Waiting for God
Waiting for God
The motto of the Jesuits, and also of the boy scouts and the girl scouts, is “Be Prepared.” Perhaps it is something you think to yourself as you go out the door: be prepared to fix a flat, to deal with being lost; make sure you have your wallet and your keys, an emergency contact list, an epinephrine pen.
How often do you catch yourself doing anxious things in the watches of the night? I have a few of my own in mind. Waking up because the air conditioning unit might still be cooling, the outside light yet shining, or because a noise outside catches a corner of my subconscious: is that a thief coming in the night, or a rat scurrying around in the recycling? Being wakeful pretty quickly crosses a line to being restless and exhausted. Anxiety. Not the worry that is justified and necessary; not the worry that makes us thoughtful and considerate, but anxiety that makes us unable to follow through on our best plans, and be our best selves. There is a fine line between self-preservation and closing ourselves off from God.
These are the sorts of worries that are the background to this passage in Luke. The people are preparing against looming disaster. Trouble is brewing, the disciples have gotten their merit badges in knot-tying, but they and we still don’t have even a tiny bit of control. Lord, how long? Lord, what will we do? The question Jesus puts in response is, “Can any of you by being anxious add a single hour to the span of your life?”
How is one supposed to prepare for the unexpected coming of Jesus? But notice, Luke is telling us that preparing for Jesus is hardly like bracing ourselves for the worst. Rather, it is more like getting ourselves properly psyched up for the best.
Easier said than done. Even ancient Christians, maybe even the disciples themselves, had to take stock once in a while and try to lay fears to rest. St. Makarios of Egypt in the 5th century gave us this gem: "I am convinced that not even the apostles, although filled with the Holy Spirit, were therefore completely free from anxiety… Contrary to the view expressed by some, the advent of grace does not mean the immediate deliverance from anxiety."
Is at least some of our preparation, burdened as it may be with anxiety, opening a way to grace?
The summer has moved along into August, another fearful anxiety-provoking turn of events, and I have not yet been able to quite stop worrying. Last week as I was worrying about the monumental final exam that would end my summer Greek course, a tiny shred of grace broke through. I discovered a cricket. I was walking, which is a form of preparation, and as I walked in the evening I noticed a distant beeping noise, like a smoke detector, or a cell phone whose battery is running out. Does even the outdoors beep with an undertone of electronics, I thought? Does my every experience of the world mirror my internal state, an alarm going off, work to be done, more Greek words to memorize? And as I came up to a corner where there were a few bushes, the beeping resolved into the sound of one cricket, chirping, and it made me remember where I was and what I was doing. I remembered summers past, I remembered how much patience it takes to catch a cricket. And I noticed that I was feeling the cool night air blowing, and had a flash of the space of wonder that allows for the presence of God. There are crickets living in Harvard square! And crickets are symbols of good luck.
Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in “God in Search of Man”, “Endless wonder is endless tension, a situation in which we are shocked at the inadequacy of our awe, at the weakness of our shock, as well as the state of being asked the ultimate question.” Heschel here seems to be onto the same concern I feel reading this passage, that in order to be ready, I may have to be in a constant state of anxiety, with my running shoes on and my cell phone in my pocket. But Heschel points out that there is a deeper beauty in a moment of tension, a deeper potential. Anxiety can be transformed.
Let us return to the passage. Luke writes, “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks.” Set the scene, the nighttime, the possibility of an alert suddenly sounding, activity crackling, all for the purpose of being present to a great moment of joy when the wedding celebration finally rolls homeward. The tension in this moment is the tension of expectation about to become real and living, and the combination can make our hair stand on end. Think of a moment when you were eagerly anticipating something, and the smallest things become noticeable. Anticipation, makes us alive. It gives us the opportunity for tiny spiritual breakthroughs.
This idea of wakefulness in the middle of the night, in what Luke calls the second and third watches, reminds me of monks who wake up to pray in the middle of the night. God, I am here, I am thinking about you. Waking for this purpose, they have found a way to turn the impulse to awaken because something might be wrong into waking for something right.
