Waiting on the World To Change

THE SEASON OF Advent is over, but the season of our waiting is not. There is still so much we long to see brought to fruition. Every morning’s news confirms the ache. We are pining for so much to be made right in a world that has gone so wrong. Christmas may have marked the end of Advent, but the liturgical year has only just begun. In other words, Christ has been born, but there is still a lot of story to be played out. What a great reminder as we head into yet another year that looks bleak at the outset: This story we are living in isn’t done yet. There is more to come, and some of it is very good news.

Just as it will take time for the Christ child to grow into the savior the world needs him to be, in every era of human history, the growth of justice takes time. Recognizing the slow pace at which the kin-dom of God unfolds does not mean we lie down on our backs and abdicate responsibility, but it does mean we have hope as we both labor and rest. No matter how dismal it may look out there, justice is on its way.

January’s readings take us into conversation with texts aching for justice and longing for homecoming, helping us sense when to listen and when to speak, when to hold still and when to move. We are encouraged to be tender with each other as we wait, to hold on tight to hope, and when the moment calls, to act with conviction.

January 4
A Mistranslated Word?

Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 147:12-20; Ephesians 1:3-14; John 1:1-18

IN CHURCH OF THE WILD, Victoria Loorz argues that John’s opening, “In the beginning was the Word,” is a mistranslation. Until the fourth century, “word” was rendered sermo (“conversation” in Latin), not verbum. As men in power debated the one true interpretation, verbum (“word”) replaced sermo. But the original Greek logos, says Loorz, is closer “to what biologists are revealing about the way trees talk to one another and what quantum scientists have discovered at the center of molecules: not things, but relationships.” Logos is about “the divine relationship between all things.” Imagine: “In the beginning was the Conversation ... and the Conversation was God.” The Conversation became flesh and “moved into the neighborhood” (as Eugene Peterson translates John 1:14). What if the Word of God isn’t static, but a dynamic relationship among all creation? Open the Talmud, a central text of Judaism, and you’ll find the ancient text in the center, surrounded by centuries of commentary—a record of ongoing conversation with the sacred text. Reading scripture as a conversation invites us to approach it with humility and wonder.

When we read Jeremiah 31’s “ingathering of exiles,” let’s not confuse it with modern Zionism. “The rabbis of the Talmud never longed to return to historic Palestine and dominate it,” writes Rabbi Alissa Wise. Following in the rabbinic tradition, Wise explains, we must read and re-read sacred texts until they read ethically. Read the gathering of exiles in conversation—with the Talmud, with suffering Palestinians, with the shared values of Christianity and Judaism—and a meaning emerges that could never condone conquest or forced displacement. Imagine Christ taking up residence in the neighborhoods of Gaza. This is the meaning of the gospel.

This story we are living in isn’t done yet.

January 11
Baptize the Flowers 

Isaiah 42:1-9; Psalm 29; Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 3:13-17

IT'S BAPTISM SUNDAY, and someone throws freshly cut flowers into the outdoor baptistry, brightening the otherwise homely tank at our rented venue. On walks, I often tell my children not to pick the flowers “because the flowers will die.” Though the flowers are currently floating vibrant in the water, I am reminded that baptism is a sort of death. What an odd thing that we “bury” our children in its waters as cause for celebration. If our culture honored death more honestly, it might not seem so strange. Death has always been part of life. The life/death/life cycle depends on dying. The spiritual journey often contains many small deaths, and today we initiate our children into this mystery. I do not speak of death that disregards life, but death that honors it, the kind that lowers something into water with tenderness, trusting it will rise again—not violence but faith in the spring after winter.

“A bruised reed he will not break,” says Isaiah (42:3) of the servant of justice, and I think of saying to my children about the flower, “Don’t pick it!” Even if you don’t break the reed or pick the flower, its lifespan is very short. It will surely die before the “arc of the moral universe” finally “bends toward justice.” Even so, the servant of justice takes tender care of the reed—no blade of grass, petal of a flower, or shred of humanity is treated as dispensable in the generations-long work of making things right. Perhaps when we baptize our children, we are entrusting their brief lives to the God who will bring justice—if not in our lifetime, perhaps in theirs. In this short span, we will guard these reeds from harm as best we can, trusting that after every winter frost, new life will spring forth.

January 18
How Long, O Lord?

Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 40:1-11; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42

I WANT TO retort, “How long must we wait?” when the psalmist says, “I waited patiently for the Lord” (Psalm 40:1). Seriously, how long, O Lord? From where I’m sitting, things just keep getting worse! When will come the day that we are lifted up out of the miry pit? I am tempted, at times, to despair, to repeat after Isaiah, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing” (49:4). But as the struggle for justice continues, I am reminded of those who fought the good fight far longer than I have and who faced hardships I’ve never known. I think of civil rights leader John Lewis who wrote in Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America, “Ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part.”

When John’s disciples ask Jesus, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” (John 1:38), Jesus answers them not with a location but with an invitation to follow: “Come and see” (verse 39). Of course, Jesus never stayed at the same place for long, so when he says, “Come and see,” he is inviting them to a journey, not a destination. Do we have the same courage as those first disciples? Knowing that we may never “arrive,” will we follow anyway?

Lewis wrote: “Change often takes time. It rarely happens all at once. In the movement, we didn’t know how history would play itself out. When we were getting arrested and waiting in jail or standing in unmovable lines on the courthouse steps, we didn’t know what would happen, but we knew it had to happen.”

“Change often takes time. It rarely happens all at once.”

January 25
What Is Calling You Now?

Isaiah 9:1-4; Psalm 27:1, 4-9; 1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23

AS JESUS “WALKED by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers ... casting a net into the sea—for they were fishers. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people’” (Matthew 4: 18-19). Immediately they left their nets. Immediately they left their boats. They didn’t wait until they fully understood the call. They didn’t wait for conditions to be perfect. They didn’t wait until they had tied up all their loose ends or until they had secured their family’s approval or until they were certain the risk was worth the reward. Sometimes, of course, slowing down is necessary, but other times, in chasing the perfect, we sacrifice the good. What is calling your name now while you are still imperfect? Before you’ve fully mapped out “the plan”?

So far this month we have explored the wait for justice as if we were the ones desperate for its long-awaited arrival. But what if we are the ones slowing its arrival? What if it is our friend or our neighbor living “in a land of deep darkness” (Isaiah 9:2) and by waiting to act, we’re blocking the sunrise? What if God isn’t waiting for us to know how to engage perfectly? God’s just waiting for us to take one step, then another. Maybe we are the harbingers of joy. Wouldn’t it be a shame to be found here waiting, mouths closed?