything—to happen, the multiple psalms exhorting us to wait.

So, waiting is unpleasant enough that we come up with various strategies for avoidance. The complaint of the Judean exiles in Babylon as recorded in Isaiah is typical: “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God” (I40:27). Why wait? So it’s easy to question God’s power, knowledge, goodness. “If I’m waiting this long, I obviously don’t matter to God.”

Another strategy that I catch myself using: shrink the circle of concern so there’s less that requires waiting. I can’t even begin to imagine how God might sort out Ukraine, the Holy Land, Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Southern Border, etc. Oh so tempting to shrink the circle!

So, first point, waiting on the Lord is one of the harder things our tradition asks of us, and it’s absolutely necessary. So let’s not beat ourselves up if we find it hard, even as we check our attempts to throw in the towel.

Second, waiting on the Lord: the antithesis of disengaging. The woman with the hemorrhages, the synagogue leader: they seek Jesus out. They risk being disappointed.

Pulling back the camera, I’m struck by the Joseph stories. Early in the story Egypt is not where Joseph wants to be, and there’s no chance of getting to passport control. So he’s waiting. At the same time he’s repeatedly engaging, and making choices about that engagement. One of those choices: the refusal of the advances from Potiphar’s wife, whose advances would have offered one solution to a bad situation. Another of those choices: how to respond to two oily high-level bureaucrats who’d gotten on the wrong side of Pharaoh and who had dreams that needed interpretation. It would have been so satisfying to keep them waiting. But Joseph keeps engaging, even while having no control over the results of his choices. Joseph in Egypt, Tobit in Nineveh, Esther in the Persian capital, Paul’s collection mentioned in our second reading, for that matter: all folk from whom we can learn about waiting and staying productively engaged.

Third, with all this talk of our waiting on the Lord, it sounds like we’re doing the heavy lifting. Does the Lord ever have to wait? It turns out that there’s this intriguing verse in Isaiah: “Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him” (30:18). “The Lord waits…blessed are all those who wait for the Lord.” There are a good number of texts in the prophets we could use to flesh that out, but since those would need some setup, we’ll move to the New Testament.

“And [Jesus] did not do many deeds of power [in his hometown], because of their unbelief” (Matt. 13:58).

More dramatically—also from Matthew: “For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me” (25:42-43). That’s some serious waiting.

So while as individuals or communities of faith we’re regularly waiting on God, we’re card-carrying members of nations that regularly keep God waiting, hence that line in one of our confessions: “We repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.”

Let’s sum up. “O Israel, wait for the Lord.” That’s directed to us.

Rather than disengagement, waiting is a productive way of staying engaged.

And, yes, the good Lord also waits, and sometimes that’s something we can do something about.