Waiting

If I could use only one word to describe the first two days of my recent trip to the Holy Land, that word would be "waiting." I waited with anticipation for the evening when my flight would leave for Israel. I waited at the airport to check in, to go through security, and to board my flight. I waited in my seat more than 10 hours as the Boeing 777 crossed the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea en route to Tel Aviv over-night. And because of a 7-hour time difference between Israel and my home, my over-night flight actually arrived in the early evening - meaning that I would have to wait over-night again (this time in a hotel) before I could visit any of the sites on our itinerary. 

The first stop on our Holy Land tour was the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem - the traditional site of Jesus' birth. Our tour guide warned us that we would have to wait in line for a long time to see the spot where Jesus was born, even though we were one of the first groups to arrive at the Church that morning. The reason for this wait? Each of the three religious communities which shares responsibility for the site (the Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Churches) had its own allotted time for daily worship there before the Grotto of the Nativity would be opened to the public. So we waited some more. 

Pilgrims Wait to Enter the Grotto of the Nativity     

I wasn't very patient as I waited for the Grotto to be opened, and neither were many of the tourists around me. Two tour guides even got into a heated argument about which group should enter the Grotto first. It would have served us well to have read an Advent sermon my father wrote about waiting. He said, "Waiting is so very foreign to us today. We live in the fast lane. We want things to happen instantly. The idea of delayed gratification of our needs or desires is just not acceptable to us. We live in a world of fast food and condensed books. People go to a counselor with deep-seated problems of long-standing and want a quick solution with one session and a few pills.

By buying into this modern trend we do ourselves a disservice, because waiting is an important and potentially positive part of life. Precious insights, vital discoveries, and new resources of strength can come from the proper kind of waiting. We live by 'clock time.' The years are divided into months, the months into days, the days into minutes. But if we want to get in step with God we must realize that God is not bound by the clock or the calendar. Waiting helps us get synchronized with God. Waiting put us on God's time. God acts in the fullness of time, at the right time. Quiet but active waiting puts us in touch with what God is doing and when God is doing it.

Many years before the birth of Jesus, the Old Testament prophets wrote about waiting for a deliverer who would be like a light for a darkened world. The people to whom the prophets spoke were weary with impatience. They wanted the Messiah now. They wanted God to be on their clock. Hundreds of years went by, and all God said was, 'Wait.' So anxious were they for the Messiah that the masses tried to crown John the Baptist as Messiah when he arrived on the scene. Again, God's message was 'wait.'

In our impatience to solve our own problems or gratify our own desires, we too try to confer messiahship on persons or institutions or philosophies that ultimately turn out to be false messiahs. We can't wait for God's salvation, and so we look to the President of the United States to solve our problems, or to government in general, or to material gain, or to the latest self-improvement fad.

For centuries, the People of God waited for deliverance, chasing here or there after false messiahs, 'but when the fullness of time had come, God sent his son, born of a woman ...'  Advent is a time to remind ourselves that God is in charge, and he knows what he's doing. In order to be so reminded, we must wait for God to act and for God to call us to action. 

Our tendency at this time of the year is to rush too quickly to the manger. Just as the world rushes into Christmas shortly after Halloween, so we follow suit. Not many of us like the slow Advent hymns; let's start right in with festive Christmas carols! And yet the wisdom of the ages tells us to wait. Don't pull out all the stops just yet. But why? What's the value in waiting? The prophet Isaiah counsels us that there is great wisdom in waiting for the Lord. When we wait on the Lord, we act not in the frail efforts of our own strength, but in the mighty power of the Lord's strength. When we wait on the Lord, we receive not the imperfect results of our own hands, but the good and perfect result of God's hand.

Don't rush to the manger too quickly this season. Wait. Stop, look, and listen to the people and events around you. Where is Christ speaking to you? Pray and read the Bible in the quietness of his presence. What is he saying to you? Don't rush to the manger. There are precious experiences along the way that should be savored, experiences through which God can prepare us to meet the Christ."

After waiting so long to enter the Grotto of the Nativity, I was rushed to (and past) the spot where Jesus was said to have been born, pausing just long enough to have my picture taken there. I didn't encounter Jesus at that hectic spot. I met him in the days that followed in the faces and voices of fellow travelers who came to the Holy Land to meet him just as I had.   

