The most useless season of all. . .

The world must not know what to do with Advent -- especially now.  We live in the moment, in an age of instant everything delivered to your door, and reviews written almost before we get it.  We know nothing of delayed gratification.  Even our corporations will gladly shoot themselves in the foot to get a profit today while suffering for it tomorrow.  We do not delay much of what we want, much of what we want to say, and much of what we have to have.  Our biggest complaint about the instant internet is that it takes too long (along with it giving us what we do not want to hear).  We cannot event take the time to learn a language but depend upon Google to translate for us, online education to compress and compact the learning that might take years, and AI to save us the bother of research into the subject for which we wish to be seen as an expert.  Then comes this season that simply says, wait. 

While we are in love with immediacy the Church speaks of a God who takes literally forever from the promise first given to Adam and Eve until the day His Son is incarnate in the womb of the Virgin and bears the Child of Promise who will redeem a fallen world.  Then this Jesus who promises thief today says to His apostles wait and His apostles tell us to the same thing.  Is it no wonder that the Church is behind the times.  We proclaim a God who is perennially late to a people who are not sure anything is worth waiting for.  I wish it were only about a delay in decorating but the whole of the Christian faith is summarized by the Advent call to wait upon the Lord.  Indeed, it is the one thing we are told to do and the one promise God has given us that we do not want fulfilled -- wait upon the Lord.

This is not a problem about when to shop or when to put up your holiday decor.  This is a problem that goes to the core of Christian faith and life -- we wait upon the Lord.  If faith is anything, it is patient.  We are a long suffering people who suffer long primarily because the Lord insists that we wait.  We are not to jump the gun or to presume upon the Lord but wait.  To be sure, this is not the impatient waiting of a people sitting on uncomfortable chairs for a doctor's appointment that is now running more than an hour overdue.  It is instead the waiting of a mother for a child who does not seem in any hurry to depart the safety and care of his mother's womb.  We are waiting not for the unknown but for the fulfillment of the promise, not for a surprise but for the ending to the story published for the ages in His Word.  We are not a hopeless people wondering about the good or bad news but a hopeful people who actually believe that the good He has promised awaits us even though we do not have a date or a time.

Our aversion to waiting is epidemic -- even inside the community of the faithful.  We would rather have bad news now over the good news for which we must wait.  That is a part of Advent's unpopularity.   The ten bridal virgins knew what was coming but did not know when.  They all fell asleep but two in the despair of a people sure that if the promise did not come when they demanded it, it was a waist.  We will all fall asleep but better to sleep dreaming of what is to come than to remain awake and bitter because it has not come quickly enough.  We all need to hear that.  It is better to wait upon the Lord than to put your trust in earthly rulers, kingdoms, king makers, or timekeepers.  Waiting may be good, right, and salutary but it will never sell in the marketplace of what we want and when we want it.  Sadly, for too many Christians God has already been judged not worth the wait.  Then you know why our Lord says the delayed glory to come is beyond all expectation and anticipation.  In this, the preaching and message of Advent is not any different for those went out to the hilltop because He is surely coming soon and those who fear He is not coming at all.  The posture of faith is not the answer machine with something for every question but the patient expectation of the mother who know the child will come but is turned away and told not yet.

If there is any consolation it is that in our realized eschatology, we gather to wait around the Table where the future is already but not yet.  Touching us in our waiting is the God who comes to fill the moment with the promise that there is so much more we cannot conceive.  Eating this hope and drinking in this promise, the Advent sacrament is the Eucharist.  Whether foretaste or glimpse, God knows what we need and Advent turns us to that moment where time and eternity intersect for a brief yet pregnant moment.  And the faithful breathe it all in, taste and savor it, rejoicing to know that it is enough for a people who want it all but are given just enough to keep us wanting at all.