2/5/12 Waiting
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I’m going to share a story now that relates directly to one of the “big ideas” in our readings today. This was something that happened a little more than 30 years ago—but I can’t imagine ever forgetting it.
I was in graduate school in geology and my class was taking the required course for all geologists—Summer Field Camp. We were headquartered in Spearfish, SD in the Black Hills for a good 6 weeks, learning to recognize and map geological formations. But for a little bit of that time the whole class took a field trip westward to see Devil’s Tower, the Grand Tetons, and Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and Idaho.
And since we were a class of students
on budgets, we went on the cheap, camping along the way and eating at Rocky
Mountain diners that were the opposite of fancy.
After we were on the road for some days
we camped one night in the National Forest outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The campground was primitive—just an outhouse
and no shower—no way to get clean. We
were dusty and sweaty and road-weary, and so we all decided to go
skinny-dipping (for we had no bathing suits with us) in the glacial meltwaters
of the swiftly flowing Snake River that bordered the camp. We just wanted to feel refreshed and cleaned
up a little bit. All the men went far
upstream and we three women stayed downstream, closer to camp.
That was so nice—it felt great to get
into the swift and icy river and get clean.
But it was painful after a bit, too—the cold was like icy needles on the
skin and we were ready to get out of that river pretty fast.
And just as we were going to get out
of the river and make a beeline for our towels some distance away, we heard a
lot of hooting and hollering coming toward us—from the river.
It was a whitewater raft filled with
10 or 12 happy vacationers. So out of
modesty we hunkered down in the river to hide ourselves from view—but it didn’t
work too well. The rafters saw us and
figured out we were trapped there in that icy river, and they enjoyed every
minute of our predicament. And they also
alerted the next raft behind them that there was something interesting in the
river right there. Raft after raft after
raft came past us. Five rafts in
all.
And we were waiting for all those
happy vacationers to finish their trip through our part of the Snake River, and
it was none too comfortable. It was
downright painful, actually. But we knew
it had to end sooner or later. And we
had each other to laugh with and to share our pain in that awfully cold water
for all those minutes.
So—what did we learn from this
exercise in waiting?
First—that what we wait for does come
to pass—eventually
Second—that we could be there for each
other and help each other share the discomfort of waiting.
Third—that next time we would pack our
bathing suits.
Waiting. That’s today’s theme—waiting. It’s really hard to wait, isn’t it? I think we’re so conditioned, especially in
today’s world, to be able to find instant answers on the internet, fast
treatments for problems and illnesses, get-out-of-debt-quick solutions to bill-paying,
expedited shipping—it’s just so hard for us to wait.
We want “to do” and not “to
wait.” We want “to have” and not “to
wait.” Our waiting muscles are not exercised very much these days—but
sometimes we have no choice. And that’s especially when it’s so hard to
wait.
Waiting weaves in and out of our
lives, doesn’t it, whether we like it or not.
We wait for healing of body, mind, and spirit. We wait for information like the results of
medical tests. (That’s some of the
hardest waiting of all, isn’t it?) We
wait for things to get better, for stress to pass, for families to learn to get
along, for happier days to return.
Look at the Israelites in today’s
first reading from Isaiah. In verse 27
we see that they’ve lost their sense of connection to God. They’ve been in exile in Babylon for a good
60 or 70 years. They are suffering. They think God’s forgotten them. They
are sick and tired of waiting. And
so they lament. And this complaining is
what Isaiah is responding to. The
prophet says, “Why do you say, ‘My way is hidden from the Lord?’ Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator
of the ends of the earth. He does not
faint or grow weary … He gives power to the faint and strengthens the
powerless.” [Isa 40:27-29]
And then here is the punch line and the
promise, the medicine for the long waiting the people are doing together: Verse 31:
“Those who wait for the
Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” [Isa 40:31]
Hang in there, hold on, don’t lose
faith, Isaiah says. God is coming and
God is doing a new thing. A strong
thing. Don’t you see it yet?
Now, shortly after this prophecy was
written, God’s plan for the people was
realized. God worked through their
captors to win their release. The people
were freed and told to go home and restore and renew their beloved
Jerusalem. Happy days—blessed days--were
there again. Or so they hoped.
The late, great Dutch priest and
author Henri Nouwen quoted a French mystic who lived during World War II and
died toward the end of that war / in sympathy with Jews starving and working
themselves to death in concentration camps and in sympathy with those in
occupied France who were struggling to survive.
Her name was Simone Weil.
She lived the wait. She was an expert in waiting as she lingered
in sickness, with the war dragging on, in solidarity with the suffering. She died waiting. She said, “Waiting patiently in expectation
is the foundation of the spiritual life.”
[Henri Nouwen, “A Spirituality of
Waiting” in A Weavings Reader, 1992, page 70.]
When we wait for profound changes, we
engage our faith that—in the words of St. Paul— “all things work together for
good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” [Romans 8:28]
And in waiting we’re called to be active, not passive. The root of the word “wait” is actually an
ancient Indo-European word that means “to be active.” In our gospel we hear that Jesus helped
himself to wait for the completion of his time with us on earth. He went off by himself to pray after he
healed all those people. Praying is a
very good thing to do while we wait. It’s a great way to be active, to “do
something,” even to remind God that we need help.
And like Peter’s mother-in-law in the
gospel today we can lose ourselves in serving others—which is our fundamental calling
as Christians. On a personal and maybe even
selfish level, serving others helps us stay busy so that our waiting goes by
more quickly and is less painful for us in the long run. And it’s what God tells us to do—to take care
of each other and to love each other.
Remember as well that just like my
friends and I found out in the Snake River, it helps us to have a community
around us as we wait. That’s one very
significant role for the Church—it can be our community that holds us up, gets
us through really difficult times, helps us to pray or prays for us when we
can’t pray anymore.
God knows how hard it is for us to
wait. So don’t hesitate to remind God in
prayer that something needs his healing touch.
And trust that God wants to bring about only the good, and that God is
working on it, even now.
Amen.
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