How do we wait? Sunday 5/28/17 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Acts 1:1-11.

“Are we there yet?... Are we there yet?... Are we there yet?”  Anyone who has taken a long trip with children has no doubt suffered through some variation of this question.  And for those who have lived a charmed life and been spared of this experience, perhaps it was you who tortured a well-meaning adult with that incessant refrain. 

The big road trip when I was a child was a 400 mile drive from northern California to Disneyland.  And I don’t care what Google maps says, it takes way longer than six hours to make that trip.  In my memory it felt like that trip took FOREVER.  “Are we there yet?” was asked over and over again in our car.  Until finally, the excruciating wait was mercifully over and we reached our destination.

It’s not just children who struggle with waiting.  No matter one’s age, waiting for something that you want - school to end, a baby to be born, a job to come through, healing for someone you love, a sign from God, peace in the world - waiting for something important is at the very least challenging and often quite a difficult thing to do.  Nonetheless, it’s part of life and I would venture to say that it’s very likely that almost every person here is in the state of waiting for something.   The disciples certainly were.  Today we celebrate Jesus’ ascension into heaven.  And right before Jesus leaves he gives his disciples these clear instructions: wait.  “Stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high,” reads the gospel of Luke.  In the Book of Acts, Jesus orders them to “wait [in Jerusalem] for the promise of the Father.” 

Given that waiting is unavoidable, here’s the challenge and the choice for those disciples and for us - how do we wait?  There’s really two ways to do it - passively and actively.  Passive waiting is about killing time.  My go-to strategy to shorten my wait time on the road to Disneyland was sleeping.  If I was lucky I could burn through an hour or two with a nap, no problem.  But this kind of waiting leads to impatience, hence the insistent, “Are we there yet?” Or with more important things, the big hopes and dreams of life, passively waiting can easily lead to complaining, bitterness and pessimism.  It’s a type of slow-acting, soul-killing poison.  The anecdote?  Active waiting - as people of faith, it’s a holy act of waiting.  Scripture tells us that following Jesus’ ascension the disciples went back to the temple in Jerusalem to worship and praise God, devoting themselves to prayer.  For them waiting for the promise of the Father, the coming of the Holy Spirit was not about killing time or doing nothing, but was a confident, expectant, active enterprise.  In staying connected to God and one another with hopeful joy they were cultivating a readiness to receive whatever God had in store.  Because really, they had no idea what was coming.  Lucky for them their wait for the Holy Spirit, which we will celebrate next Sunday on Pentecost, only lasted ten days. 

Often, however, we find ourselves waiting much longer than that.  And here’s a truth that can be hard to hear, active waiting - staying connected with God and God’s people, remaining hopeful and expectant while witnessing to the love of God - isn’t a special formula that we do so that we get what we want.  The holy act of waiting is not about the end - like arriving at Disneyland.  Rather, the holy act of waiting is about the process of shaping us into the people God wants.  And in doing so we make ourselves to ready to receive whatever God has in store. 

That’s the witness the disciples offer us today.  They waited really well and yet they didn’t get exactly what they wanted.  Their final question to Jesus reveals their deepest hope, what they’ve been waiting for.   “Lord,” they ask, “is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”  It’s really a variation on the question, “Are we there yet?”  The restoration of the kingdom to Israel is the disciples’ Disneyland destination.  They’ve been waiting for the time to finally arrive.  But Jesus replies, “It is not for you to know the times or the periods that the Father has set….”  It is not for the disciples or any of us to know the details or the timing of God’s plan.  Rather, it’s to be enough to know that the God who is Love is at work.   For what God does in us and through us while we wait is just as important as what we are waiting for.  

Giving God the benefit of the doubt is the only way to go.  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit priest and philosopher, put it this way “Above all, trust in the slow work of God.”  He goes on,

We are quite naturally impatient in everything

to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way

to something unknown, something new....

Give our Lord the benefit of believing

that his hand is leading you,

and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

in suspense and incomplete.

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We leave the disciples this more in the act of holy waiting.  Next week we celebrate the coming of  the Holy Spirit for them, but God’s Spirit has already been poured out into our lives at baptism.  And that Holy Spirit is loving us, healing and forgiving us, empowering us and all of creation to live into the fullness of all that God desires for us.  Know that.  Believe that.  And trust in the slow work of God.