Tag Archives: waiting

The Waiting Game

Leave a reply

Sermon preached on the 7th Sunday of Easter based on Acts 16:16-34 and John 17:20-26

May I speak and may you hear through the Grace of our Lord; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen

I’m not very good at waiting. If something needs doing, then I want to get it done as soon as possible; but sometimes waiting is the only thing to do.

So, what to do in this period of waiting? Well the first thing you could do is to do absolutely nothing. Time to catch your breath, to rest up and regain some energy; but also not conducive to being prepared when the waiting is over.

Or perhaps you could fret and pace continuously up and down, putting forward different conjectures and scenarios, trying to cover all eventualities. Surely one will turn out to be close to what is likely to happen.

Or maybe there is a third way to use this time of waiting. A time of waiting that we find ourselves in right now. A time of waiting between Ascension and Pentecost, which we know is just seven days away…

However, let’s think back to the those first disciples, still in hiding from the authorities, witnesses to some amazing events; the reappearance of their teacher after witnessing his death on the cross, satisfying themselves that this miraculous thing had happened and then watching as he ascended back to his Father, with a promise that they would not be left alone to continue the work he had prepared them for, but that a helper, the Holy Spirit would be sent.

But when? Waking up each morning wondering if this was the day, then retiring at night still fearful but hoping that tomorrow would be different. What could they do to fill this time? Do nothing; restlessly throw ideas backwards and forwards or do something else.

Yes, you’ve guessed it they went for the third option – prayer!

The disciples, after Jesus’ ascension, were instructed to wait in Jerusalem for the promised Holy Spirit. This waiting was not a passive activity, but a time of fervent prayer seeking guidance and power from the Holy Spirit. They recognized their dependence on God and understood that the Holy Spirit was essential for their mission and ministry. It also emphasized the importance of waiting with a purpose, trusting in God’s timing and anticipating the fulfilment of his promises. 

In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit’s presence was known and experienced through God’s active involvement in the lives of individuals, particularly prophets, kings, and those called to specific ministries. The Spirit was seen as a powerful force of God, bringing about specific tasks, empowering individuals, and inspiring holiness as seen in the books of Moses, Judges and particularly Isaiah. 

From the very beginning the Holy Spirit represented God’s creative and sustaining presence, the very creator of life according to Psalm 104. The Old Testament prophets even spoke of the Holy Spirit’s role in the coming Messiah, as seen in Isaiah 42  – ‘Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him’; and again in Isaiah 11 – ‘A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him.’

The Holy Spirit also inspired holiness in believers, as mentioned in Psalm 143:10 – ‘Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. Let your good spirit lead me on a level path’. However, they also knew that while the Holy Spirit’s presence was obvious, it was not poured out on everybody during the Old Covenant, but rather limited to specific individuals and occasions. So perhaps the disciples were wondering which one of them might be chosen to receive its power.

And so they continued to pray.

Now I’m not going to spoil how their waiting ended; you’ll have to come back next week to find that out, but I wanted to think more about their choice of activity in that waiting time – prayer.

In fact our reading from Acts emphasised that prayer was still the go to occupation when you were waiting to be shown where God wanted you to be. We heard that Paul and Silas, who had started their missionary journey in Antioch, now found themselves in Philippi, and were on their way ‘to the place of prayer’ when they were waylaid by a female divinator, whose powers they curtailed, thus leading to much annoyance by the girl’s owners and accusations of unlawful sedition.

Unbowed by their punishment and ill-treatment, they spend the night ‘praying and singing hymns to God’, waiting to see what how he would rescue them from this situation. The response was an earthquake and voluntary self-incarceration which proved to be the spark for the Holy Spirit to come into play and convinced the jailer and his family to seek salvation and become believers in God.

Just like the Holy Spirit, salvation can be seen as a gift from God, not something earned through good works. Yes, it involves turning away from sinful behaviour and acknowledging the need for God’s forgiveness, but it also signifies a new spiritual life and relationship with God.

It also provides hope for the future as believers are promised eternal life in heaven, wherever that is as Vicky told us on Thursday, but we know its a place of peace and joy where God dwells with his people. 

This is the prayer that Jesus was praying in our Gospel this morning. A prayer that included a request, ‘Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory’, in order that we will all be united, ‘I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one.’ A prayer that shows that we will become an intrinsic part of the Trinity when the Holy Spirit resides within us.

An incredibly powerful prayer for us to look forward to being answered in time. But we are still here and we are still in that waiting room.

