Holy Waiting - Or What to do with our Tree

 This text is from a teaching delivered on Sunday, December 1 at the First Congregational Church, Rochester, Wisconsin. 

This is the first Sunday of Advent, a church season characterized by waiting, and waiting is what I’m going to talk about today – what it is, what makes it holy, and what in particular holy waiting might look like to us specifically at this church. Advent reminds us that sometimes, God intends us to wait. In many churches, no Christmas carols are sung until Christmas Eve, but lots of churches don’t wait. For them, Christmas carols begin early in December and there’s a reason for that. We don’t like to wait. We just don’t. We’re Americans, after all, and we like to get things done. Waiting just doesn’t seem very productive. And we’re impatient, too. Waiting takes a long time—too long for most of us.

But there are some good things about waiting. Waiting itself can be productive because of what it is – it’s very nature demands that we stop doing whatever we were doing and prepare for something else, some goal or looked-for event - usually something pleasant – waiting to turn 16 to drive, waiting for a baby to be born, waiting for school to be out and summer vacation to begin, even just waiting for a light to turn green or the nurse to call your name in the doctor’s office.

There is a lot of waiting in the Bible. In the book of Jeremiah, the Lord makes a promise to send a savior to the people of Israel. They believed God’s promise and waited for it - they waited six hundred years for this promise to be fulfilled. And then, finally, when Jesus was born, it was.  That’s serious waiting. In fact, it’s not only waiting, it’s holy waiting.

There are also examples of holy waiting in the New Testament.  Mary waited for the birth of Jesus as foretold by the angel Gabriel.  John the Baptist waited for the Lamb of God to reveal Himself.  The old man Simeon and the prophetess Anna waited their entire lives, praying constantly in the temple for the consolation of Israel. Mary Magdalene, too, practiced holy waiting, completely confused and weeping outside the tomb of the crucified Jesus. 

These are all examples of holy waiting and what made their waiting holy is that it is always waiting for God. That’s what makes the waiting holy. Holy waiting is different from the waiting we do for summer vacation or the light to turn green. Holy waiting is different because its goal is God.

My favorite of the New Testament examples is Simeon and the way you can almost feel the relief in his voice. He’s finally seen Jesus and could die happy. “Now let your servant depart in peace for mine eyes have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see. A light to enlighten the nations and the glory of your people Israel.” He had waited and was satisfied. But there was a problem and Simeon didn’t know yet what it was. The problem was that Jesus wasn’t the savior Simeon thought he was getting.

Because there’s another thing about holy waiting.  In every biblical example, the end of the wait came with dramatic change, change that was not expected. The Jews, all of them, Jeremiah, John the Baptist and Simeon, expected a king coming in triumphant victory and instead got first a helpless baby and then a humble carpenter. Mary Magdalen, mourning and terribly confused by a dead savior, certainly expected, at that point, a lord and teacher who would stay dead, but instead got a savior who awoke, very much alive, calling her name. And who knows what Mary, Jesus’ mother expected, because she kept it treasured in her heart, but it certainly wasn’t doing a stint at the foot of the cross watching her son slowly suffocate to death in humiliation and then show up again only to levitate into the clouds.

So this lesson is meant to emphasize two things – first that we are sometimes called to holy waiting for God and second, that if we let God have His way, what happens at the end of the waiting is not predictable. In fact, usually the opposite. Hence, the cartoon.

It shows a squirrel sitting in a tree - a tree he's pretty proud of, and he should be. It's beautiful. He knows the tree has come from God but he has cared for it and nutured its growth for years. He thanks God for it, but all the while we know that he's taking most of the credit for what it's become. Still, he says, have your way with it, God, and sure enough, the Holy Spirit shows up peeking around the corner. I get the feeling that the squirrel anticipates a pat on the back, but then we see what God has in mind. He has a hatchet in His hand and the squirrel is  not happy. 

So, who is the squirrel? He’s us, of course, and the tree is the First Congregational Church of Rochester, Wisconsin and we are in our tree, waiting. During the liturgical season of Advent, we are waiting for God. We are waiting to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Jesus at Christmas.