From: "Waiting"

Scripture: Isaiah 40:1-11, 28-31   

Preached at Paoli U.M. Church

Advent in a Prison Cell

I spent some time in prison earlier this week -- not as an inmate, but as a visitor. I traveled to Graterford State Prison -- the closest state prison to Philadelphia -- to take an inmate's deposition testimony in a lawsuit he filed against three correctional officers. This is something I do with some frequency. At any given time, at least a third of the cases I am defending are ones brought by inmates who claim that their rights have been violated in prison.

The State Correctional Institution at Graterford

Graterford is Pennsylvania's largest maximum security prison, housing over 3,000 inmates. Built in 1929, it's mind-boggling to imagine the number of people who have passed through this prison during its lengthy history. It's an understatement to say that the facility is run-down. The place is worn, dimly lit, grungy, bleak. And there's something else the place is: incredibly secure. 

To get from the visitor's lobby to the room where I would question this inmate under oath, I had to sign in, have my identification checked, have my hand stamped, pass through a metal detector and have my belongings searched. Then, I had to pass through a "sally-port" -- a short hallway with two sliding security doors at either end controlled by a guard who sat in an adjacent, locked booth.  The two doors are never opened at the same time. The first door slides open, you enter the sally-port, then the door slides shut behind you, making a loud thud as the door's lock engages. After a few moments pass and the officer in the control booth has accounted for the persons standing before him in the sally-port, the second door slides open, and you can walk into the main corridor of the jail. The second door closes behind you with the same unmistakable thud, and you realize that there is no getting out of this place unless or until the staff sees fit to open the doors for you.

In a sermon entitled "A Possibility for Change," my father recalled why his favorite theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer "reported that while in prison he came to a fresh new understanding of what Advent is all about. For in prison, one can only wait, locked up in his cell. The prisoner is totally bound and helpless in his imprisoned condition. He cannot free himself. All he can do is sit and wait for someone on the outside to come and open his door and offer him his freedom. For the prisoner, the good news of redemption can only come from outside himself, from the other side of the cell door."

"So it is with Advent," my dad wrote. "We can do nothing during this period but quietly prepare and wait until the 'Dayspring from on High' chooses to come and visit us. ... We must see ourselves for what we are -- prisoners of our self-centeredness -- hopeless and helpless in and of ourselves, until the appearance of the salvation that God has prepared for us in Christ. The meaning of my personal Advent is that Christ comes and opens my prison door and bids me to step out into His Light. The stepping through that door is the stepping from Advent to Christmas, from prison to freedom, from my sin to God's salvation. There can be no real experience of Christmas without a prior experience of Advent. There can be no real sense of freedom unless one knows the meaning of bondage. There can be no salvation until we realize how lost we are in our sin."

I sat across a shaky, old table from the inmate I was questioning. A court reporter sat at the end of the table, dutifully recording our dialogue. Usually, inmates I encounter are angry and bitter. This one, though, seemed different. As I questioned him, I sensed a lightness about him. He seemed strangely ... hopeful. Then came this exchange: 

Q.  You allege that you injured your back in the altercation that brings us here for your deposition, correct?

A..  That's right. Those guards hurt my lower back.

Q.  That was two years ago, right? Has the injury healed?

Flashing a wide grin, the inmate responded ...

A.  I'll let you know for sure in two weeks.

Q.  Why do you say that?

A.  In two weeks, I'm getting paroled.

... Just in time for Christmas, I thought to myself.

From: "A Possibility for Change"

Scripture: Jeremiah 13:20-27; Romans 7:13-25

P.S.: For more on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Advent in prison, click here.