And this period of waiting provides a valuable lesson for those of us who believe. It highlights the importance of prayer when we are encouraged to engage in persistent and heartfelt prayer, seeking God’s guidance, strength, and power. And just as the disciples were anticipating the arrival of the Holy Spirit, we too can anticipate God’s presence and power in our lives, learning to trust God’s plan for our lives, so we can demonstrate our reliance on God’s power, rather than our own abilities. 

In this waiting time we should pray for God’s will to be done in our lives and in the world. ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven… Amen

God’s Time Is In The Waiting

Leave a reply

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent based on 2 Peter 3:8-15a and Mark 1:1-8

May I speak and may you hear through the Grace of our Lord; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen

I hate waiting… I’m a completer / finisher and if something needs completing or finishing why wait around. Get on and do it straight away. Soonest done, soonest mended, soonest you can move on to the next thing. Yet haste is not always on the side accomplishing the best results. Yes, it creates a sense of achieving a lot in as little time as possible, but it’s also possible that things get missed, that plans change, that you have to go back and do it all again!

It’s taken me a long time to realise that time is not something to be got through as quickly as possible. Time is a precious commodity and the freedom of youth and endless days of pleasure give way to a sense of time passing too quickly towards its ultimate conclusion.

A recent spell of three hours in the waiting area of the Royal South Hants walk-in a few weeks ago, actually got me sitting and contemplating the nature of waiting. Situations such as this throw together a group of people each with different needs and attitudes, and I found myself noticing that the medical staff had perfected a list of priorities which was sensible and fair, however much everyone looked up each time hoping they were the next to be called through. The possible broken limbs, the youngest children, those who might be in immediate need of treatment to prevent further deterioration, and those who knew it wasn’t a matter of life and death but would really like some relief from their present condition.

The trouble with time is that it is a human concept, to be regulated and measured, and for those who believe a literal understanding of the beginning of time as described in the Genesis narrative it can seem that God ordained the hours, the days and the weeks to give us the rhythm of nature and seasons to measure our earthly existence.

It’s an interesting conundrum, and one which I recently spent discussing with some 8-year-olds at school the other day. I have to say that these are some of the best moments in my work as a school chaplain, when children divert me away from discussing how they might present a bible story in their Child-Led Collective Worship and morph into pondering the bigger questions in life. From annunciation to childbirth to creation in the space of two questions. From the miracle of Jesus’ conception to the lack of stories of his childhood to the question of how Adam and Eve’s son’s managed to find wives. Then back to the key question, but who created the creator and did he really do it all in six days.

Of course, the best way to answer these questions is to deflect it back to the questioner… What do you think? No, it’s not a get out clause, but it gives a chance for them to express what they might be thinking but not quite wanting to suggest in case it’s the worst answer ever and Reverend Linda will scoff at their ignorance and everyone else will laugh. To be honest you don’t get that sense of reticence with 8-year-olds, and they are actually very respectful and will listen to each other.

So, the response that God would have done it in God’s time and if he could create two people why could he not have gone on to create a few more. Nevertheless, it was the first statement that I heard so confidently expressed, and here this morning we hear the same point being made from the pen of St Peter, ‘do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and thousand years are like one day.’

 Peter is noting that the completion of God’s plan for his creation should not be something we are concerned about on a human timeline, but how we spend that waiting time, so that when and if it should happen in our lifetime, we could stand before God with a clear conscious that we had striven for all that is demanded of us as followers of Christ.

The fact is God’s plan has never been set to a particular timescale. He has been one of those draughtspeople who will take things back to the drawing board, recalculate and adjust depending on what is now wanted and needed.

If we look back over the Old Testament stories, we can clearly see God making these adjustments. He’d tried ripping up the original blueprint and starting again with Noah and his family, he’d given detailed plans to various architects of faith, including Abraham and Moses and he’d sent engineers into the field with instructions of what needed doing such as his prophets, Elijah and Isaiah, but it would seem that the people didn’t grasp the vision or understand what sort of kingdom he was trying to build.

It seemed that the workers had downed tools and were taking a long vacation, and God was silent… Except he wasn’t, he was busy pulling together the next part of his plan, and it would be the greatest draft yet because it needed to be absolutely right, and it needed to be a one off. He had tried giving chance after chance, now he was doing something new, something amazing.

So, what sort of publicity campaign would he run. How many global publishers would he engage to follow up the big launch? As always God surprises us. No big fanfare, well apart from a host of angels in the middle of the night. A teenage girl, a reluctant fiancé, in a land under foreign rule, a rag-tag bunch of shepherds and a foreign diplomatic visit. An aged couple in the temple and a wild-haired man in the desert, not exactly front-page news.

But he was here, and the next part of the plan was about to begin; ‘the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’. Today we focus on that beginning as John announces that the time has come, to repent and turn back to God, because time is running out.

