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Advent: A time of waiting

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The first of a 3 part reflection for Advent.

Advent.
A time of waiting.

Waiting for the bus,
the TV programme to start,
waiting for test results,
for an appointment,
for a child to be born,
for dinner to cook
still waiting for the bus.

Waiting inhabits most areas of our lives, in one way or another.
Sometimes waiting passes by unnoticed.
At others, waiting is a heavy millstone around our necks.

Sometimes waiting can be a joyous and uplifting time,
At others, it can be draining of life.

Advent.
A time of waiting.

Waiting as Abraham and Sarah did, waiting for God’s unexpected and seemingly impossible promise to come true, that in their old age, they would bear a child.

Waiting as Joseph did, rejected by his brothers, imprisoned for years, yet when all hope seemed lost, his liberation comes as he interprets dreams, and finds purpose.

Waiting as the Israelites did, time and time again, for 40 years, to reach the promised land. Waiting for God’s promise to be fulfilled.

Waiting as Mary did, having been visited by an angel, and told she would conceive, waiting for this Christ-child to be born.

Advent.
A time of waiting.

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Keep Watching….

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The stage was set…
The house lights dimmed…
Silence…
Waiting…
Watching…
Anticipation building.

Then with great gusto, The orchestra begin to play,
The curtain begins to rise…
The stage is revealed, and the show begins. 

I still remember my first trip to the West End.
Anticipation was strong.
We knew the story we were about to witness,
Yet we didn’t know quite how they would do it on the stage.

So as we sat there,
We sat between the known and unknown,
intensifying the anticipation of what was coming…
The knowing made the waiting even more electrifying.
The unknowing made the waiting more exciting.

That image, for me, captures the essence of Advent,
A time of waiting in expectation,
Between the known and the unknown,
Remembering what was.
Waiting and watching for what will be.

Waiting inhabits most areas of our lives, in one way or another.
Sometimes waiting passes by unnoticed.
At others, waiting is a heavy millstone around our necks.

Sometimes waiting can be a joyous and uplifting time,
At others, it can be draining of all life.

And over the last 2 years waiting has taken a whole new meaning for us… waiting for our turn in the vaccine roll out, waiting for another news conference, waiting to know if there will or will not be more changes to the way we live our lives….

In Luke 1:39-45 we read of Mary and Elizabeth.
Both are pregnant…
Unexpectedly pregnant in fact…
Both families have been visited by angels foretelling something of what will happen.

When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 

Luke 1:41-42

Amidst all the unknowns…
Amidst the crazy uncertainty…,.
Elizabeth somehow knows Mary carry’s God’s promised one…
She doesn’t know how, what, why…
But she knows that this baby would be a fulfilment of God’s promise.

How it must have felt for Mary and Elizabeth,
Having a glimpse of what might be coming,
A glimpse of what God was doing,
Yet not really knowing God’s plan at all.

Confusion. Uncertainty. Fear. Disbelief. Loneliness.
Why them?
Why now?
How?
When?
What?

There must have been more q’s than answers.
But they were willing.
They trusted.
Waited.

2000 or so years on, we’re in a different place…
The promised Messiah came
Jesus came, lived, ministered, died, rose again.
Left the Spirit of God with us.

All could be made well with the world…
Peace, hope, harmony, justice, righteousness, clarity….

2000 years on, perhaps the world isn’t quite so different as we sometimes like to think. Humankind might have progressed, but thw world is still a mess.

While I don’t think any of you are expecting to give birth to a son of God any time soon…we are all also like Mary & Elizabeth.

We’re human.
Still human.
Still live with anxiety, fear.
We live with questions.
We live with uncertainty.

For me, there’s something about the known and unknown of the season of advent, the watching and waiting which reminds me that God is as much in the waiting, uncertainty and the unknown, as everything else.

