Sermon: On ‘Waiting’
Psalm 130
Today’s Psalm is traditionally entitled A Song of Ascent or A Pilgrimage Song; it addresses a deeply intrinsic part of our life: waiting. The state of waiting is sometimes troubling and many times turns out to be a transforming experience. I guess virtually no one would claim that they are so good at this state of waiting – whatever kind it is. Waiting comes to us in our life in and with various and different flavours and situations. Think about a family in a waiting room: they’re waiting for their son or daughter to return from Afghanistan. Their child could show up at any minute, and they will all be reunited, but the last few minutes of waiting are as hard as any in the previous months.Another family waits for the result of a surgery on their loved one; the surgery should be over, but the doctor still hasn’t come. The family waits and worries, knowing that any news, good or bad, would be better than knowing nothing at all.
So, here are some answers on the survey an ordinary person conducted on his friends, asking “What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word waiting?” (Please join in on the question - ask yourself before you hear the answers, what the first thing is that comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘waiting’.)
The answers he received are quite interesting, because they show how common the experience of waiting is in our daily lives, and how similar our responses:“Restlessness. Having time for myself. Being bored, boredom. On the phone, customer service. Standing in a line in a store, a bank, around with my iPhone. Waste of time, being impatient. Improvement. Lost time. Amusement Park. Hard plastic chairs. IPhone (again). Doctor’s office. Waiting to board a plane. Boring, wasting time, frustrating. A time for reflection. People ahead of me. Anxiety. Bearing fruits. Love. Lineups. Candy. Time/clock slows down, dramatically. To exhale. Waste of time, I hate it. I get aggravated, then try and convince myself that it’s a gift of time, time to just watch, think, breathe, listen, then I feel better."
To speak for myself, waiting is certainly where my weakness lies. Personally, I can tell you that what I do least well is waiting – until I am informed of the result of things that I have been preparing for, or promoting, or the result of a job interview I have gone through, I get so restless. I tend to act as if my life depends on the one single event or result, as if it really were a- life-or-death situation! Sometimes it feels like what we’re really waiting for is the waiting itself being over!
Reading today’s Psalm 130, a Pilgrimage Song, I gave myself some time for meditation on whether we could think about waiting in a new way, more as a spiritual practice, not just a ‘time period’ that we hope should be over soon and done, or as “Lost time.” Today’s Psalm reads as follows in the version we are using in our service. (Let me read it again to help deepen our reflection.) “Out of depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive if you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in God’s word I hope; My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.”
The Bible has many good translations of this passage; the Good News Bible translates the words as follows; “From a sea of troubles, I call out to you, Lord. Won’t you please listen as I beg for mercy? If you kept record of our sins, no one could last long. But you forgive us, and so we will worship you. With all my heart, I am waiting, Lord, for you! I trust your promises. I wait for you more eagerly than a soldier on guard duty waits for the dawn. Yes, I wait more eagerly than a soldier on guard duty waits for the dawn.”
As you hear these two different versions of the song, you may notice, the psalter sings of the belief and anticipation that his or her ‘waiting’ will be soon over, the darkness of the night will surely pass, and Israel will look to the in-breaking light of an imminent sunrise, the glowing crimson colours emerging on the shoulder of the dawn. The Psalter’s trust and hope that the waiting will be soon over and God will take charge of the fortunes of the nations and of the world – of the troubled lands of human communities – is both clear and obvious. But the Psalter’s understanding of waiting in this Pilgrimage Song expresses an in-depth meaning of what ‘waiting’ may mean for us; rather than simply ‘Lost Time’ – a mere clock/time-wise activity which we experience sometimes as boredom or with restless anxiety, ‘waiting’ is a deep structure of time where we can allow ourselves to be immersed in metamorphosis, being transformed and transforming.
Waiting is a time ‘in between’ where we are no more the self in the past, nor the self that can be predicted by the projection of how we understand ourselves here and now, like a line on a graph. I believe that waiting is a time when we can let ourselves be lost in the present moment and float on, like a buoyant leaf carried on the stream’s current, giving oneself to the flow of things, dealing wisely with the stress and the anxiety, eventually finding a deeper sense of “Self” that is unchanging.
Think about an ocean, many fathoms deep – the waves on the surface go up and down, appear then disappear, repeat the patterns and change them, but the depth of the ocean does not change. It is not static or unmoving, but it is constant. … The depth of the ocean is like who we are truly in our very heart and soul, a being that is completely sustained by God and the Universe, not the waves rising on the surface.
In a time of waiting – no matter what kind of waiting or transition or situation we may be now experiencing in each of our own lives, it is profoundly important to remember, to know who we are now. We are not bound to the past, nor can we be dictated to by what has not yet come. The present is the time and realm when we move forward toward what is possible in God, rather than what can be predicted by our past biases or preconceived by our hopes and fears for our future. We may experience all kinds of feelings and emotions in our time of waiting: worry, anxiety, agitation, excitement, joy, restlessness. Those feelings are all legitimate - we need to let ourselves stay connected to our changing feelings, the waves on our surfaces, and honour their place as a nexus where our inner selves meet the outer world .
However, what should be also our practice is to give ourselves time for reflection in order to learn and understand what God wants us to notice, what God wants us to be now, at this present moment. God wants to make a relationship with us, calling us to transformation and to find a home in the unchanging, steadfast, and constant love and compassion of God. What we need to do to engage with this process, called the time of waiting and time of transitioning is to know our own strength - to know and to be aware of what we have already attained, nurtured, and strengthened already within us as our learned, our earned wisdom, faith, gifts and guidance. May God guide us as we go through the troubling and transforming experience of ‘waiting’ and transitioning of whatever kind it is, and help us to trust God’s promises with patience, calmness and expectation. Waiting is not lost time. It is a God-full time that promises new hope, a new dawn upon the shoulder of the horizon. Let us be assured that even in the time when everything seems to be incubating in darkness, a new breath of life will reveal to us the God who awaits us even as we wait for God.
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