He speaks with urgency and recognises that he is merely the preliminary act. The messenger sent ahead to prepare the way. And Jesus was coming out of his own time of preparation, not just a mere 40 days in the desert, but thirty odd years of learning, observing, listening, and waiting and it was now his time.

For John his understanding was likely to be that this was it, this would change everything, the Messiah had come, and things would never be the same again, and of course they weren’t. However, God’s plan was still not marching in time with that of his people and we can see that some two thousand earthly years later that his plan is still being worked out.

Nonetheless, it’s sometimes hard to see amongst this world of increasing secularism and human conflict the bigger and brighter plan for us. Someone asked a question the other day as to whether we were really living in the end times at the moment, and that maybe we’d all be better off if God did bring these times to an end. It’s hard to deflect such a question because of course there is no answer to that. God’s time is not our time, so we just have to wait.

But it’s in the waiting that we can make a difference. We can still share the Good News, we can represent Christ in what we do and say, we can show people that there is always hope. However dark a tunnel is, it is just that a tunnel, a means to get from one place to another, and as we move through it there will always be that glimmer of hope and light that appears at the opening.

We have to be patient, yet active. To wait, but to do so with hope. To mark time but to make the most of it. To let God be the completer / finisher in his own time.

This Advent we wait once again to share the Good News, God is with us. Amen

Go back

Your message has been sent

Advent Waiting

Leave a reply

Sermon given on Sunday 27th November 2022 on the 1st Sunday in Advent based on the following readings: Matthew 24:36-44 and Isaiah 2:1-5

May I speak and may you hear, through the Grace of our Lord; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen

Today we enter a new season in the church calendar. Our old church year has ended and a new one has begun. The colours around us have also changed, there are purples and pinks and candles to light – one at a time – increasing light coming into a time of shortened days and winter darkness. A feeling of anticipation and rising excitement. Yet we have to wait!

Waiting… the action of staying where one is… time passing… expecting something to happen… until one day it does! Advent, a time of waiting, of hope, of anticipation. We hear in St Paul’s letter to the Galatians, ‘when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son’

Advent is the church in waiting… the church’s annual reminder of what Christians worldwide anticipate in the days leading up to Christmas. We wait for Christmas as Israel waited centuries for a Saviour. Waiting for God to fulfil his covenant, for a virgin’s son of Abraham’s line, a descendant of Isaac, Jacob and David, for a branch from the root of Jesse, for a baby born in Bethlehem called Immanuel.

For generations, God’s people waited for the fulfilment of countless Old Testament prophecies of a Saviour, who would light up this world brighter than any Magi’s star. A Saviour, who was to be called Jesus, the long-awaited hope in a dark and sinful world. The true light, that gives light to every single human, was coming into the world.

As Christians wait for the light of Christmas, the four advent candles are lit with each week’s passing, but we know that our hoping and waiting doesn’t stop at Christmas, because he will return at the last day, a second advent.

Today, it is that second advent that we are thinking about. A time of waiting that equates with that of Israel. Waiting and not knowing when these prophetic events will take place. We can image that it is unlikely to happen in our lifetime, or without knowing it, it could happen before I get to the end of this sermon…. ‘Therefore, keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.’ So, if you all disappear before my very eyes, I’ll know I wasn’t fully prepared!

It is from the Old Testament that we hear of what will happen in the last days, perhaps a more leisurely climax to the end of time and spoken in the beautiful prophetic language of Isaiah.

On a mountain higher than any we might have stood on and from which caught a glimpse of the awe and wonder of God. A mountain whose peak brushes against the thin veil of heaven, ready at any moment to tear a hole through which the Saviour can return.

From the very beginning of humankind there was but one nation, the nation of Eden. However, human rights, economic disparities and land disputes forced the people to spread to each and every corner of the world, creating nations that forgot the principle of working together for the common good or acknowledging their divine creator.

Then, on a mountain that will stand so prominently above all others, on which the gathering place of the people of God will be built, the nations will stream towards it. I was once given an image by one of my lecturers, Mark Chapman at Cuddesdon theological college, of a smooth sphere spinning in space out of which streams of people, like spumes of gas were escaping and forming new spheres, that bumped and grated against each other, but that how, at the end of time it would be as if the image was being rewound and those streams of people would be sucked back so that eventually the original sphere would take shape, not so smooth, but one single spinning object in infinity.

And the reason that people will want to climb the mountain and will encourage others to come with them, is so that the God of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Daniel, Peter, James, Paul, Augustine, Francis, Theresa, Luther, Sacks, Mohammed and of you and me, can teach us once more to walk in the ways that He intended us to.