I want to go back to the promise Jesus makes again. “Fear not, my little flock. Your father is delighting to give the kingdom to you. And to relieve our pronoun-related anxieties, we can rephrase: Jesus is saying to all of us, “Your Creator, your Mother-Father-God is delighting to give to you the kingdom.” This is a moment to revel in the warmth of God’s delight. God prepares a place where our hearts are safe, and to secure them there, what we need is a little bit of trust.
This is what Luke is telling us is the key to preparing for the long haul. It is only possible with a healthy amount of trust.
We know we trust God when we give our hearts to each other for safekeeping, when we turn with compassion and humility to others as God has turned to us, when we live into this question of what to do with our treasure by giving of it to one another. Sometimes our treasure is money, the possessions we can sell, but more, treasure is the goodness and generosity within us, our capacity to desire God. Treasure is the currency of our good will, in every form that can flow from us as a visible sign of what we receive from God. God trusts us implicitly with this treasure. In my imagination, God is always pressing close to us, expectantly, waiting joyfully to see what we might create. Being trusted, our hearts are lifted to do likewise, maybe even to forget what it is we are waiting for, and for a moment live generously in the present.
The 20th-century theologian Simone Weil wrote a great deal about what it is like to wait for God; and she is a kindred spirit to Luke in her writing about poverty. She is on the same page as Luke when she writes, in her Letter to a Priest, “Charity and faith, though distinct, are inseparable…. Whoever is capable of a movement of pure compassion towards a person in affliction (a very rare thing anyway) possesses, maybe implicitly, yet always really, the love of God and faith. Christ does not save all those who say to Him: ‘Lord, lord.’ But he saves all those who out of a pure heart give a piece of bread to a starving man, without thinking about (Christ) the least little bit. And these, when (Christ) thanks them, reply: ‘Lord, when did we feed thee?’”
Luke is known among the gospel writers for having special concern for social relationships. He puts the emphasis on how we treat the poor, on how we treat one another. Simone Weil took this to mean that it was her duty to wait steadfastly, with endurance, and cultivate her ability to truly empathize, not condescend. To that end she struggled with exhaustion from overwork, and with ill health because she sought out the hardships of extreme poverty: lack of food, clothing, and shelter. She lived an example that waiting for God can be unendurable, that the night can be too long.
One last plot point about Luke; he perhaps is saying something that would resonate with Simone Weil when he talks about thieves. Who is this thief? Will Jesus actually come and rob us while we sleep? I want to suggest that the thief is a contrast to Jesus, that this thief stands for the real threat that still exists, by which we know that we are not yet living in the reign of God. Luke says, “Know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” In the previous chapter of the gospel, Luke spoke about prayer, and there is an echo here. This passage is related to the Lord’s prayer as Luke tells it; even the wording is similar. Luke’s version goes like this: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.’ Good and bad are side by side: things wished for, harm we wish to be spared. The search for God yet must occasionally nod to elements that are not of God and are not good. The kingdom has not yet come, and we need protection against harm. We need protection from the thief in the night.
Trust is all the more precious when we do not naively trust, when we are fully aware that sometimes it does not work out, but trust anyway. It is a tall order, a risk, to believe that we are cared for and loved by God. We see signs that it is true all around us, but still trust requires practice. To start, trust God. Trust that there is still the possibility for surprises to be good; expect crickets in Harvard Square. Then, trust a stranger. Give generously to someone you don’t know. When that is easy enough, go even farther: trust someone you really care about. Give your whole heart to someone important to you. With your whole life sing, “come living God”, sing joy and praise as generously as you can, and even trust in the future. Be a conduit for God’s love and blessing. Do you have an ear cocked for a cricket’s chirp, or for the latch to turn? With trust, fear of the unknown becomes exultation. May we wait on God with joyful anticipation to see what God has in store. May God’s revelations still to come flow through us, unexpected and beautiful. Amen.