A Light In The Darkness

When I was in junior high school, our youth group at Calvary United Methodist Church in Easton, Pennsylvania went on a spelunking trip. Spelunking is better known as caving. We were told to wear old clothing that we were willing to throw away. The reason for this became clear when we eventually emerged from the cold, wet cave. We were covered from head to toe with mud, looking something like this guy:

A Spelunking Guy

For a seventh grade boy, this is high adventure, but I don't think my dad fully shared my enthusiasm for spelunking. He did, though, glean a sermon illustration from the ordeal. Here’s what he said the next Sunday:

“I’m not sure why our Junior High Youth Fellowship advisor, Chuck Fuller is so gung-ho over exploring caves, but a week ago as our group slowly threaded its way up from the depths of a cave toward the mouth, I thought perhaps it was meaningful for him, and could be for all of us, if we looked upon it as a parable for life. And the more I thought about it, the significance of this whole experience was even more heightened by the fact that we were groping our way out of this cave on a day in the middle of the Advent season.

As we left the inner reaches of the cave and began to climb out, it became apparent that the batteries in my flashlight were beginning to grow weak. Since we had to proceed in single file order, when the person in front of me would get pretty far ahead, or turn the corner and I no longer had the benefit of his light, it grew quite dark, as the beam of my own light was fading fast. Without the proper light, there were more bumps and scrapes on the jutting rocks of the cave’s walls; more caution was needed, more feeling ahead with my hands. But then, just as my flashlight was dimming to a mere glow, something happened. I felt it before I saw it. The cooler air of the outside world; we were coming near the entrance to the cave. And then finally confirming my speculation, the first beams of sunlight were visible. In no time at all we crawled out into the full light of day, squinting in the bright sunshine, for we had become accustomed to the darkness. It made me think again of that great verse from Isaiah 9: ‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.’

This whole caving experience is our Advent parable. Apart from God, in our fallen humanity, as individuals and as nations, we are groping and fumbling our way through the darkness, falling, hurting ourselves, bumping into one another. Sometimes helping each other a little, but mostly pushing each other away and looking out for ourselves. Like my flashlight, what light, what goodness we have on our own is weak and flickering at best. It cannot be counted on to save us from the darkness that is closing in all around us. Such is the helplessness and frustration and fear we feel as we thread our way through the worries and tragedies and tensions of life. Our strength sometimes wanes, and we wonder if we’ll make it.

But the meaning of Advent is this: Just as the rays of our own light are about to go out and we fear that we will be consumed by the darkness, just then a light shines on us from outside ourselves, a light far more brilliant than anything we could manufacture. This light, this salvation for our darkened lives, is from God. The Sun of Righteousness is the Righteous Son of God, whom God has sent to light the way for us unto all eternity. With him the energy to fuel the light is inexhaustible. We need never fear the darkness again.

Advent is the invitation to crawl out of the darkness and stand up in the light. Your eyes must get adjusted to the new brightness. There is growing to do. Sometimes the light itself will seem to be a little scary, and you may be tempted to retreat into the familiar darkness of the cave. But once you grow used to the light and take more and more of it in, the more certain you become that this is where you belong.”

So here is my prayer for you as we approach the fourth Sunday of Advent: May Jesus light up your life and your world this Christmas and always. Amen.

From: “A Child Is Born”                                            

Scripture: Isaiah 9:2-7

Preached at Calvary United Methodist Church,

Easton, PA

An Unlikely Hope

This Sunday, the Third Sunday of Advent, we will be lighting the candle of Peace on the Advent wreath at Newtown United Methodist Church. In a passage from Isaiah that's often read during Advent, the prophet casts an idyllic image of future peace for the People of God when he writes:

The wolf live with the lamb,

And the leopard will lie down with the goat,

The calf and the lion and the yearling together,

And a little child will lead them.
-Isaiah 11:6 (NIV)

Linton Memorial Park - Newtown, PA

One winter evening in 1980, my father happened upon a scene which, when I first read his description of it, etched in my mind something of the meaning of this famous line from Isaiah: "And a little child will lead them." Here's what Dad wrote:

"I pulled to a stop at a red light at the intersection of 6th and Northampton Streets in Easton, Pennsylvania. This was a section of the city besieged by urban decay, a place where the tragedy of urban living was at its worst. As I waited for the light to change, a poorly clad girl of about 8 or 9 years of age led a man by the hand whom I judged to be her father – a man who was drunk and could hardly keep his balance. The girl carefully led him off the curb and slowly across the crosswalk in front of my car, pulling him, steadying him, urging him on, until they reached the other side, and presumably from there made their way home in similar fashion. As I watched this scene unfold, a deep emotion flooded my soul as I realized how God sends his love and care to us, even when we are at our disgustingly worst – in the most fragile and unlikely ways, even in a little girl such as this one.