As Advent reminds us of what was, is and will be,
We are reminded we worship a God who’s work has not finished.
Has never finished.
Advent reminds us to keep watching…
Watching for glimpses of the God in our daily lives.
Watching for the activity of God in the world.
Watching for God’s invitation to us to participate in that activity.

For that is God’s gracious and generous offer to us.
Inviting we watchers and waiters to participate in the continuing work of God.
So, keep watching.
In advent and in all our days…

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Interrupted…by Hope

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Looking back on the interruption of 2020, and the interruption that the season on Advent encourages us to look towards.

What has given you hope this year?
What is giving you hope today?
Comment below, I’d love to hear your experiences.

I should have been in Ireland this weekend for my brother-laws-wedding.

My girls were going to be flower girls and my future sister-in-law was so keen that back at the beginning of 2020 they got the dresses…but all that’s been interrupted how, and chance is my daughters will have grown out of them by Autumn 2021 when the new wedding date is.

2020 has been filled with so many interruptions and delays, and I know some of you have been saying you’re just looking forward to 2020 being over. But before we get to 2021, we journey through Advent and into Christmas.

Advent is a season on watching and waiting…Remembering the waiting of God’s people, who were longing for the Messiah to come and save them, hoping God’s promised one would transform their lives and society.

Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we might be saved.  Psalm 80:3

These are hopeful words from Psalm 80, expressing the people’s longing for the shining light Gods face to bring hope and release. Little did they know that years later Gods face really would interrupt the world as a baby in a manger.

I got this Christmas decoration when I was at school. I’d been asked to be a part of a group from school going to put on a Christmas concert in a local town, I think for a charity working with elderly and isolated residents.

I think I was reading a poem and I started well, microphone in hand,
filling the vast hall, and then my nose started to run, big time!

All eyes were on me, and so I didn’t want to wipe my nose, and thought that maybe, if I just ignore it, with the occasional gentle sniff, no-one will know.

I felt embarrassed, and deeply wanted that moment to end as fast as possible!

To this day I don’t know if people did notice, but the one thing this Christmas decoration always reminds me of is no matter how uncomfortable a situation I am in, hope will interrupt it.

The discomfort will come to an end. Restoration will come.

2020 has been a year of the unprecedented.

But nothing compares to the unprecedented truth that Advent leads us towards, that Jesus is coming to interrupt the status quo, and bring us hope.

I pray you day is interrupted…by hope.

Come, thou long expected Jesus,
born to set thy people free,
from our fears and sins release us,
let us find our rest in thee.

Words of Charles Wesley (1708-1788)

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Jesus Christ is risen! – Is he?

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Leader: Jesus Christ is Risen!

Response: Is he?

Leader: He is Risen Indeed!

Response: Is he really?

Leader: Alleluia!

Response: I thought he was dead?

After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.

Matthew 28:1, NRSV

As Jesus was crucified Matthew tells us that many women who had been following and providing for Jesus looked on from a distance (Matt 27:55). Two days later, under the dim light of dawn some of them head towards the tomb.

These women were grief stricken, devastated, broken-hearted – having watched the one they’d followed and provided for taken from then, beaten, mocked and killed. And not just killed, but killed under the painful cruelty of crucifixion.

I wonder if those women felt lost, no longer having Jesus to follow and learn from. I wonder if they felt as if they’d lost a sense of purpose, their vocation of providing for Jesus so brutally taken from them. I wonder how they felt now that Jesus was no longer alive. The one who had shown acceptance, compassion and love to these women was gone. I wonder how they felt, with the prospect that they may never be accepted and loved by someone else in that way again.

As they approach the tomb, they expect the stone to be there, sealing Jesus’ body in. They perhaps expect the guards to be there. What they don’t expect, is for the earth to tremble and shake and an angel appear before them, in bright light and dazzling white and roll the stone away – and then take a seat (Matthew 28:2-3).

Matthew’s storytelling makes me smile. All that drama – light, earthquake, stone rolled away – and then what does the angel do? They sit down. Just needs a pot of tea and scones for a truly English picnic (with proper social distancing of course!).