But we also waiting for something else right now. We are waiting for a pastor. And this is also a kind of holy waiting, not only because we are waiting for God to act in this situation, but also because we have no idea how it’s going to turn out.

I don’t know about you, but I feel a kind of dichotomy, a kind of psychological tug of war. I want two outcomes at the same time, and of course, that’s not possible. One of those outcomes is wanting someone like Paul back – someone who fits right in, who loves easily, who understands God’s world primarily in terms of mercy and grace, who sings with joy, and whose happiness and friendliness is visible to everyone who meets him. Someone we can grow to love and trust. He is a hard act to follow but follow him someone must.

And this is when I remember my second desired outcome – to do like the squirrel in the tree said he wanted to do - to do God’s will. The squirrel reminds me that God’s will is not predictable, but that God doesn’t make mistakes. I remember that we wouldn’t be looking for a pastor at all if God had allowed Paul to live longer. He could have, after all, but he didn’t. So we are waiting and looking. And I remember that we are not guaranteed someone like Paul. In fact, if I understand the pattern of how God seems to work, it is more than likely that God may offer us someone completely different, someone who will fulfill His desires, His plan, not ours. He’s done it before. Remember the Jews who waited all those years and got a savior completely different than they’d hoped for, and for Simeon who held the baby thinking he would be a conqueror, and of Mary whose pain of burying her son was not erased even when He rose from the dead, and of Mary Magdalen who didn’t understand why Jesus had died and was then stolen from his grave. All this confusion, misunderstanding, and suffering was not an accident. It was God’s will – God’s will for the people He loves.

 But change assumes there’s something about us that needs changing and what in us is there for God to work on? As a congregation, we already click. We get along in genuine affection. And because we feel this way about each other, we also get things done not only efficiently, but organically - naturally, and congenially. We have a kind of system, practiced and cemented into place after long years of implementation. We’re a Swiss watch of a congregation. Humming along and knowing our places together. And this is good. It’s almost a miracle, actually, given the amount of strife churches often experience. Our church family is not broke, and there seems to be no reason to fix it. We are justifiably glad about the love and harmony that binds our church family. But at the same time, we are a tree, a tree that is nourished not by one another, but by God. We run the church, but the church, the tree, belongs to God and God could easily come into our church world with a hatchet like in the cartoon. Just because we are good at what we do doesn’t mean that God doesn’t have more for us, something we haven’t yet considered. If He does, He may be hacking some things apart and we may be in for some surprises.

 It’s easy to say that God is in this place, and I think we all feel that in one way or another, but it’s important to remember that the place where He resides isn’t in these four walls but implanted deep inside every one of us. We will not get God’s love or discover His will from our church building or from our committee work or from the Congregationalist headquarters. They can all help us achieve practical ends, but they will not help us find and follow God’s best for us. That comes by a very different path. It comes only through God Himself. So if we are going to care for our tree, we have to connect with its source of energy, God.

 The funny thing is that He’s already here. In the everyday. I learned this in a really vivid way from a bunch of monks. I once did a week long writing retreat at a monastery, New Mellaray Abbey, in Peosta, Iowa, not far from Dubuque. The monks make caskets there, praying as they work, and they also practice of the presence of God, praying as a community seven times a day. People who stay with them do the same and they helped me to understand what a healthy relationship between spiritual and practical work looks like. It’s a funny thing to watch, because the monks work in the wood shop, but when the bell rings they stop their work and all file into the church, wood shavings hanging off their robes, tool belts banging around their waists, and raise their voices together in prayer and chant. My work there was there to write and even I found that, just when I got deep into my project, the bell would ring for the call to prayer and I’d have to break off what I was doing to trail into the church behind the monks. It was as though priorities had been turned upside down. In a world that works first and often struggles to find time to stop and pray, they lived in a world where work took a back seat to conversation with God. Eventually, days no longer framed themselves around the work. They framed themselves around the prayer, around God. One learned to look forward to the prayer more than the project. In the contest between the practical and the spiritual, both were accommodated, but the spiritual won.