We live in a world that is very dark, ugly and dangerous, just as it was that cold night at 6th and Northampton Streets. Sometimes this dark ugliness is within us, sometimes it is around us, but in either case God always sends signs of hope, fragile signs, signs which we can perceive only with the eyes of faith. Strange as it seems, Christian hope is often found in unlikely places. In fact, Christian hope has a way of burning brightest on the most darkened stage. Christmas, coming when it does, reminds us of this. Christmas is not observed in the beautiful springtime. It is celebrated at the dark winter solstice. The date of December 25th does not have historical importance. Instead, it has theological importance.

The ultimate hope for us resides in a baby laid in a manger in a backwater town called Bethlehem. Such an unlikely hope! And yet God’s word and our Christian experience tell us that Almighty God himself came to visit us in that humble child. He came to show us that he loves us still, in spite of the darkness within us, and he wants us to love him. God’s love comes gently as a child. It doesn't coerce or overwhelm. It doesn't dazzle or manipulate. God’s love comes quietly, as quietly as the cry of a newborn. It is God’s subtle yet forceful reminder that God’s kingdom is on the horizon, and if we quiet our restless lives and allow it, God will fill us with his love. God will fill us with himself. This allowing God to fill us is faith, and faith is the way we know that, unlikely hope though he may be, this baby Jesus is indeed our Savior."

From: "An Unlikely Hope"
Scripture: Isaiah 11:1-9; Matthew 11:2-11

Between Two Advents

Tomorrow is the second Sunday of the season of Advent – a time of preparation for Christmas and the birth of the Son of God as a baby in Bethlehem. But did you know that Advent is not simply about looking back to Christ's birth? It's also about looking forward to His promised second coming. In one of my father's Advent sermons, he explained that we live “in a unique time-frame which relatively few other people since the beginning of time have known. … We are living between two Advents.”

“Traditionally, Advent not only has been the season of anticipation of Christ’s first coming into the world as a baby in a manger, but also has been a time to anticipate His second coming in glory at the end of history to establish his rule of righteousness and peace. … There is the first Advent, the revelation of God’s grace through Jesus the Christ, who came in the form of a man. … And then there is the second Advent, the final revelation of Jesus Christ as Lord and King over all people and all creation. This Advent yet-to-be will signal the ultimate triumph of the Kingdom of God. This is the hope of our gospel faith. With belief in these two Advents, we are enabled to live our Christian life in a fallen world. These two Advents are what keep us going.”

“Advent simply means ‘coming.’ … The first Advent or Coming, taken as unit, which is how it must be seen – Christ’s birth, life, death and resurrection – is the guaranty of the defeat of evil, the down-payment on our ransom. Christ came into the world, subjected himself to everything that Satan could throw at Him, even died at the hands of evil men, but He rose victorious. He broke the back of evil. And so now it remains for you and me to spread this wonderful news, to give all people the opportunity to hear and believe it, so that when He returns to claim His kingdom and formally establish His rule, He will find happy, willing, and believing subjects to enjoy it with Him forever.”

“As bad as things seem to be these days, the Christian is given strength to hope [by the two Advents]. … We live day-to-day, fighting our skirmishes with evil, living the Christian life, but with our heads up, watchful, knowing that our salvation is always drawing nearer. There is great comfort and encouragement throughout all of the stresses and strains of living when you know that the Lord is there at the end, waiting to take you unto Himself.”

“Once upon a time, there was a little boy who sat on his father’s lap, sobbing because the next day was to be his first day of school and he was afraid. Until this point, his father had been with him in all that he did, and so now he wanted his dad to go along to school tomorrow and stay with him all day. But, of course, the father couldn't do that; this, the boy had to do alone. But his father succeeded in comforting the boy with these words: ‘I have been with you for the last six years and you know that I love you. Tomorrow when you go to school my body will not be with you, but I will think about you all day and, in a way, I will be there with you. And then when school is over, I will come and meet you at the bus stop and we’ll walk home together and you can tell me all about your day.’ The child was comforted by these words because this new, untested, and fearful experience was bracketed on either side, before and after, by the presence of a loving father.”

