A Different Kind of Waiting

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on the Third Sunday of Advent, December 11, 2022 by the Very Rev. Tyler Doherty, Dean and Rector.

Waiting is a funny business. Most of the time, most of us are waiting for something. For the red light to turn green, for the stock market to turn around, for our health to improve, for the pandemic to end, for people to treat us the way we think we ought to be treated. Waiting for. We imagine a state in the future where we have what we think we need and say to ourselves, “Then, then, I will be happy!” Waiting for, in this sense, is waiting with something definite in mind. It’s motivated by a sense of incompleteness, scarcity, and lack. The mind, doing what minds do, thinks something out there will give us what we yearn for and so we search in people, places, possessions, substances, relationships, power plays, earning praise….

The strange thing about Advent waiting is that it is an entirely different species of waiting. It’s a waiting upon, a waiting born of non-acquisitive patience, unhorizoned by demand, for something that is already given, for something already here: “Turn around! Change the direction you’re looking for happiness! The kingdom of God–the beauty ever ancient ever new–is at hand! As the author of the Letter to James counsels,

Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.

Advent waiting is farmer waiting. It’s patient, and attentive: a tending of what we know, by faith, is already here. Watered with early and late rains–perhaps guarded by a deer fence or a watchful scarecrow—we make space for He Who Is to come to be, to live in us in the manger of the heart. Advent waiting is a gathered moving-into-nearness. Coming near to the One who has come near to us so that he might be born and recognized in the feed trough of the daily round.

Teresa of Avila reminds us that the vast majority of our problems in prayer and life come from the perceived sense of God’s absence. We approach the spiritual journey the same way we approach everything else in a consumer culture–from the standpoint of lack and acquisition. We think God is absent. But God is never absent. The only thing that separates us from God in any situation is the thought that God is absent–that this isn’t it. This red light, the gate of heaven? This toothache, the gate of heaven? This stranger plopped on the front steps, Christ Himself? Even John–the master ascetic of camel hair, locust and wild honey fame–isn’t immune. He’s seen the spirit descending like a dove on Jesus and heard those words spoken from an opened heaven–”You are my son, my beloved, in you I am well pleased”--and yet now he wonders whether he made a fatal mistake. Locked away in prison with Guillotine Salomé sashaying in the wings, John’s got his doubts. Is God in this, too? Can God be with me here? Blessed is the one who takes no offense at me. I was in prison and you visited me.

It’s rather easy to experience God in the wilderness, honestly. Away from the hurly-burly of the busy city, surrounded by wind and sky and rock and sand the raven’s croark only deepening the silence. We return to ourselves, to simply being, and taste the trustworthy truth of quietness and rest as our salvation. When the stories of God’s absence fall away (or we see them for what they are… simply stories); when the stories of lack and this isn’t it fall away (or we see them for what they are… simply stories); when the grumbling stories about how things should be fall away (or we see the grumbly stories for what they are… simply stories); when waiting for yields to simple waiting without goal, or thought of lack or gain… what’s left? In this coming-into-nearness with the One who has come near… what is there to say or do? Crocus blossom joy and singing. Presence. Li Bai–the 8th century Tang dynasty poet and compadre of old Du Fu–probably says it best:

The birds have vanished down the sky.

Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,

until only the mountain remains.

I look at God and God looks at me until the ‘at’ falls away and there’s just the single, moving into coming near, the looking. Who’s looking at whom? Where does one begin and the other end?

I remember asking my wife, Michelle, years and years ago what the most important thing she’s learned in the spiritual life was. Her reply? “I am not my thoughts.” I suspect now she’d say something of Jesus’ love that’s available to us when we are not identified with our thoughts about ourselves, others, the world, and God. But truly–before we start thinking about it–in that good and broad land of open, aware, spacious presence where everything is left just as it is–What’s missing? Before thought jumps in to judge, grumble, sort and categorize–what’s here? Springs of water. Reeds and rushes. A jackal haunt turned frog-song swamp. Cross-armed waiting for yields to coming near. “Be strong! Do not fear!” Eyes opened. Ears unstopped. Leaping like a deer. What we’re looking for doing the looking. 

Why is the least in the Kingdom of Heaven greater than John the Baptist? I wonder if it’s because John is trying a little too hard (axes, winnowing forks and all the rest) at what’s free and easy. I wonder if Jesus is saying it’s one thing to be holy in places it’s easy to be holy in. It’s another to follow me back into the city to dine with sinners and tax collectors, Samaritans (gasp!) and lepers and demoniacs. It’s another thing, that is, to follow me back into your ordinary everyday life and learn to find me leaping there among the pots and pans. Among the popsicles and parking tickets and PICC lines. Among the diagnoses and the dog parks. Among the weeping and the dancing. Among our living and our dying. Watching over our going out and our coming in. Nothing missing once the story of something missing (that howling haunt of jackals) is gently laid aside.

Jesus is always trading the grand for the humble, the majestic for the everyday. For a Cedar of Lebanon, we get a mustard plant. For Levitical purity, we get yeasty leaven. For dainty reserve (a dollop of mercy here, a dollop there), we get profligate, sloppy excess (an entire jar of costly nard sloshed all over everything the whole house heady with its fumes). For a triumphal messiah leading Israel to military-political victory, we get a grubby Galilean, a feeding, foot-washing, servant of all hanging on a tree on a garbage dump outside the city walls. Is God in this, too? Can God be here? Blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.

This curious kind of king calls us into an embrace of our ordinary life as the place of grace. This curious kind of king calls us to draw near, come close to our life just as it is. To drop our ideas and expectations, our need for the world to conform to how we think it should be and look and see and wonder there. Our usual waiting for is a “someday [that] never comes.” Our usual waiting for blinds us to sacredness of just this: sanctus teaspoon rapped three times on the mug’s lip. Our usual waiting for keeps us flat-footed and unresponsive in the liturgy of the here and now: the man cutting boxes at the food bank stops to stretch and head tipped back catches a flappy wheel of pigeons startled by the bus. Like Statler and Waldorf–those balconied, peanut-gallery judges harrumphing from the cheap seats in The Muppet Show–we jibe, jab, judge, and spectate our way to a place separate and apart from all the fun–the play and joyful silliness of the miracle of this everything, everywhere, all at once. 

“Wonder,” as Heidegger says, “opens what is locked.” Wonder draws us close, opens those crossed arms into wide-flung orans. Wonder opens us even, I’d say, to a reed shaken by the wind. This is what I came out here to see.