I
usually start the sermon with a question so here is the question for you. Do any of you ever get confused reading
scripture? Do you wonder how to tell the important things from the run of the
mill stuff? Well some of you might be biblical scholars, but for the rest of us
reading the bible is a challenge. So I have one quick and easy tip to tell if a
point is important in the bible. You can tell the important points because the
writer repeats it twice. You can tell the important points because the writer
repeats it twice, Oh duh. Oh true. In Psalm 130, we are called to wait for the
Lord like watchmen waiting for the morning, like watchmen waiting for the
morning. Hold it. This waiting for the Lord is so important the psalmist
repeats the phrase twice, “more than watchmen for the morning.
Is
that how we wait for the Lord?
What do you all think about waiting? Is waiting something you like? Is waiting something you are
good at? We think of waiting as a
bad thing. Waiting is dead time, a waste of time, something to be avoided. Yet in our passage today we are called
to wait for the Lord. But in our world waiting gets no respect. Waiting is the
Rodney Dangerfield of spiritual disciplines.
I
don’t think of waiting as a spiritual act. I think of waiting as a pain. In the perfect world waiting
should be cut to the minimum. There should be no waiting at all. I should go
right from my internal idea of what should happen to having that thing happen.
Life should be instantaneous, especially MY wants and need. Yet Psalm 130
describes a way of waiting that is profound and expectant. If waiting is so
important maybe the kind of waiting and the kind of being that the psalmist is
describing is quite different from what we think of as waiting. Waiting might
be a so completely different that we are blind and ignorant to what waiting can
powerfully and sacredly be. How do
we wait and how does God call us to wait? What’s the difference?
How
do we wait? Take your time answering. I have all day. We wait impatiently. We wait
anxiously. We wait with worry or with rage. We wait idly. We are predisposed to
action. We live under an illusion. The illusion is that if we just keep on
moving we are making progress. So,
not getting in to talk to the doctor, or the slow driver ahead of us or not
having the biopsy results or not finding the perfect job or the perfect mate
feels to us like wasted time. This is life at a frenetic pace. Let’s just keep moving along. But sometimes moving along is just
keeping the little hamster wheels of our life in motion. This isn’t living. This is racing to
death. We are going to swerve through traffic, pass the slow poke, cut off the
student driver, dodge around the big truck and race to that red light before
anyone else. Does that sound
familiar?
We
are waiting all wrong. We are dumb at waiting. We wait passively. We wait
anxiously. We wait idly. God wants us to learn soul waiting. Soul waiting is
different. Soul waiting is waiting expectantly, hopefully and actively. Soul
waiting is a state of being that is completely different from the toe tapping,
blank space we are used to. You can see this even in the posture of
waiting. Dead waiting is slack
jawed, blank eyed and drooling. Soul waiting is attentive and ready and
completely in the now and active.
I
have an example. Back in the day,
long, long ago I was a captain in the Air Force. I spent one long hot summer in
Montgomery, Alabama in SOS, Squadron Officer School. As part of this schooling we had teams that would work
through a series of crazy problem solving obstacle courses. For instance six of us would have two
pieces of rope and three poles of different lengths and we would have to get
the team over a ditch and a wall. We would walk into the course area and have a
set of instructions handed to us and be timed on how fast we could complete the
problem solving exercise. On the
first task I was handed the instructions and I started reading them to my
team. So I read, “The team must go
from starting point over the yellow logs.” I slapped the yellow logs to
illustrate. Big mistake. We have
to get over the yellow log and the ditch without touching them. So my slapping
the yellow log before I got that far in the instructions earned my team a three-minute
penalty. We weren’t allowed to start moving for 3 minutes. So for about 20
seconds we froze in silence. Waiting. Doing nothing. Then I asked could we talk? The answer was yes we could talk
and think. We just couldn’t move any of the pieces in place. So we spent the
3-minute penalty, reading the instructions and planning our strategy. We made
it over the wall in good time despite the three-minute penalty.
This
is our problem. We think of waiting as the absence of action. Waiting is an
opportunity for reflection, for preparation and for readiness. We need a new
word in the language for waiting. We need to wait actively. There is a big
correlation between waiting actively and listening actively. We need to wait
actively like we listen actively.
