Transcript
One who is more powerful than I is coming after me. Please be seated.
I once had a mentor tell me to never pay, never pray for patience. You see, I was waiting for something, something really big, and I was lamenting. Okay, I was complaining that it wasn’t happening yet. And my mentor said, “Whatever you do, do not pray for patience because if you do, God will give you plenty of opportunities to practice.” And it’s true, or at least in my case, it was true.
Appropriately, some of the biggest parts of my life that involved waiting happened during advent season. So often December feels like a huge rush. Get the shopping done, get the presents wrapped, get the house decorated, get the cookies baked, get the parties planned, get the dinner prepared. And yet the juxtaposition of all that rushing around and being busy is the fact that all of it, all of the chores, and to-dos and tasks and errands, they are all an anticipation of Christmas.
Be it the commercialized giftgiving star at the top of the tree, too many family members at one dinner table kind of Christmas. For the Christmas pageant practiced, choir music selected, liturgy walked through, sermon written, waiting to place the little Jesus figure in the manger kind of Christmas. And even the sit, be still, wait, be quiet kind of Christmas. We can create to-do lists and chores and errands for any of the types of Christmas that we are told to wait for, that we are told to anticipate, that we are told will be coming if we just have enough patience.
I mean, just look at the gospel reading. Even John the Baptist is telling us to wait. He’s doing all his crazy John the Baptist stuff, wearing camel hair clothing and wandering the wilderness, eating locusts and honey. He is calling out the government officials who have come to be forgiven regardless of their repentance. He is baptizing and converting and prophesizing.
And he’s telling us to wait, to have patience because one who is more powerful is coming. And he will. He will. He will.
I already mentioned having waited quite a bit in my life, especially during Advent. You see, it was 8 years ago yesterday that I was ordained to the priesthood. And let me tell you, waiting for that to happen is nothing like waiting in a grocery line. It’s a lot more like a marathon of waiting.
Because it was about five years before that when I finally was told, “Yes, you can go to seminary.” But wait, for some reason at the time, my bishop, not a bishop any of you know, wanted me to wait a year before starting seminary. I guess I hadn’t waited enough already.
Because, you see, it was another couple of years before that when I first even spoke to anyone about the very fact that I thought this was where I was supposed to be, what I was supposed to do, who I was supposed to become. a lot of waiting even though I already knew. And to be honest, God already knew, too. Okay, to be really honest, God knew way before I did. God knew way before anyone even thought that I, me, Lisa could or would or should become a priest.
So, I guess while I’m busy complaining about having to wait for, I don’t know, four or five, six or seven years between knowing that this is where I belong and finally getting ordained, God waited for more than 25 years of my life for me to finally get the message. What’s that saying about payback being something? Anyway, if I had to wait six years to be ordained, God definitely had a much longer wait for me to be ready to say yes. Why?
Well, because I was going to be a star and not the epiphany star in the Christmas pageant, a star on Broadway or in a ballet company. Because by the time I was a graduating high school, I was dancing two hours during the school day and another four to five hours after school. And if I wasn’t doing ballet, I was practicing my gymnastics. I even decided I was going to major in dance when I got to college. Who does that?
Unfortunately, there was an injury in December. Actually, 7 months before my high school graduation, I took the month off kind of. I mean, I was 17 at the time and we don’t follow directions very well. But what I didn’t realize was how bad the injury was.
Because two more years of dancing on that injured ankle, I finally had to get it reconstructed surgically. It definitely ended any dance career I was aspiring towards. Maybe God was tired of waiting and wanted to speed up the process.
But God didn’t do a very good job because after I had to change majors out of the dance department, I found international studies. I switched to intercultural communications. I did a semester overseas. I spent four months in Denmark as a 20year-old in case you were wondering. and I joined the Peace Corps because if I wasn’t going to be a star on the stage, then I would change the world in a different way.
One month after graduating from college, I left for the country of Georgia, age 22. I kept saying, “Even if I just change one person’s life, I’ll consider my service a success.” Well, God heard that.
And again, probably tired of waiting, God changed my life because it was on August 8th, 2008, just after Russian troops marched through my village, that I was evacuated. Funny enough, being evacuated from a war zone can really change a person, especially considering I was close enough to active combat that I know what color the sky turns when a mortar explodes a mile away. And I know the sound of a bomb falling from the sky. And I know the looks on the faces of young men and women as they march in formation towards war.
Yes, my service changed one person’s life and it was mine because God was done with that stage of waiting and wanted me to move on. Might sound like I’m making fun of my journey a little bit and my spirit experiences. Maybe I am. But I’m certainly not dismissing them.
I know these are big things to experience and they changed me significantly. And at the time, I was very lost and very confused and very scared. After being evacuated from a war zone, I realized my foreign service career was definitely over. And I finally heard the call to start going to church. I wasn’t really raised in a church any more than my family putting out a manger scene right next to the milk and cookies on Christmas Eve. But at age 24, after being evacuated from a war zone, I returned to the classroom and to the pew.
I worked, in case you were wondering, sorry, I have a master’s in peace operations. It’s an academic attempt at finding answers to really hard questions. And I worked in nuclear non-prololiferation on the high techch, high science side of it, partnering former Soviet scientists with US national laboratories trying to keep nuclear knowledge off the black market. And I served as a youth minister leading the middle school and high school youth groups in the neighborhood Episcopal Church.
A settled life. No more injuries, no more war. And yet not what God wanted.
So God finally stepped in, probably with about as much exasperation as John the Baptist in today’s gospel reading. God, or maybe an angel, visited me, told me I would become a priest, and scared the living daylights out of me. Literally, I fell out of my chair backwards at the presence of someone in my otherwise empty office and the voice of a man in an otherwise quiet company suite. God was done waiting. The only answer I could say was yes.
I mean, I asked a lot of questions and cried a lot of tears and struggled with such a change and so much waiting. And yet here I am just as God wanted. Just as God knew from the beginning. So it only seems fair that I had to wait after making God wait all that time too.
Which brings me to my final thoughts of this sermon. John the Baptist tells us tells all of us his followers at the time the Pharisees and the Sadducees whom he’s calling out even us today who are reading this passage now John the Baptist is telling us that someone is more powerful so much more amazing so much more forgiving and loving and gracefilled and all of that someone is coming not just on Christmas when we lay baby Jesus in his manger bed also here in our hearts in our lives. So you might think you don’t like waiting but imagine how much God is waiting for you for whatever it is that God has planned for each of you that you just simply won’t hear or aren’t ready to hear or don’t know how to hear.
No one really likes to wait. And yet this happened. I invite you to wait. Wait for God since I’m sure God has been waiting long enough for you. Amen.