(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on December 2, 2018, Advent I)
Days of Failure
“Jonathan, have you practiced
today?” It is a question I still
hear from my childhood, one that my mom asked me regularly. If I answered, “No,” then I knew the
expectation. I would soon
sit down at the bench of the piano, and for thirty minutes I would
practice.
Playing the piano was
wonderful. Practice, on the other
hand, was miserable. Practice
didn’t just mean playing the difficult parts, where I made mistakes. It meant playing them again and
again. Practice meant hitting the
wrong notes again and again until the time when I did not. Practice was slow, repetitive, and full
of failure.
It was also miraculous. What kind of equation was this, where
discordant failure multiplied by days, even weeks, would suddenly equal one
harmonious expression of joy, where lifeless notes stitched together by
mechanical repetition would suddenly equal a song filled with living passion
and wonder?
People say that practice makes
perfect. That’s true enough. But there’s another ingredient
involved, an irreplaceable one. Time.
What Took the Longest
I still remember the afternoon
when I arrived in Sheffield, England, for the beginning of my studies
there. The bus dropped me off in
the leafy outskirts of the city.
From there I lugged my two suitcases to the dormitory and entered into a
small, bare room. After making the
bed and emptying the luggage into the closet, I felt a rumble in my
stomach.
And finally I felt the feeling I
had been fighting. I felt empty,
as blank as the room I stood in, as hollow as my howling stomach. It felt like I had nothing: I had no
friends there, no phone, no transportation, no bank, and perhaps most
importantly at the moment no food.
So I wandered outside the dormitory and asked another student where the
nearest grocery store was. She replied,
“You mean supermarket? There’s one
down the road, about a 15 minute walk.”
That walk was my first step in
what felt like a wilderness journey.
Step by step, I made my way, constantly entrusting myself to the
kindness of strangers. Soon I picked
up a basic phone from the shops at the city center. The half-hour conversations I allowed myself with family and
friends at home lifted my spirits when they were low. Then I set up an account with the bank near the supermarket
and began traveling on the bus and got a rail pass for trips outside the
city. I spent a lot of that first
year sitting with my head against the window, watching scenery as I wandered
about town. Finding friends took
the longest. I didn’t find them
where I expected to find them. I
found them, or they found me, by chance, by accident, by grace, because I
happened to be wandering and looking around, because I was going to the
supermarket regularly and riding the bus into town and trusting, always
trusting, in the kindness of strangers.
People say that a move takes
planning. It does. There are many steps to be taken. But there’s another ingredient involved
as well, an irreplaceable one.
Time.
Goodness Takes Time
Goodness takes time.
The Bible is full of metaphors
for this truth. The kingdom is a
seed sown in the soil that grows over time. It is leaven that helps the dough to rise over time. It is new life that emerges from a
pregnancy replete with birth pangs.
Goodness takes time.
The psalmist knows this. It is why he cries out to God, “For you
I wait all day long.” In Hebrew,
the word for “wait” is also the word for “hope.” Hope, in other words, includes waiting. Hope lives in the meanwhile, in the
meantime. Hope is not about the
destination but the journey. Indeed,
hope does not know the destination; it does not set ultimatums or bargain for
this result or that one. It is
humble. It knows that it does not
know. But it is eager to
learn. “Teach me, teach me,” the
psalmist implores repeatedly today (25:4-5), before acknowledging that the
lessons of time are a gift received especially by the humble (24:9).
Goodness takes time.
Paul knew this too.
In last week’s Bites, Brews, and Big Questions, we ruminated over Paul’s
infamous song on love, 1 Corinthians 13. We kept coming back to the inescapable fact that love takes
time. It is patient; it bears
everything; it endures everything; it hopes.
Watchful, Waiting, Welcoming
It’s ironic that during Advent, a
season of waiting, our world rushes about frantically. It rushes around shopping. It rushes from party to party. It rushes about in its benevolence,
giving to this charity and that one.
There’s never enough time.
But hope has all the time in the
world because it knows that goodness takes time. Hope is a friend of time. It accepts the reality of time, the reality that birth takes
time and dying takes time, that growing takes time and healing takes time, that
friendship takes time and reconciliation takes time, that work takes time and
sleep takes time.
Our world walks around with a
can-do swagger and assuredly offers quick-fixes to every dilemma. Hope, on the other hand, does not
guarantee a surefire solution. Hope
admits it can’t do it all. Hope is
what happens when instead of reacting to a problem singlehandedly, you ponder
it and share it and lament it.
While the world calls for a vote and responds hurriedly in the name of
speed and efficiency, in the process dividing hearts and fracturing spirits, hope
waits and learns and proceeds only when a way has been made known.
Hope may feel the urgency of a
situation, but hope never hurries.
To hurry is to presume a control that we don’t have. No amount of hurry would have given me
control of those piano songs any sooner.
No amount of hurry would have made me friends any quicker in Sheffield. Hope does all it can while trusting God
with what lies beyond its control.
While the hurrying, controlling
world works with tunnel vision and a possessive grip on things, hope is ever
waiting, ever watchful, ever welcoming of what comes. Trusting that God’s goodness is planted deep in every
circumstance and is every growing, hope celebrates the little things, the
glimpses of grace—like when a young child smiles, or when a parent with
Alzheimer’s shares a tender moment, or when an ill friend finishes a meal with
relish. Hope has no guarantee for
what happens next. It simply
trusts that faithfulness will meet with goodness in due time.
In this way, hope is
open-ended. Hope foresaw neither
the manger nor the cross. But it
received them faithfully when they came, saying as both Mary and Jesus did,
“Let it be done to me according to your will.”[1]
The Goodness That Lies Outside Our Control
The best things in life take
time: friendship, babies, cookies, crops, flowers, the list goes on. All of them are gifts. We can be a part of their
process—indeed, it is our responsibility to be a part of their process—but
there is also much that we cannot control. The goodness that takes time arrives on its own time.
Which is to say, God
arrives. God, which is among other
things shorthand for the goodness that lies outside our control, arrives. That is essentially what Advent means. “Arrival.”
And hope is the beginning of
Advent. Because hope lives in the
meantime, trusting that time is anything but mean, that each minute means
something, that goodness takes time—that God is coming.
Prayer
Enduring God,
Whose love takes time—
Recalibrate our hearts
This Advent
Not to hurry
But to hope.
Help us to befriend time,
Trusting that our faithfulness
Will meet with your goodness
In due time.
In Christ for whom we wait. Amen.
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