Who here thinks of listening as just dead space and a waste of time? I
mean really, you really would just prefer to tell your own stories and talk
right? Well we may hear each other making noise but how often do we really
understand? Hearing noise and understanding another person are two different
things. This is like dead waiting
and soul waiting. There is a technique called active listening that helps move
us from blah, blah blah to connecting. Active listening is a way of listening intensely to
another person. It is a way to
short circuit our preconceptions and get to what the other person is saying by
paraphrasing and asking question first about what the other person has
said. So often we think of
listening as just a gap between the times we get to talk. This is like dead
waiting. We think of waiting as just the dead space between our one goals and
our personal desires. There is
space and time but nothing going on in between. But active listening
dynamically understands. Active waiting and active listening help us get in
touch with God.
The
original Hebrew in this passage gives us a great picture of what waiting for
God looks like. The Hebrew word kavah,
which we translate to wait,
really means the extension of a cord
from one point to another.
This is a fine metaphor: God is one point, the human heart is the other; and the extended cord between both is the earnest believing waiting of the soul. This desire strongly extended from the heart to God. When we hold
onto the other end with attention this is the active, energetic waiting. When we wait properly, we can feel
the leading of God. The line of waiting becomes a lifeline, humming with
energy, from God to us. This is soul waiting. When we put down the rope or hold
it so slackly we can’t sense God’s pull, this is dead waiting. Isaiah writes, “Those
who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength.” The soul waiting can connect
us with the source of power and strength. Waiting on God gives us direction and
purpose.
Henri J. M. Nouwen writes so beautifully about the
spiritual discipline that is soul waiting. He writes,”
To wait open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life. So is to
trust that something will happen to us that are far beyond our imaginings. So,
too, is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life, trusting
that God molds us according to God’s love and not according to our fear. The
spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment,
trusting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our
own imagination, fantasy, or prediction. That, indeed, is a very radical stance
toward life in a world preoccupied with control.” Spiritual waiting changes how we look at ourselves and how
we look for God in the world.
The
truth is some waiting is harder than others. Psalm 130 starts with, “out of the
depths I cry.” The psalmist is in the depths, a bottomless dark place. This
isn’t waiting with happy anticipation for Christmas morning. Waiting in the
depths is waiting in the hospital room or the dark hours of the morning for the
teen to get home safely. Waiting in the depths is an uncomfortable, painful
place. So this waiting takes a
different kind of hold on that cord from God. This kind of waiting requires a
faith that God is at the other end no matter what pit we are in. This kind of
waiting pays attention to who is at the other end of the cord. You aren’t waiting for just anyone. You
are waiting for God, for the Lord of steadfast love.
When you are in the depths, in the deep
pit there will be lots of philosophies that will tempt you to let go of waiting
for God. A
Buddhist might say: "Your pit is only a state of mind." A Hindu might say: "This pit is
for purging you and making you more perfect.” Confucius might say: "If you
would have listened to me, you would never have fallen into that pit." A
new ager might say: "Maybe you should network with some other pit
dwellers." A self-pitying person might say: "You haven’t seen
anything until you’ve seen my pit." A news reporter might say: "Could
I have the exclusive story on your pit?" A bureaucrat might say:
"Have you paid your taxes on that pit?" A county inspector might say: "Do you have a permit for
that pit?" A realist might say: "Yup, that’s a pit." An idealist
might say: "The world shouldn’t have pits." An optimist might say:
"Things could be worse." A pessimist might say: "Things will get
worse." But Jesus, you in a pit, will take you by this expectant cord of
faith and lift you out of the pit.
Knowing
whom you are waiting for is the difference between waiting dead and waiting
with your soul. A Christian holds
onto the cord of faith so that God can pull you out. This is waiting with
expectant faith. That is why we wait for God like watchmen on the walls on a
dark night. A watchman
is one who waits, looks and listens with complete concentration. A
watchman knows the danger and remains alert. A watchman waits for that
steadfast dawn. So watch and wait
wisely from a soul that knows its connection to God and knows the inevitability
of the sunrise.
Amen
