Isaiah 40:28-31; Luke 12:35-40
One
of my favorite plays is Waiting for Godot, by the Irish playwriter Samuel Beckett. Published in 1948, the year I was born, this play basically argues that humanity is waiting for “Godot,” a Messiah-like reality that could fix everything that went wrong, yet Godot never shows up.
The three characters in the play wait and wait in vain in their dreary existence, and to highlight such a sense of desolation and hopelessness, the only prop on the empty, dry stage is a dead tree. For Beckett – as for many others during those excruciating days of postwar — “God” was no more than a human construction, a figment of our imagination, an idea, a fantasy, the kind of stories our own children and grandchildren invent every day during their playtime.
Nothing real, for sure, and for that reason, not “God,” but rather “Godot,” an empty, unresponsive reality that we have invented to feel better about everything. From this perspective, all our cherished Christian beliefs and traditions, including Advent and Christmas, ought to be dismantled immediately so that we stop deceiving ourselves.
“Listen well . . . don’t waste your time,” is the message we are left with. “Even if you blow a billion candles of Hope like this one [pointing to the Hope candle by the altar], God is not going to show up!”
***
Before we dismiss Beckett’s thesis as absurd, let’s think for a moment about the many people today – even within our own families, why not — so broken by adversity, they too may feel it makes no sense to wait, to hope for God to show up. This feeling is not strange to me — from time to time I have experienced one of those ugly, self-defeating moments.
Don’t you at times feel like that — the world is collapsing around you and you begin to suspect that waiting is senseless, then you give up altogether? “God will never show up,” we conclude. “I have been waiting for so long, and in vain! It is what it is.”.
What about those illiterate, rustic, overworked and underpaid shepherds near Bethlehem of Judea? Did they harbor any real hopes that their lives might be different? They had inherited the Promise of old, they had been waiting for generations, and yet nothing seemed to have changed for them. Chances are that the night the angel of the Lord stopped by their flocks to tell them, “I am bringing you good news of great joy,” those shepherds went “Hahaha, wait a second, Mr. Strange Messenger, don’t foul us again with more “Godot” news!”
***
Through the last 2,000 years things haven’t changed that much — in Jesus’s time as well in Becket’s time and in our own time there has always been and there will always be many who may feel that waiting for God is hopeless. But we know better, for we know that God has already showed up — from the first to the last page the Scriptures are the story of so many people who met in person with God, and their lives were changed forever.
And how many others close to us – yes, even here today — haven’t touched our lives with a word of hope — that God showed up to them with a new beginning, and the same will happen to us if we just look forward to it and let it happen when it happens!
That’s why we gather to worship, my friends –to share the peace of Jesus, to gather around this table, and today to open our arms this wide [gesturing] to welcome new brothers and sisters into our manger, where there is plenty of room for anyone who wants to be with us.
We certainly know that God will never stop showing up, always coming by to meet us right there where our needs and our hopes intersect. For he is a God of new beginnings!
***
As the day of my ordination approached, our bishop asked my father, also a Methodist minister, to prepare a brief homily for the occasion. I had no idea about this arrangement, but our bishop thought it would be quite meaningful.
When I found out, already in the ordination service, I kind of disliked the idea – I know what my dad is going to preach!
But this time was different, for my father became intensely personal –he told us about a major spiritual crisis that had brought him to the brink of total collapse when he was only nineteen years-old; how he tired of waiting for God in vain; how he was this close [gesturing] to giving up on God and on life; how someone from a small church nearby – half Presbyterian, half Baptist, half Methodist– one day entered his life with a big smile, a big hug, and a little pray.
And how at that precise moment he felt that the stranger was no other than the Risen Christ himself who was adventing, was coming to him with a huge “slice” of hope – dad loved pizza so much . . .
And he closed his brief meditation with the “little” prayer that stranger had shared with him. Isaiah’s own words: “Alberto, let me reassure you, those who wait upon the Lord” – now a classic Advent theme — shall walk, and not faint, because the Lord gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. And those who hope in the Lord will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint.”
“Remember, son, these words,” – my father said almost in tears– never give up, for Christ is always adventing to us, always coming to us with a big smile, and big hug like this – and he hugged our bishop next to him — like the Prodigal Father in the parable of the Prodigal Child did,” and of course, a little prayer.
***
Later that evening our bishop dismissed us with that little” prayer and then he invited us to echo those words, which we did. Would you please repeat them after me?
“Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall soar up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”
Brothers and sisters, may this Advent season renew your sense of hope in Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.