What are you waiting for?

 Luke 21:25-36 - First Sunday of Advent

Tell me, what are you waiting for? What is it that you’re looking ahead to with joy, fear, anxiety, excitement, or some concoction of all four?

Waiting is an essential part of everyday life for all of us. I suspect I can say with some certainty that we are all waiting for something right now…

Waiting for a hospital appointment,

Waiting to meet up with friends or family,

Waiting to open our Christmas presents.

Or perhaps even just waiting for the curate to get to the point of this sermon.

Waiting is all about context too, isn’t it? By that I mean some periods of waiting seem longer than others, irrespective of whether the clock would like to agree with us or not. The final 5 minutes of a cup final seem unending for the winning side, whilst the seconds slip by like grains of sand from the fingers of the losing team. Waiting can be hard and challenging…..who knows, perhaps even the long wait for a tiny little baby to arrive tests the patience of even the most dedicated parents. We all must be waiting for something.

The season of advent is about waiting. Our waiting in this season is not a fruitless time however, or indeed it needn’t be fruitless. It’s not like sitting at home waiting for something good to happen, like waiting for I’m a Celebrity or Strictly to come on the TV, it’s not a wait that is passing the time. Advent is a kind of intentional waiting. Because although we spend the next four weeks waiting, we do so with a purpose. 

So, tell me, what are we waiting for?

Quite simply, as I’m sure you could probably have guessed by now, we are all waiting for Jesus! The answer is always Jesus, isn’t it. But our wait for Jesus is multi faceted; it’s complex and intricate, just like a beautifully knitted Christmas sweater (or perhaps that’s an advent sweater). On one level we are waiting for Jesus in the form of Christmas day.  Advent ends when Christmas begins, and over the coming weeks our songs and bible readings will reflect that. We edge closer to Jesus each day, we look to the moment when God became human. The moment that changed everything for human history.  

But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there. Our reading today was pretty cryptic I think, and even a well rested curate who hadn’t just returned from paternity leave might well have struggled to find something succinct to say about it. But basically Jesus is encouraging His followers to lift their eyes from the present moment and to be watchful for those things to come, for the end times. He says that someday there will come a point when all that which we know and love and possibly hate about this world will disappear and He will return to gather those whom He loves and who love Him.

“When these things begin to take place”, Jesus says, “stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Whilst advent is a time of waiting it is not a pointless waiting. For some it might seem like an eternity as we edge closer to Christmas and for others perhaps the wait will go by in a flash. In whatever context your waiting happens one thing is for sure, it’s a time of focussed waiting.  A wait which looks to Jesus not just as that tiny baby on Christmas day, but as the one who will return to bring us home when the time is right. 

So, as you wait for your (insert you own age) Christmas (in my case it’s my 32nd Christmas), I encourage you to look upon this season with fresh eyes. To see this time of waiting as an opportunity to draw closer to God in some form. Perhaps you might spend a little time in silence with your advent candle each day or maybe you could stick on some funky Christmas tunes and dance around the living room as if the party has already started. Maybe write a poem or take some photographs. Maybe even call an old acquaintance each day and choose to share the light of Christ with those you’ve lost touch with. Use this time of waiting as an opportunity to look to Jesus. Even in the busiest of lives each one of us can spare just the briefest of moments to be with the Lord. 

However you choose to spend your time in the waiting room of Advent this year, try to do it with an eye on what is to come, a moment so glorious even the angels’ song won’t be able to do it justice. I am praying for you all this Advent. 

Amen