2348AFC120123 – Wait and Watch (1st Sunday of Advent)
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Isaiah 64:4-5-a, 8 –
4 From ages past no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who works for those who wait for him.
5 You meet those who gladly do right,
those who remember you in your ways.
8 Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; (↔ Music Link)
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Psalm 80:3 –
3 Restore us, O God;
let your face shine, that we may be saved.
1 Corinthians 1:9 – 9 God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Mark 13:33, 37 – 33 Beware, keep alert [and pray]; for you do not know when the time will come. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”
Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! The grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ, and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. We have come at last to the First Sunday of Advent. It is a time of J.O.Y. as well as a time of reflection, Love, and hopefully of true giving from grateful hearts. We give a lot of thought about gifts we can give to loved-ones at Christmas time, and somewhere in our heart of hearts we remember that all this hubbub has been built up around the genuine and True reason for celebration: the coming of the Messiah, the Bread of Life, as a wee little babe in a manger (↔ Music Link) in some little cave in Bethlehem – The House of Bread. Also coming up as quickly is the first Monday of Advent! I think somewhere along the line in my working days, I ended up developing an allergy to Mondays. 😉 Really, though, a Monday can be a challenge if we aren’t prepared to accept whatever happens with that attitude of gratitude that ol’ geezer Chick Todd keeps talking about.
ANYWAY, what have we got that inspires gratitude in us? Well, we all know the practiced answers:
- I am a child of God
- God loves me
- I am saved by Grace and Faith
- Jesus is my personal Savior.
- I can go to church and do my part to be present in the worship
- And so on.
All of those are great answers, and you could preface each of those statements with the declaration “I am grateful that … .” What about all the tiny little things that make your day miraculous? The trees on your way to work, the toddler in the supermarket that grins and waves at you, the lady who steps to the side so she can pull the door open for you, icicles that look like monsters’ teeth, a tiny ant carrying a leaf 6 times his size and weight, a phone call from your friends, a picture of your grampa, the smell of pecan pie and coffee, and all the other simple but amazing things? Do any inspire gratitude? So, happy camper, how long does it take to say, “Thank you Lord (↔ Music Link) ”? That’s just “the small stuff,” but like we always say, “It’s all small stuff if it’s not God’s stuff.” And what is there, anyway – other than sin and its wages – that is not God’s stuff? Everything we do, think, say, are, have, hope – all of it, all of it – comes from God. WE can have F.A.I.T.H. in the fact that he starts anything and everything in our lives.
Now, imagine you know that God has created you to be among his Most-Prized Possessions (He did you know). You are created for him, in him, through him, and by him so that you will recognize the personal relationship you have with him is RELIGION. Religion is all about relationships between us and Someone supremely superior in every aspect of Being. Wherever there is Religion, we will find at the very core of it WORSHIP, and Worship always, always includes, depends on, and rewards SACRIFICE – the giving-up-by-offering-up of something that is uniquely ours. And – no surprise here! – that offering is something God provided to us. Why?
Why does God give us “stuff” and then ask us to give it back? It’s simple math – in the 
Absolutely Perfect Plan anyway: whatever we give back to God is multiplied by the Love he bestows on us and our gift. Who else but God would do that? Who else but God could do that?? When we worship him with adoration, thanksgiving, and praise, we receive Graces and Blessings, and Gifts in overflowing quantities. We can’t possibly hold on to all of it, so it spills over onto the people around us – even to people we don’t know if only we will love them. When we gladly do what is right, when we remember to do things his way, he reaches out to us to give us strength, and speaks to our hearts to give us ever-greater Love. That’s why Isaiah can say
From ages past no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who works for those who wait for him.
Isn’t that amazing? “Thank you, Father!”
This is how we know God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. John 3:16-19 – 16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 
17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. YOLO-F! “We reap what we sow.” (See Galatians 6:7-9) The Apostle Paul tells us there “God is not mocked. He gives what you choose to keep.” And when the time comes for the End of Time, whatever we have kept will be our key to one of the two rooms that begin with the letter “H.”