 Something similar is always happening in our lives. Even a church makes a conscious decision regarding how spiritual their lives together are to be. This time in our church life might be an opportunity for us to reevaluate our own dynamics. At the end of our holy waiting, we will probably get a new pastor. But it is not the new pastor that is standing at the door knocking. It is Jesus.  It is always Him, and in the knocking, God is showing us a opportunity for a renewed future. He has already declared it by taking Paul home. Yes, I want a pastor like Paul and I want nothing to change, but in the end, I think I want God’s will more. And that might mean that things will be different, that they’re supposed to be different.

God has already changed our circumstances, and He promises that it is for our own benefit. He is giving us an opportunity for something new, not because the old was bad, but because with God, there is always something more. We can embrace His gift, open our arms to welcome the more and all of the relearning and rethinking that comes with it, or we can remain what we were, but this is when we welcome everything He has imagined for us, or we don’t. I’m pretty sure He will not abandon us either way. He will simply give us as much of Himself as we show Him we want.

 So, we are in the time of Holy Waiting. We wait for Christmas, of course, but we also wait for the unknown to show itself. We do not just wait for a pastor. We wait for God. So I call you all today to pray, to read, to sit quietly before God and let Him show you, and thereby show us, what He wants. And then to communicate that to the rest of us. We can do it alone or together, by email, around coffee or a meal or in a quiet corner by ourselves.  This prayer is not intended toward choosing a minister for this church. The selection committee is already doing the heavy lifting for that. This prayer is intended to find the more God has for us, to grow us in God so that we might become as spiritually adept as we are practically efficient.

 We are so lucky to be the little corner church in Rochester, Wisconsin, already trained by God and good pastoral leadership to be faithful and loving, so who knows? We may become not only the neighborly church on the corner but the light on God’s hill. It’s no accident that Advent sounds a lot like adventure.  It will be an adventure, all right, but God has already built a church well equipped to love each other through whatever He brings us. It is up to us to decide whether we will take the community and warmth He has fostered in us and use it to keep ourselves warm and dry, or to let him wield his loving weapon of change to make us something we never imagined. He will tell us. Let us pray. We can find out together.

 Cartoon Credit: John Hendrix, The Holy Ghost

John Adams: Patsy or Prophet?

I've been ruined by the musical Hamilton. It's songs still echo at the slightest provocation. For example, I'm reading a book, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics of Enlightenment and the American Founding by Darren Stadoff and every time I open it to the chapters about John Adams, I hear King George scoff, "Adams? They'll eat him alive!" Well, as it happens, the song and characterizations are catchy, but the musical's version of history is a little off. That's okay, though. It's excused. It's still brilliant. And so, it turns out, was John Adams.

The Enlightenment, you will recall, heralded the age of reason we take so for granted now - the idea that human reasoning ability holds the key to any knowledge worth having, that science trumps faith, and that rationalism is capable of paving the way to as close to utopia that mankind can achieve - and came by the pens of thinkers like Rousseau, Voltaire, and Locke. And all of this at exactly the time this country was being born. So of course, as educated men, the founding fathers of this country were influenced by it, but each had their own wrinkle and I found Adams' particularly compelling.

Adams was not a successful President. He followed Washington and was voted out after one term in favor of Thomas Jefferson, but he had some compelling ideas that made me think of our country, especially as it lines up today, angry battle lines ready to fire at one another at the slightest provocation. 

Adams' take on mankind contemplated the degree to which the equality of mankind was possible. He agreed that people have the potential, even the mandate, to reason, but as they work toward it, are often ruled by pure passion. When we say equality, we don't often mean it, envisioning a mass of people more or less equal to one another, but presided over by, hopefully, ourselves, rising just above the masses or lacking that, presided over by someone more wealthy, more motivated, or more gifted. Equality is fine, in other words, but we are more comfortable when there is someone in power more equal than others. 

Whoa! Whoa!

Don't shoot the messenger!

Think about it a minute. How do you see the world? How does anyone? It's not possible to see the world through any eyes other than our own. We are always the central character in the story, in any world we experience. It can't be any other way. I can't see the world through your eyes or you through mine. It's not possible. We have a deep love for ourselves that automatically makes us self-centered and selfish. That's why our emotions are geared toward individual experience and, inevitably, individual welfare. It is our only reference point. 