But the angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” This is my message for you.’

Matthew 28:5-7, NRSV

In that moment, I wonder what those women felt. Joy or terror? Hope or disbelief? Maybe they did accept the angels invitation and look into the tomb and see it was empty. But did they believe the impossible could have happened? Did they believe this dazzling angel – sat on a stone – was telling the truth?

With both fear and joy they head towards the disciples to tell them. Joy that the angel could be telling the truth. Fear that the angel could indeed not be an angel, in which case what has really happened to Jesus? Was Jesus risen? Was this resurrection thing true?

Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’

Matthew 28:9-10, NRSV

The women’s doubts dispelled, they can race on. Joy in their hearts – Jesus really is alive. How? Why? When? None of that matters. They have a message to deliver, there is hope in their hearts – Jesus is alive!

But that’s not the only tale that goes on to be told. The guards, they’ve already headed off to the authorities to report, and another story is soon devised to explain the unexpected events – blame the disciples, say they came in the night and took the body (28:11-13).

And for Matthew’s story (which like Mark, has very little resurrection story to tell compared with Luke and John), even when the other disciples do see Jesus and worship him some still doubt. Could this resurrection thing really be true? And what does it really mean for the future?

When we travel through Lent, and then Holy Week, Easter Sunday is often the end point, the climax, the destination. It’s the place we know we’re going to get to at the end of the pain and suffering. And generally, as soon as dawn breaks – where there.

But for the disciples, for 1st Century Palestine, it’s wasn’t so cut and dried. Resurrection wasn’t such a given. There was doubt, uncertainty and fear. There were multiple stories and little resource to tell the difference between them.

It took time for the resurrection story to spread across society.
It took time for the resurrection to be believed.
It took time for Jesus friends to experience the resurrection for themselves.

For Jesus’ first followers, and for 1st Century Palestine, the Resurrection was not a one day event. It didn’t arrive for the whole of society as dawn broke, but took time to be known, experienced and believed – if indeed it was believed at all.

We know the truth of the resurrection. We live the truth. Jesus Christ is Risen – He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

Due to Covid-19, there is an inevitability that for many of us, while knowing the truth, Easter Sunday will feel odd, different & strange. It may be hard to hold onto the truth in the isolated living we currently experience.

I think it’s worth reminding ourselves that rather than a one day even, Easter is a period – a season – which takes us from today all the way to Pentecost (this year 31st May). A season of entering into the new of the resurrection, where the discovery of the hope of new life is allowed time to be fully known, realised and experienced.

Perhaps this year we experience the resurrection more like Jesus’ first followers did, and more like the Easter season invites us, not as the dawning of a one day event, but one that takes time for us to fully realise. One where we embrace the wonderful and life changing truth of the resurrection of Christ, the truth that sets us free, while waiting to discover the full impact of the resurrection to come.

No gathering to worship in church buildings and singing Thine be the glory with organ at full blast. They remain as empty as the tomb. Waiting. For those who are used to it, no Easter Sunday communion – today the plate and cup remain as empty as the tomb. Waiting.

They wait, and we wait, for when our resurrection from lockdown comes.

Waiting to discover afresh resurrection’s impact.

All the while knowing the truth which sets us free.

Jesus Christ is Risen – He is Risen indeed – Alleluia!

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Gifted Time, Patient Hope and the Resurrection to come

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Have you all remembered to spring your clocks forwards this morning? On more than one occasion I’ve led worship on the last Sunday of March and towards the end of the service someone has turned up looking embarrassed, having forgotten to change the clocks and ending up running an hour behind the rest of the world.

There’s no chance of us turning up to church an hour late today though, and what we do and when is largely our own business at the moment. Many of us are spending our days differently to how we usually would as we embrace and settle into what our new and temporary ‘normal’ is going to be.

I’ve spent the week using technology differently to normal, done a shift at the foodbank for the first time, made lots of phone calls and have even managed to clear 1 of the many piles of ‘stuff’ that have been collecting in my office over the last 12 months.