A time of preparation, before Jesus, the Word of God, undertakes his role as the final judge of the people, settling disputes and bringing the nations back into harmony, so that there will be no need of wars, no need for the machinery and weaponry of conflict, no need for military tacticians or economic masters.

Instead, for those who have re-turned to, re-tuned into and re-stored the one true faith, the light of God will shine on them so that they will appear like beacons of hope in the darkness.

It’s a beautiful picture, and one we might dismiss as poetic licence, an Old Testament allegory designed to give hope to the peoples of Israel and Judah who were in dispute, and who had been subjugated by the Babylonians. Yet this same image of a gathering of the nations and the formation of a new earth and heaven is given to us by John in his vision in Revelation, ‘I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple… The nations will walk by its light and… the glory and honour of the nations will be brought into it,’ and for each and every person, ‘they will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.’

Yet, none of this calls for complacency. Today, tomorrow, next year or whenever… we can’t just simply wait… the things that are foreseen are also the things that we should be striving for each and every day, to work together as individuals and as a global nation, to do all we can to bring about peace between the nations on earth, to teach people the way of God, so that all can be restored

So, this year during Advent, as we continue to watch and pray for our Saviour to come again let us also make plans, whether in the long term or short term… who knows… to prepare ourselves and our world for the smoothest transition and be truly ready, ‘because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him’.

Amen.

Watching and Waiting

Leave a reply

Signs of Advent

Signs of Advent

At this time of year, in the lead up to the Christmas celebrations, we spend a great deal of time watching and waiting. What is it though that we are watching and waiting for? Is it for the first sign that Christmas is coming? In that case our watching should have started in September, when the first packs of mince pies appeared in the shops! Maybe the earliest sign that we’re watching for is when, what has become an iconic Coca Cola advert, ‘Holidays are coming, holidays are coming….‘ appears on our television, as the twinkling lorry wends it’s merry way to bring cheer and healthy profits for its stockholders – perhaps the waiting is over when we’ve seen that?

On the other hand we might be watching our credit card groaning under the increase in spending as we are tempted to celebrate the season by purchasing an excessive amount of presents to show our friends and relatives just how much we really love them…… Maybe though, we won’t be waiting for the bill to flop onto our doormat and realise that it will probably take a whole year, if not more to make the repayments – if only we hadn’t bought that one extra present that got put in the cupboard last year and might just do as a raffle prize next time someone asks for one!

Indulging in luxuries, wine, and rich food will never make you wealthy
Proverbs 21:7

What is it we are watching and waiting for? Are we watching our weight as the pounds pile on as we tuck into several Christmas party dinners and surreptitiously open the big box of chocolates that we were saving for Christmas – we can always get a replacement before the day. Or are we waiting for the sales that will start on Boxing Day, so that we can go and hunt out all those bargains… the credit card should just last till then… or maybe we could return that ‘delightful’ jumper that Auntie May bought us, then we can buy what we really want!!

Am I being a bit cynical, a bit ‘bah humbug’. I probably am, but I’m certainly not being holier than thou, because at some point or other I have done all of those things – except for returning the jumper Auntie May! For many people the real joy of Christmas will be doing all or some of these things – and there is love and joy and happiness in coming together, sharing, and giving and receiving gifts. For many of us though there will be a little bit of sadness that people won’t watch and wait for something considerably more important and certainly longer lasting than the use by date on the egg nog.

At church we have started a new year, with the season of Advent, The word Advent is an anglicised version of the Latin word adventus – meaning ‘coming’ – what then or who is coming? Well Christmas is coming (regardless of whether the geese are any fatter) and we will spend these next few weeks preparing to celebrate the coming of Jesus to earth over 2000 years ago. But we’re not really watching and waiting for his birth – that’s already happened; and his resurrection means that we will not really be watching and waiting for his coming among us, because he’s already here in the gift of the Holy Spirit.

What the watching and waiting will involve is a retelling of the ancient stories of a long awaited Messiah, through the visions of the prophets, the blessing of Mary who carried the Christ-child in her womb and the messengers, like John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Jesus’ earthly mission. Perhaps more importantly we will once again be watching and waiting expectantly in preparation for Jesus’ Second Coming, as we put aside some of the excitement and spend some time being penitent and a little more thoughtful.

“So you, too, must keep watch! For you do not know the day or hour of my return”
Matthew 25:13

In the meantime, we can also spend time doing some more watching and waiting…. Watching and waiting for opportunities, whether it’s time or money, to bring to all those around us, who for one reason or another may not have the same chances or opportunities to join in our celebrations, a feeling of hope for the future; and to show once again that Jesus really is the reason for the season!

May God bless us all this Advent

Watching and Waiting

Watching and Waiting

Go back

Your message has been sent