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A Few Words from Pastor Bryan
...and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, the time in the church calendar year when we take four weeks to prepare ourselves spiritually to celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas. We do this traditionally by focusing on 4 traditional Advent themes--hope, peace, joy, and love. So worship these next 4 Sundays will center on these themes.
Advent is also a time when the Church historically has focused on the theme of waiting. The idea is for us to get in touch with the sense of deep longing for the Messiah to come that characterized the biblical people of Israel when Jesus was born. They were waiting for the "Messianic promise" to be fulfilled. The prophets of old said that God was going to send them a leader who would lead them into peace and freedom.
Well I believe with all my heart that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah. But as I've said many times in my Sunday messages, Jesus did not come to do the work for us. Instead he clarified for humankind what the real work is, and he actually showed us how to do it. Then he told us to form communities, seek the Spirit's guidance, roll up our sleeves, open up our hearts, and do what God is leading us to do. In other words, he turned it all around and in essence told us to stop waiting. Or as the saying goes, "We are the ones we're waiting for." In fact, it struck me as I was thinking about this today that God is actually the One doing the waiting at this point. I think we should reframe the Advent theme of waiting. God is waiting for humankind to embrace and live out what the Christ in Jesus revealed. Hmmm. That's deep. And true.
But we humans still wind up needing to do our share of waiting, don't we. And most of us don't enjoy waiting very much. There are all kinds of very understandable reasons for this. Maybe we're impatient. I often am. Or selfish and immature--you know--"I want what I want when I want it." Most of us like to be in control and to be able to make things happen, or at least have some degree of input. Or maybe a better way of putting it is to say that very few of us enjoy not being in control, let alone being completely at the mercy of circumstances, or someone else's agenda or process.
I find waiting most difficult when something is very important to me, I'm invested in things going a certain way, and I'm at least somewhat convinced I know how they should go. Or how my heart longs for them to go. But there's not a darn thing I can do to speed up the process. Ah. This could easily be a sermon, but these "few words" articles push me to be succinct. So here you go.
There is a gift in this kind of waiting. A gift in those times when you "just can't push the river." The gift is having to accept one's powerlessness to bring a certain outcome about. Why is that a gift? The powerlessness isn't the gift. The acceptance is. It's akin to the deep freedom of surrender, because when all we can do is accept and surrender, then we're left pretty much stripped down to nothing but...
...whether or not we are willing to trust God with ALL of it. With everything. Especially the things we can't make happen. Or change. Or keep from happening a certain way. Things that are uncertain and unknown and that are currently NOT where we want them to be.
BUT--when trusting God is enough, well, then we have everything. That sounds trite, but I mean it deeply. When we can truly let things be in God's hands and know that is the best possible place for them to be, they we're free. And that's the gift.
Not there? I really do understand. I'm often not either. And this may sound obnoxiously simple, but here's all I know. When you're waiting, unsure, and out of control, AND you can't seem to trust God with it all, simply admit that to God with as much honesty and authenticity as you can manage. And then in a way that feels real to you, ask God for the grace to be able to trust God completely and to FEEL that trust in a way that makes a difference.
And then wait for it.
Yeah I know...
I'll leave you with one of my favorite poems by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin that's related to all of this.
Hope to see you soon one way or the other,
Pastor Bryan
Patient Trust
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Above all trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
To reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate states.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
Unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
That it is made by passing through
Some stages of instability—
And that may take a very long time.
ONLY God could say what this new spirit
Gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
That his hand is leading you,
And accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
In suspense and incomplete.
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