What are you waiting for?
What are you looking for as a sign that God’s promises are all being fulfilled?
What are you waiting for, before you drop everything else to throw yourself into the glory of God? What’s missing, that would allow you to go in 110% on following Jesus?
Myself, I tend to be cautious about going all in on something – or believing it’s all ready – if there’s not a clear plan.
I spent years waiting for a step-by-step (or even clear first step) plan for following this weird idea that maybe I should be a priest.
I’m still waiting for following Jesus to get clearer than all this constant nebulous discernment about what spiritual path I’m on, and whether to give this money to the food bank or the disabled veterans.
Maybe some of us are waiting for a break in all the responsibilities you’ve got to take care of: family, work, getting dinner on the table and the bills paid and the holiday organized. If that were cleared away… ?
And Jesus has always been there, God seems patient – the sense of urgency is missing.
Maybe you’d like some kind of proof, even just a little bit, that Jesus is personally interested in you, before you go all in. (I mean, there are all these stories in the gospels about Jesus getting in one individual’s face to say “follow me”, doing a spectacular miracle for one particular other person – why not me?)
Or something that proves that God is making the world a better place, not just watching from some far detached place in the sky, before you’re convinced this is the moment of decision?
I don’t know exactly what you are waiting for. Honestly, I may not be sure what exactly I’m waiting for.
But many of us are waiting for something to change, to happen, before we commit our whole selves, whole hearts and lives, waking and sleeping, to following Jesus in all ways, proclaiming God’s kingdom already come.
Many of us, consciously or otherwise, may also be evaluating the options besides Jesus – in case there’s something else we should be waiting for. Checking out the possibilities that work or exercise or the right friends or the right hobby might offer fulfillment or healing or wholeness. Looking for our sense of purpose from sharing the right moral views with friends and family and the people we vote for.
Many of us are, at one time or another, considering whether we couldn’t do better than Jesus for solving the needs and heartaches of our lives.
Even the most religiously passionate of us are often waiting for some change, or sign, or choice, or something, before we commit completely and permanently to Jesus, dropping every other priority in our lives.
Even John.
John who already spent most of his life getting us all ready for the real power of God to show up among us. John who already met Jesus while he was out baptizing, and knew then that he was the real thing, the real power of God. Even John is waiting for something else.
And he’s not afraid to ask Jesus directly about it.
Look, are you the Messiah? The one we’ve really all been waiting for?
Or not?
Is there someone, something, better coming along?
John’s waiting for an answer.
A direct answer, before he feels confident committing what’s left of his life to this particular person being The One he’s already spent his life preparing for.
And Jesus sends him stories.
Sends him people who’ve seen healings, who’ve seen lives restored, seen and heard oppressed people respond with joy to what Jesus has to say, to just talk about their experience.
It’s not like John never heard those stories about Jesus before, probably.
So far, though, those stories haven’t been enough. They weren’t what John was looking for.
Maybe John was waiting for Jesus to overthrow either the foreign government, or the religious elite. Maybe John was looking for fire and brimstone – an epic moral confrontation between ultimate good and human evil.
Or maybe he was looking for a personal touch, a clear plan, a different urgency, or the relief of all his other responsibilities so that he could finally follow Jesus as The One whose coming he’d been waiting for.
What he gets is the stories. Stories about what his friends have witnessed in physical healing and heart healing as Jesus moves around the countryside.
None of these stories are about what John was preaching and predicting; none are about John getting released from prison.
They are just are stories about renewal, insight, hope, and love, actually seen and heard by the tellers, as Jesus walks through the world.
We don’t know if this time it’s enough for John.
If it was the yes his heart needed.
Matthew never tells us.
But I think it might have been, after all.
It might even be enough for me.
When I’m getting wishful and wistful about God fulfilling promises, sometimes I get tempted to treat attendance at church as a sign of whether God is really coming. (I know better, but there’s that tempting feeling when the pews are full…)
And then it’s cold here. Or you’re busy on Sundays. And we’re out of the habit of being packed together in these pews. And I wonder if this is really what we’ve been waiting and working for – since Covid, since all our lives, really. Wonder if God’s really all that interested.
And then someone tells me a story about how good it was, how powerfully healing, to get to just talk to one other person casually at coffee hour again.
Another person tells me a story about how important the livestream service has been to them, still. That the church is present, that they have been to church, they are part of us, when they cannot physically get here on Sunday morning.
And my heart says “yes.”
Yes.
This is what we are waiting and working for.
This is the kingdom of God coming among us – in the ways I wasn’t especially looking for.
God’s purpose, God’s plan, are being fulfilled.
Just not the way I thought I was waiting for.
When I’m looking for what I am expecting God to do,
I might be missing what God is actually up to.
When I look for what I want God to do – for things that make me more comfortable, or just more confident; when I look for Jesus to be making it easier for me to drop everything else – I might be missing the things that God wants to do to make all of us more trusting and generous, might be missing what Jesus wants to do to empower all of us to follow him, love him, be loved by him.
Then when I listen to the stories – stories about other people, healing and renewal that happens one trickle at a time – when I listen to the stories Jesus sends me, I might just be seeing God’s whole kingdom coming, all of it, in a place and time that doesn’t feel like enough, but is everything.
And then my heart answers John’s question.
My heart says, yes.
What stories is Jesus sending you?
What story of healing, insight, joy, or love – happening on a small scale, to someone else – have you heard lately?
What if that is the invitation, or the proof, that you’ve been waiting for?
What story of renewal, generosity, or hope far away have you heard?
What if that story is the relief, or the urgency, or the opportunity that you’ve personally been waiting for? Not the way you thought it would look, not at all.
But actually what you need, somehow, to say yes to God’s coming into the world, into your heart, your life.
And what story could you tell?
What little moment of insight or hope, healing or renewal, love or joy, glory and generosity have you seen that might be the story Jesus is sending to someone else? To someone waiting to know if God, if Jesus, really is what they’ve been waiting for.
We all wonder, once or often, if this is it.
If this is real. If this is God. If God is enough for what we’re waiting for.
And Jesus sends us stories.
Sends us not an answer, but stories of what God is up to.
And then waits, listens, to see if our hearts say, “Yes!”
No comments:
Post a Comment