How we spend our time can be important at the best of times. What we do impacts us and can impact others, positively or negatively. This week the question of ‘what does a minister do now?’ has not been far from my mind as I discern how best to minister in church and community when we are distant and isolated from one another. I am sure I am not alone as I grapple with that question of how best to use my time?

How best do we use our time today?

In today’s gospel reading (John 11:1-45), people don’t think Jesus gets his timing right. On day 1 of the story, Jesus gets the message that Lazarus is ill. Mary and Martha wanted Jesus to come to them, but Jesus doesn’t. He waits, continues in the place he was, doing whatever he had been doing. 2 days later, he says to his disciples, let’s go, let’s head to Bethany.

But to Martha at least, Jesus is late. He got his timing wrong, took too long dilly-dallying and now Lazarus is dead. Yet in the midst of the grief and emotion she was experiencing, Martha is faithful and hopeful:

Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’

John 11:21-22

As the story goes on, they head to the tomb, Mary joins them, and Jesus asks for the stone to be rolled away, and call’s to Lazarus ‘come out’, and out comes Lazarus.

Death leads to life.
Waiting leads to still holds possibility.
Hope leads to resurrection.

As ever with John’s gospel there is so much that could be said of this passage, but I wonder today, in this period of isolation and distance in our world, if we have something to gain from reflecting on Jesus’ use of time.

Jesus doesn’t rush to Lazarus, Martha and Mary – despite how deep John’s gospel portrays their friendship. He pauses, takes time and continues what he was doing. Only then, after he had taken time, did he go.

And by then all must have seemed lost to the community in Bethany, because Lazarus was no longer ill. He was dead, hope was gone, death had won. But then Jesus came. But then Resurrection came.

‘I am the resurrection and the life.’

(John 11:25)

We live, ‘normally’ in a fast paced society. Where waiting and patience are not always normative to us. Where we expect to find the food we want to buy on the shelves when we go shopping. When we sometimes expect leaders, medics and governments to have all the answers. When, as pragmatic people of faith who know faith necessities action, we want act, do and somehow respond with pace to make a difference in times of adversity and challenge.

But what I’m struck by is that Jesus doesn’t respond quickly. He continues what he was doing, and then, after time, heads to Bethany. By then, by all accounts all hope was lost – but it was only then, when death had seemingly won, that resurrection truly came, when hope became a true reality.

As we live in this period of distancing, waiting for the resurrection that will one day come, knowing the world is ill but being powerless to do anything about it except stay at home to protect the NHS and save lives, we have a gift of time.

We are in a time of waiting, this time will pass and resurrection will come, but this time is also a time in itself to use well. For ourselves, for others, for our relationship with God. An extended time of Sabbath Rest perhaps? So I encourage you, this week, to think about how you will use this time.

Take time to Pause
Take time to finish things.
Take time to spend with God as you need do
Take time to prepare for the resurrection to come

There’s a poem that was on a poster I had in my bedroom as a teenager. I can’t find it now, I guess it went in one of our house moves. There seem to be various versions of it online, and I can’t find it’s original author, but I leave it with you to read, reflect, pray through and allow the Spirit to guide you with, as we take this gift of time we have and seek to use it well, with patient hope, knowing resurrection is to come.

Take time to think:
it is the source of power.

Take time to read;
it is the foundation of wisdom.

Take time to play;
it is the secret of staying young.

Take time to be quiet;
it is the opportunity to see God.

Take time to be aware;
it is the opportunity to help others.

Take time to love and be loved;
it is God’s greatest gift.

Take time to laugh;
it is the music of the soul.

Take time to be friendly;
it is the road to happiness.

Take time to dream;
it is what the future is made of.

Take time to pray;
it is the greatest power on earth.

Author Unknown

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if you’ve got thoughts or something to share after reading and reflecting on my thoughts, you can comment below and share them with us all – I’d love to hear from you.

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