ADVENT WAITING
'The meaning is in the waiting', RS Thomas asserts(1). Tell that to the Groom whose Bride is ominously late, to the woman anxious for her pregnancy test result, to the child impatient to hear Santa's sleigh bells. Waiting can be torture - and it can feel meaningless.
And yet we all have to do it. In traffic, in queues, in Accident and Emergency Departments – and at other crucial times, too. We can't escape this obligation to let time pass ..... and wait ... and wait ...
And there's Advent. Yes, Advent. Not Christmas-come-early because we (or let's blame them) the kids, 'just can't wait'. Advent, real Advent. With its dark mornings and early evenings, its scary, challenging hymns and Scriptural themes; its purple and candle-lit processions. Gifts wrapped but as yet unopened. Whispers of promises yet to be kept, longings to be fulfilled. Advent - the counter-cultural proponent of delayed gratification.
But then, it's all going to happen anyway ... and there you have it. We know. We know that salvation did come; Joseph married Mary; the Virgin gave birth; Jesus was born. The First Christmas and all that followed happened.
So why all this fuss about waiting and meaning?
How about – to deepen our souls?
Joseph was a Groom unsure about Mary, his Wife-To-Be, found to be great with child (Matthew 1:18-21), who had herself been non-plussed by Gabriel's news (Luke 1:34). We are told that, before his birth, John the Baptist got excited when the Virgin visited his mother, Elizabeth (Luke 1:44). Anxiety, confusion, excitement in the midst of waiting. To each came an experience of God's presence. In his Annunciation, Joseph is given a sense of purpose as he puzzles and waits (Matthew 1:18-25). In hers, Mary is reassured that the Lord is with her and has deep fellowship with her cousin Elizabeth (Luke 1:26-31; Luke 1:39-48). John's extraordinary birth and naming proclaim God's providence in his life (Luke 1:57-80). The presence of God can give meaning even to the tortuous experience of waiting.
All of this offers us a spirituality of waiting, unwise to ignore. We glimpse ourselves in Mary, Joseph and John, who, the necessity of waiting thrust upon them, mirror the Psalmist as in faith they 'use it for a well' and find that 'the pools are filled with water' (Psalm 84:6). RS Thomas finds 'moments of great calm', 'with all that close throng of spirits, waiting'(2). All this in the midst of not knowing. How do they do it? How can we?
For Betjeman, as for us, 'the bells of waiting Advent ring'(3), holding out to us the promise of Christmas. As we hear them, we are between the 'already' and the 'not yet'. A place of suffering, sometimes; but also, potentially, a place of blessing. If we learn the values of Advent, we can lift our hearts, however hesitantly, as we wait 'in joyful hope', whatever is going on for us. We can find revealed within us 'this Single Truth' (as Betjeman puts it) – that 'God was Man in Palestine and lives today in Bread and Wine'(4), which is the eternal significance of the Incarnation. When we let its depths resound in our hearts and lives we find that, after all, the meaning can be in the waiting – why? Because God is right in there with us – and so we can trust Him for the rest.
May God's blessing hold you and yours this Advent and whenever you wait.
Revd David Matthews
(1) RS Thomas, 'Kneeling' from the collection Not That He Brought Flowers (1968); (2) ibid.; (3) John Betjeman, Christmas (1954); (4) ibid.