“This too is your source of strength and mine. Christ came; and Christ will come again. If we’re living for Him in the meantime, we cannot lose!”

From: "Between the Advents"

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 1:1-19; Mark 13:32-37

The Purple Wet Blanket

It took me by surprise last Monday as I walked through the atrium of the Shops at Liberty Place on my way to court in Philadelphia. It was a glistening, multi-storied Christmas tree – perhaps the largest I've ever seen.

Atrium Christmas Tree - The Shops at Liberty Place

Before I came upon that massive tree, I hadn't really noticed stores putting up holiday decorations or Christmas sale flyers in the newspaper or the local radio station that's been playing Christmas music around the clock. I had been hunkered down over the past couple weeks to prepare for a trial, only to be ambushed by the Christmas season on my way to court. 

So after my trial was behind me, I pulled one of my dad's Advent sermons out of his barrel for a refresher course in preparing for Christmas. What I found was a reminder that Advent -- our time of inner preparation for Christ's birth -- looks far different than the run-up to Christmas that we see on the surface as we walk through streets, shops and neighborhoods all decked out for the holiday:

“The color purple is used traditionally by the Church to mark the two great penitential seasons of the Christian year – Lent (the period of preparation for Easter) and Advent (the period of preparation for Christmas). The color purple is the color of self-examination, sorrow for one’s sin, and repentance. It evokes a somber mood, as do the hymns of these two seasons -- which are often written in a minor key. That’s the theory.

The reality is that the Church can pull off a somber and penitential season before Easter, but it’s well nigh impossible in our culture today to do so before Christmas. How do you tell Christians not to celebrate Christmas until December 24th when the rest of society has been doing so since Halloween? How do you tell Christians that in order to truly appreciate Christmas they first need a period of quiet introspection? Many a pastor has gotten into trouble with his or her flock by insisting on a traditional Advent observance – by refusing to pull out all of the Christmas stops until Christmas Eve. More than one has been branded a kill-joy, a wet blanket, if you will. And in this case, you can color that wet blanket purple.

Of course, the important thing is not whether we hang purple or white in the sanctuary before Christmas Eve, or whether we sing dirges or carols. The important thing is that we remember that we can’t really appreciate the fact that God sent his Son into the world unless we know personally why he had to come. I can’t celebrate a Savior unless I understand what he saves me from. There is some personal agony of the soul to be felt before we can really celebrate the hope that resides in the Baby of Bethlehem. Otherwise, Christmas is reduced to a warm, syrupy emotional escape that quickly fades.

The bottom line here is that Christmas is shallow unless we take our own sin seriously. Christmas is God’s first step in dealing decisively with the human condition. Advent is the time when we own up to our sin problem. Most of us modern Christians have trouble with this idea of our own sinfulness. We do not see ourselves as depraved. We readily admit that we are not perfect, but we also know that, relatively speaking, we’re not all that bad. 

Our error here is that sin, as the Bible defines it, has nothing directly to do with morality. As far as the Bible is concerned, the Apostle Paul was as big a sinner as King Herod. As far as the Bible is concerned, an ax murderer and a Girl Scout stand equally condemned before God. That’s offensive to hear, I know. It offends me. Nevertheless it is true, because sin, in the biblical sense, is not what we've done or what we haven’t done. Sin is our innate human tendency to declare our independence from God. Some of us may do this by committing heinous crimes, and others may do it by proving how good we can be, but either way we are telling God to buzz off. Either way we cut ourselves off from God.

The essence of salvation is surrendering our pride, our self-will – no matter what form it takes – and letting God be God for us. Somehow, this must take place during Advent if we are really to have Christmas. Jesus was born, died, and rose again to save us. This is not a three-act play we can enjoy and then, when the final curtain falls, go home to business as usual. It is God acting in history to confront us with who we are, and who we can be, if we surrender to God.

Advent is not a purple wet blanket. It is not really a season on the calendar. It is a season of the soul, a season you must have to prepare for your personal Savior.”

From: “The Purple Wet Blanket”

Scripture: Luke 3:1-20

Preached Nov. 29, 1987 @ Paoli UMC