“It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.”[i]
This past week, the music streaming service Spotify rolled out their annual “Wrapped” results. The music streamer tracks the hours listened to, the artists listened to, and the preferred songs of each user. The annual unveiling of our top listens is a cheerful way to remind users that everything we do on our phones and online is tracked (you have been warned). Some users have suspicions of their results, but they must wait for confirmation. Others, like me and Allison, wait to see how our children will skew our results. From one set of results to the next, we wait to either confirm our suspicions or ask, “What in the world are our kids listening to?!”
Waiting is neither fun nor easy. In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, in one of my too many “Oh shoot, we forgot to get that” trips to the grocery store, I watched shopper after shopper maneuver their too-full shopping carts from one line to the next in desperately attempting to avoid waiting behind a fellow shopper with an even fuller shopping cart.
“Watch out! Coming through!” a man shouted at me as I pulled Nora back before she was run over by a cart full of frozen turkeys and, boxed mashed potatoes and stuffing.
“You will be waiting forever in that line,” he said as he pushed past us. “I think they are paying by check, too,” he added.
“Oh, thanks, I guess,” I said. “Good luck thawing those birds out for tomorrow’s big meal,” I added.
“It won’t take too long. I don’t mind the wait,” my new friend said.
On this First Sunday of Advent, we do not begin with prophecy or angels visiting Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, or Joseph with words like “fear not.”
“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.”[ii]
“Beware!”
“Keep alert!”
Watch out.
Wait.
Advent is the beginning of a new year for the Church. While Advent for the world may be about counting down the shopping days to Christmas, for the Church, Advent is a time when we ask, “Where is God?”
Jesus tells us to wait three times in six verses. No one knows when Jesus will return, so Jesus leaves us with instructions to simply wait.
This portion of Mark’s gospel was written less than 100 years after Jesus spoke these words. One hundred years is a long time to wait. The earliest Christians believed Jesus would return within their lifetime. But as one generation’s waiting was inherited by the next, weariness began to set in. And now today, their waiting is now our waiting.
Waiting in 2023 is not an easy task. With two-day, one-day, and same-day delivery, whenever we are asked to wait, we always can find another vendor to give us what we want on the timeline we demand. Instead of waiting in line at the grocery store for an extra five minutes, some will choose to nearly run over a five-and-a-half-year-old on their way to a shorter line or to speak with the manager.
We may giggle when reading about Veruca Salt demanding a chocolate-golden egg from one of Willy Wonka’s chocolate-golden egg-laying geese, “I want it now!” but when Jesus tells us we must wait for his return, it is enough for us to demand to speak to management.
Wars rage on. Environmental catastrophe could be around the corner. Bombs, guns, and drugs kill children. As poverty around the world continues to increase, it seems that the rich are becoming richer, and the poor are becoming poorer.
We want Jesus back, and we want him back now.
“If Jesus was going to come back,” we tell ourselves, “Now would be a great time for him to get a move on!” We would settle for two-day shipping if it meant God would set things right.
We can become frustrated in our waiting, assuming God is asleep at the wheel. Or, we can begin to think that Jesus did not know what he was talking about.
“Beware!”
“Keep alert!”
Watch out.
Wait.
Sure, whatever you say, Jesus.
Jesus is not telling us that our waiting should be passive. Jesus’s parable is a parable about the meantime, the in between time. The master has gone away. We know; for about 2000 years. Though the master did not leave the servants to wait idly.
“It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.”[iii]
The doorkeeper was given a task.
“Beware!”
“Keep alert!”
Watch out.
Wait.
The servants of the master were given a task.
In his book Heaven and Earth (which we are using to guide us through Advent), Rev. Will Willimon writes, “Between Christ’s first Advent and the Second, Christ has done the usual vocational thing: put the servants in charge, given each one a job to do. We, somnambulant, inadequate servants though we are, having been given a portion of Christ’s realm to share with the world, have the time to be faithful.”[iv]
We have the time to wait. Waiting is one of the ways the Church Universal remains faithful to Christ.
The work of the Church is to show and tell that Jesus Christ indeed has come and will come again.
We shout that God is not done with us. The Church – yesterday, today, and tomorrow – has been commissioned to bear the light of the Light of the world. So then, the life of the Church is a life of waiting between two Advents. We proclaim that Christ was born of Mary and laid in a manger. We proclaim that John baptized him in the River Jordan. We proclaim that Jesus performed miracles and signs pointing to God's glory and grace. We proclaim that Jesus was killed on the cross but that death did not defeat the grace of God. We proclaim that on the third day, Jesus rose from the grave. We proclaim that Jesus ascended to the Father's right hand, and promises to come again, in the Second Advent, and judge the living and dead.
As the Church waits, we watch for signs of Christ’s presence in the most unlikely people and places. But (and it’s a big but you know it does not lie) as we wait, there is a place where Jesus will always meet us. The parable about the man going on a journey is not a parable about an absentee master. Jesus sustains those who wait in bread and wine in what Rev. Fleming Rutledge describes as “refreshment for the next watch.”[v]
We are an Advent people, saved by grace, sustained by sacrament, and sent out to declare Emmanuel has come and Emmanuel shall come again.
[i] Mark 13:34
[ii] Mark 13:32-33
[iii] Mark 13:34
[iv] Willimon, Will. Heaven and Earth: Advent and the Incarnation. Abingdon Press. 2023. Page 31.
[v] Rutledge, Fleming. Advent: The Once & Future Coming of Jesus Christ. Eerdmans. 2018. Page 267.
Sustained for the Longrun