When I was giving birth to our first child, one of the nurses asked my husband how he was doing, since he was just standing there, having nothing to do but watch me struggle through labor. My husband, who would have much preferred to be anywhere else but there, said (quoting John Milton), “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
This is an attitude that I found difficult to share at the time. And across the years, I've gotten no better at it. Along with most Americans, I hate to wait, despite all the practice I get. As a mother, I wait, often unhappily, for my children to finish their homework, find their shoes or grab one more item before leaving the house. As a shopper, I routinely discover that the express lane is a mere delusion.
During this time of year, none of us enjoys waiting in the long lines at the check-out counter or the inevitable traffic jams around the Christmas shopping hot-spots. After all, fast foods, high-speed Internet and quick transportation have made us accustomed to immediate gratification. Waiting seems a waste of time.
And yet, we are willing to wait in extraordinary ways for the things we really want. Some folks camped outside Best Buy for three days to buy Playstation 3. In one instance in Destin, Fla., a kid who was the first person in line was offered $3,000 for his spot. He took the offer. When my husband and I were talking about the craziness of what people were willing to do for this game, our 6-year-old son blurted out, “It can do everything.” The implication (from someone who can barely endure an hour of worship): You'd be crazy not to wait for it!
In the Christian year, Advent is the time we practice waiting. Similar to the folks gathered outside Best Buy, our waiting is not simply wasted time. It has a purpose: we are waiting for the Messiah. It might seem crazy to set aside a period of time for this. For one thing, don't Christians believe the Messiah has already come? Why wait? Someone who had a Playstation 3 in hand wouldn't bother to set up a tent outside the big-box store.
Yes, the Messiah has come. God has become flesh. And yet Advent reminds us that God's coming among us, as one of us, is not simply an event relegated to the past. Rather, it belongs to both the present and the future. In Luke's Gospel, we read, “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” The kingdom of God is now, even though we await its full consummation.
This can all still seem rather crazy. Purchasing a Playstation seems much more real. After all, you put down your money, and voila, it's in your hands. Waiting for God's kingdom, by contrast, can seem much more illusive. Most of us haven't cast out any demons lately.
Also, waiting doesn't seem like we're really doing much. If God's kingdom involves feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving drink to the thirsty (Matthew 25), then, quite frankly, waiting seems beside the point. Better to be about doing than simply waiting.
And yet, Advent reminds us that these two cannot be separated. We wait because we see that we cannot make Christ come to us. Christ comes as pure gift, not just to us as individuals but to his whole body, the church, so that we might participate in God's life for the world. We don't have to elbow our way into line or pay someone for his or her spot. We are not in competition. Rather in the body of Christ we wait together because we see that we need not only Christ but each other, just as the eye needs the foot (1 Corinthians 12).
Advent is a different kind of waiting — not empty, not acquisitive, but filled with hope, because we wait for a future already achieved in Christ but not yet in us. God's promise is that in his time it will be.
-30-
— Beth Newman is Professor of Theology and Ethics at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. [email protected]