‘As
the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their
hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah…’ (Luke 3:15). Advent
is a period of expectation, of waiting. Yet waiting goes against everything we
stand for in contemporary society. The internet gives us the power to find out
an enormous amount of information almost in a second. The television gives us
the power to watch the news as it is breaking worldwide – or at least, the
particular channel’s version of what constitutes the news. One doctor who
advocates patience for the healing of the body, states that if impatience were
a germ we would talk of a modern pandemic of impatience: ‘we have become so
used to fast food, fast internet, fast cars and busy schedules that we don’t
even blink when we are told that we can have a quick fix for our health’.
Well, we can perhaps all
agree that quick fixes don’t usually work, and particularly quick fixes for our
health when the body needs time to heal itself. But it seems to fly against the
spirit of the age to wait patiently. You may not think of yourself as
impatient; I know I am. All those old chestnuts such as ‘Rome wasn’t built in a
day’ don’t do much for me. I want to see progress, action, projects launched
and projects completed. The command ‘just wait’ seems to me to reek of
passivity. I want the kingdom of God to move forward, here and now in my
lifetime.
All this is the ‘me’ before reading Henri Nouwen’s words for
Advent. ‘Waiting as we see it in the first pages’ of Luke’s
gospel, ‘is waiting with a sense of promise. “Zecharaiah, your wife Elizabeth
is to bear you a son” (Luke 1:13, 31). People who wait have received a promise
that allows them to wait. They have received something that is at work in them,
like a seed that has started to grow. This is very important. We can only
really wait if what we are waiting for has already begun for us. So waiting is
never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a movement from
something to something more. Zechariah, Mary and Elizabeth were living with a
promise that nurtured them… Waiting is active… There is [no] passivity in
scripture. Those who are waiting are waiting very actively. They know that whatthey are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing’
(Nouwen, Seeds of Hope, 157-8). A
waiting person, Nouwen tells us, is a patient person. Waiting is also
open-ended: Zechariah, Elizabeth and Mary were filled with hope. ‘Hope is
trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the
promises [of God] and not just according to our wishes’ (ibid. 159-160).
‘To wait open-endedly’, Nouwen argues, ‘is an enormously
radical attitude toward life. So is to trust that something will happen to us
that is far beyond our own imaginings. So, too, is giving up control over our
future and letting God define our life, trusting that God moulds 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 towards life in a world
preoccupied with control’ (ibid. 160).
Waiting
together, as did Mary and Elizabeth, is the model for the Christian community. ‘It
is a community of support, celebration and affirmation in which we can lift up
what has already begun in us… That is what prayer is all about. It is coming
together around the promise. That is what celebration is all about. It is about
lifting up what is already there. That is what Eucharist is about. It is saying
“Thanks” for the seed that has been planted. It is saying: “We are waiting for
the Lord, who has already come”’ (ibid. 161-2). It is also why the Bible is
always in the midst of those who gather. ‘We need to wait together, to keep
each other at home spiritually, so that when the word comes it can become flesh
in us… We read the word so that the word can become flesh and have a whole new
life in us (ibid. 162).
Nouwen contends that ‘the life of Jesus tells us that not to
be in control is part of the human condition. His vocation was fulfilled not
just in action but also in passion, in waiting… If it is true that God in Jesus
Christ is waiting for our response to divine love, then we can discover a whole
new perspective on how to wait in life. We can learn to be obedient people who
do not always try to go back to the action but who recognize the fulfilment of
our deepest humanity in passion, in waiting… The spirituality of waiting
is not simply our waiting for God. It is also participating in God’s own
waiting for us and in that way coming to share in the deepest purity of love,
which is God’s love’ (Nouwen, Seeds of
Hope, 203).
There
are two aspects of waiting. One is our waiting for God, and the other is the
waiting of God for us. We are waiting. God is waiting. This is the season of
Advent, when both processes are at work. Amen, Come Lord Jesus!
