Some Things Are Worth Waiting For

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, December 11, 2022
Luke 1:46b-55

    When you think back through your life so far, what has been worth waiting for?  Finding the right spouse to marry or a career that was a good fit?  Saving to buy a house or new car, or to go on a special vacation?  We are not very good at waiting today, in general.  From the year 2000 to now the average adult attention span has been reduced from 12 seconds to 8, and let’s be honest, 12 seconds isn’t great to begin with!  We are used to and expect instant gratification – online orders that promise same-day deliveries even on holidays and weekends, text messages and emails that require an immediate response, restaurants that have good service are ones where you place your order and the food comes out hot within a few minutes.  Most of us don’t like waiting if we don’t have to.
    Because we expect so many things to happen quickly, it’s probably easier to name what we DON’T want to wait for:  an airline delay or cancellation, the pandemic should’ve been over way sooner than it was, the next day off or holiday or vacation to come, the next season release of our favorite show on Netflix so we can binge-watch it.  Peace on Earth coming sooner than later would be nice!  Waiting isn’t easy, and maybe it never has been easy for we humans.  Our scripture readings for today, especially our second reading from James, urge us to be patient.  Along with words like “watch” and “prepare,” “wait” is a quintessential focus of Advent as we encourage one another to be patient – Christmas is coming, and Christ WILL come again!  We mark the weeks until Christmas with calendars and candles to help us wait.  Patience is a spiritual gift to remind us that some things are worth waiting for.  
Our scripture readings for today list different examples of what’s worth waiting for.  James describes our waiting for Jesus to come again as a farmer who is waiting for a crop to grow in due season – you can’t rush the growing of plants.  You probably don’t want to eat something that grows too fast, in fact!  And in Mary’s famous Magnificat from Luke, we are reminded of another important example of the need for patience.  The birth of a baby is worth waiting for.  Anyone who has experienced a premature birth or miscarriage knows the challenge and heartbreak of a birth that comes too soon.  God uses the time of pregnancy to grow healthy new life.  God wants us to use the time we have now to live like Christ and share our hope that in the right time, Christ will come again.  God will continue to fulfill his promises to us just as God has done in the past.  John the Baptist believes it; Mary believes it, the prophets believe it – that God fulfills his promises in due time.  Today, we encourage one another to have hope and trust in God’s timing.
    In Galatians 4, Paul talks about God sending his Son Jesus, born of Mary “in the fullness of time” to redeem us and to make us also children of God.  I love that phrase, “the fullness of time.”  For we who struggle to be patient, as people of faith we trust that God knows when the time is right to fulfill God’s promises – in the fullness of time.  In Greek, there are two concepts of time.  One is “chronos” time, where we get words like “chronological.”  This is how we use time with calendars and clocks and Advent candles – the sense of marking or keeping time; knowing what time it is.    Often in the New Testament, Jesus and others use the other sense of time – “Kairos,” which is the idea that there is a right time, an opportune time, the perfect moment.  Scholars suggest that archers used the word “kairos” to describe the best time to let the arrow fly to hit the bullseye on a target.  God’s time is Kairos time, knowing the perfect moment to do something big for us.
As we prepare for Jesus’ birth, we see throughout these stories leading up to Christmas that God chose a particular place and time for Jesus, the Messiah, to be born.  Jesus’ birth was a “Kairos moment.”  Mary was the right person to give birth to Jesus – from the line of David, cousins with Elizabeth and Zechariah of the priestly class, betrothed to Joseph who was willing to serve as Jesus’ adoptive father.  Mary was not rich or powerful, but willing to be a vessel to literally bring to birth God’s promise of salvation for all humanity.  Mary was willing to wait nine months, the time it takes to have a healthy baby, even though it meant traveling for a week while heavily pregnant from Nazareth to Bethlehem, enduring some public shame perhaps in being an unwed pregnant teenager, and of course the physical suffering of pregnancy and birth itself.  It may not have seemed like God’s timing was right at first to Mary, but she trusted that God knows what God’s doing! And of course, God did amazing things through Mary as the mother of our Lord and Savior.
Our friend John the Baptist shows up again in our gospel for today, and he also wonders about God’s timing – “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” he asks Jesus.  John is willing to wait if Jesus is not the right person, or if this is not the Kairos moment for God to save his people.  He thinks it probably is, but John would like to be sure.  Jesus confirms John’s hopes – quoting the words of the prophet Isaiah – “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”  He echoes the words his mother Mary sang while pregnant with the Messiah – “you have cast the mighty down from their thrones and uplifted the humble of heart, you have filled the hungry with wonderous things and left the wealthy no part.”  This is what God’s salvation looks like in Jesus Christ, in God’s Kairos time.  In Jesus, God is setting things right – righting the wrongs and bringing healing, life, and good news.  Still through us today, Christ brings healing, good news, and life to this suffering world.  We are Christ to one another!
    So along with Isaiah, Mary, James, John and others who have patiently waited for the Lord and witnessed God doing great things in God’s own time, we try our best to wait patiently and trust in God’s Kairos moment.  We long for Christ to come again.  We long for the words of Isaiah’s vision to be true as it was in Jesus’ earthly ministry 2000 years ago.  While we wait, like Mary, let’s proclaim the greatness of the Lord and rejoice in God our Savior.  Amen.