“Ahhh, baloney! ‘End of time.’ HA! The Earth has been here like 13-BILLION years, and there’s a good chance it will be here for that and many more later.” Grand idea, Friend, but we have been told to watch and wait, because The End of Time is coming, and now, right this very minute, would be a great time to take inventory of all the little things we’ve tucked away in our rucksacks. Why? Because we know that a lot of that stuff isn’t of any value other then our own selfish sentimentality. Those meaningless things could result in not having much to say when our Master asks, “What have you done for the anawim?” (↔ Click it) What shall we say, “Behold! I saved up all this stuff for them to have after I die.” Whew! That sounds … well, not appropriate for the situation. Junk-hoarding is not the same as watchful waiting. Ask anyone whose had to deal with cancer – either in their own bodies or in the body of a loved-one. Junk-for-later isn’t much help. Ever. Waiting is, though.
Did any among us (other than Crucita and me) ever read Robert Heinlein’s fabulous, Hugo-award-winning story called Stranger in a Strange Land? (↔ Click Link) Released in 1961, it got snapped up by the hip-60’s crowd and they went around grokking everything. It was controversial, had a lot of jabs at politics, it most certainly was a life-raft for the free-love mentality, and took some salty potshots at religion. Water was portrayed as sacred, and a blessing from the main character to his “water brothers” went, “Drink deeply, and never thirst.” Another common aphorism was “Waiting is. Fullness coming.” We can leave Heinlein’s pseudo-mysticism behind (it was in the rucksack), and just say that his eponymous character engaged in passive waiting as he described it. The “fullness” was an intuitive but thorough understanding of some object or person or situation – grok. Here’s the thing, though.
WE are not called to passive waiting. Something has to be going on inside us – meditation, anticipation, elucidation, edification, just a whole bunch of –ation words. Those words describe the actions, the processes, of DOING something. Or, to jump to another fantasy writer for Harry Potter, we have the character of “Mad Eye Moody” repeatedly proclaiming “CONSTANT VIGILANCE!” Absolutely! Never, never, never, never, never quit … WATCHING! Watching for what? All the eschatological hints in Daniel, Revelation, Psalms, all the Prophets, and Matthew 24 – IMPORTANT (↔ Click Link) and in Mark and Luke as well. It is in those passages that the Christ of God tells us he is on his way.
We have been told for centuries that Jesus can return “any minute now.” Well, that is true, and while we Believers have nothing (we hope) to fear about that, there are billions of people we don’t really know who don’t know he’s coming, and furthermore, don’t really care that he’s coming. Sadly a portion of folks in that group claim to be Christians, and that they wait only passively, being certain that they can explain some sort of answer to the question “What have you done for the anawim?” and most certainly there is an immensely larger group that think the whole thing is just a fairy tale to placate our primordial fears of death. As we often say here, all of those folks are in for one Hell of a surprise!
ʻŌmea, will we watchfully wait together; share what we see and hear and know; encourage, challenge, and Love one another as he has Loved? You wait with me, or I’ll wait with you, or better WE wait while we watch, and watch while we wait. What we’re waiting for is worth watching for. What we’re watching for is absolutely worth waiting for! AMEN? (↔ Music Link) A-a-a-a-a-a-MEN! If HE built it, he WILL come! And so, Belovéd, let us wait together for his coming. When others ask us, “What are you waiting for?” our answer ought to be, “Not what, but Who.” Waiting can be boring, so let’s think of some of the things we can do as we wait and watch. How about this?
Ephesians 4:31-32 – 31 Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice 32 and be kind to one another, 
tenderhearted*, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. *Greek – eusplagchnos (↔ Click it) (yoo’-splangkh-nos) deeply, viscerally, and mercifully compassionate in humble deference. See also 1 Peter 3:8 – 8 Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind. And while we’re at it, we might as well make sure that the way in which we wait is worthwhile and doable, that is, as we wait and do something, that something might as well be useful for our meeting with Christ. As The Apostle Paul told us in Galatians 6:9-10 – 9 So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. 10 So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith. We – the adelphos, the anawim – must not wait away from the House of the Lord (God’s family), but rather be in the Presence of the Lord in the land of the living: Psalm 27:13 – 13 I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. ʻŌmea, wait and watch, and do that together like ohana and as those who gladly do right.
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
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Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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Keep Watching