That doesn't mean we're corrupt. It only means we care about ourselves more than we care about anyone else. We tend to admire people whose desire for the improvement of others brings them personal notoriety - Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Eleanor Roosevelt. Their passion for compassion may render them more pure of heart, but even they cannot live the lives they try to improve. They are merely living their own. 

But let's look at most folks. We say we want equality. We want an egalitarian society, where everyone has their say and the will of the people is enacted without interference from an elite nobility. 

But we don't. 

We don't. Think about it. Communism doesn't work. The French Republic drove them to chaos. These happen because the will of an amorphous, uneducated, or uninterested people can't be trusted either. Like it or not, we look at power as a zero-sum game. If one person has more, that automatically means someone else has less. And we want to be on the side of the more. We tend to ignore that with power comes work and responsibility. Many of us don't want that, either. Look at how many people, even in an election as seemingly important as the last, didn't bother to vote at all. More than 35%. What some people want is a comfortable life determined by someone else, someone smarter, richer, or more advantageously placed. They want a kind of equality but at the same time want to be ruled.

Actually, our government is designed to accomodate both camps. The Senate represents the elite, the few. The House of Representatives represents the many, the commonplace folk. The Presidency, designed to maintain a balance, actually operates on one side or the other to accomplish the agenda of the party in power, but the power of the Presidency lasts only as long as the President remains in office. 

Adams understood that a pure democracy will always be short-lived and the source of its own undoing. We do not have a pure democracy, nor do we really want one. 

A modern Roberspierre would inevitably rise up and those looking for a strong leader would support him. America, after all, has its own aristocracy. Every society does. Actors, sports stars, Musk and Jobs and Gates and Trump. They are our modern aristocracy and we expect them, not us, to get things done. 

John Adams knew this and it wasn't more welcome news then than it is now. Yes, they ate him alive for it, but he thought the truth worth the torture. I would probably not stand as he did in front of a firing squad for it, but as difficult as it is, I welcome the divided government he believed to be essential and look to it as the foundation of the struggle that paves the way forward.

Photo: Farside, Redbubble

Why Baking is Dangerous for Philosophers

I made pumpkin custard for breakfast today. Last week, I bought a good-sized whole pumpkin at the grocery for only 99 cents. At the time, I didn't know what I was going to do with it exactly, but since then, it has become a lovely yeast bread and savory soup. Today, with a couple of cups of cooked pulp still left over, I decided to make custard. It was easy - I had everything already and only took a few minutes courtesy of my handy dandy immersion blender. After mixing everything, I poured the silky pumpkin cream into cups, about 3/4 full.

After about an hour in the oven, this is what I got.

Look at them. Eggs and heat made them rise far above the edge of of their rims into things of true beauty, giving me more out of the oven than I put into it. Intellectually, I know at least part of why this happened. Eggs are leaveners and help baked stuff rise and I also whipped air into the mix, so it becomes a kind of pumpkin souffle. 

 

But I've also been reading The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. Dangerous territory for almost any activity because it's Camus' stage for explaining the absurd - the state in which nothing makes sense after a certain point. The natural world will eventually extend beyond our ability to explain it. Our own reason will collapse when it reaches a certain threshold. When we reach those points, we are suspended over an abyss and have to figure out what to do next.

There are ways out of this, of course. God or magic, for instance. In those places, the absurd doesn't matter so much any more. Of course, there's another way to look at the unexplainable, and that's to start with allowing for it. If we assume from the get-go that we won't be able to figure everything out, that reason only takes us so far so we might as well not depend so heavily on it in the first place, that maybe the Enlightenment didn't do us so big a favor after all, well, life gets a lot more interesting. 

So, this morning, looking at my little pumpkin souffle-custards and in spite of knowing at least some of the science that spawned them, I've decided to yield to the inevitable absurd, to allow the beauty of my custards to be magically granted or God-graced miracles. That way, I avoid all looming contradictions. 

But then again, maybe allowing for the beautifully unexplained just makes me feel special.