WAIT

This may or may not interest you, but about two months ago I accidentally bashed my left thumb against a wall.  It’s been black and blue ever since, and it doesn’t seem to be healing at all.  Thankfully it doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t prevent me from using of it.  For weeks I was putting salves and creams on it in attempts to make it better, but nothing worked.  At Thanksgiving I was at my brother-in-law’s house, who is an emergency room doctor at a local hospital, and I asked what I needed to do in order to fix it.  He said, “You just have to wait.  Nails grow from below, so there is no cream or salve that’s going to heal it.  And you may lose the nail in the meantime.”  That’s not what I wanted to hear, although I trusted his wisdom. 

Last weekend I happened to be sharing a meal with a friend of mine, who is also a retired E.R. doctor.  I said, “As long as I’m here, give me a second opinion on this thumb.”  He told me exactly the same thing, that it might take up to SIX months before the scar is gone.  I didn’t find any joy in hearing that either.

In the grand scheme of things this is not a big deal.  And who but me would care about the appearance of my thumbnail?  But I do.  And I don’t want to wait.  And I don’t like to know that its healing is utterly beyond my control.  I just have to live and wait for it and watch for it.  All I have is a promise that this disgusting mark will get better.  It feels like a long time now.  I wake up every morning and I inspect my thumb.  And usually I see no change at all.

But what if we enlarge this mini-crisis of mine to a global stage, and to centuries of time?    What if we speak of Israel’s longing for a savior, of a profound aching for God to intervene in our history and to heal deep wounds that actually matter, and that endure for generations?  And what if the only answer we hear from God is, “Wait.”?  Now we’re talking Advent.  And while the news ultimately is good, it may not be just what we’d prefer to hear.  Watch and wait.  Watch and wait.  I want something more than that!

Our Christian faith has two dimensions to it:  action, and contemplation, as the Catholic theologian Richard Rohr so well names them.  There are things that we can and must do here and now to bring about God’s presence in our world.  That’s the action part.  We can be makers of peace, we can be do-ers of justice, we can be extenders of mercy, we can be mentors of youth, we can be consolers to those who grieve, we can be noticers of those who are poor and lonely, and speakers of prophetic truth, and resisters of bullying, resisters of hatred, welcomers of strangers and aliens, we can be reconcilers with the outcast.  All of that is what today’s reading from the Hebrews means when it tells us not to bother with our rituals and churchy formalities if it doesn’t lead us to all of those other things when we leave the building, for the rest of the week.  That’s the “action” part of faith.

But then there’s the “contemplative” part.  The watching and waiting part.  The Advent part.  The thumbnail part.  The part that recognizes that, after all the action, there are some things that only God can do, in God’s own time and in God’s own way, which we may find frustrating and mysterious and baffling.  To be contemplative means to be made to sit, with confidence but perhaps with a tinge of doubt, amid the circumstances that all of our best efforts cannot change for now.  It’s the prayer part.

In today’s gospel of Luke, we are presented with a scene of great joy – Elizabeth and Mary, both pregnant with their sons, both of whom were destined to be murdered because of their faithfulness to God.  You just don’t get through life like that without prayer, and faith, and trust.  The word “blessed” is use multiple times in this gospel.  And how hard it is to feel blessed when suffering comes, and when all of our actions seem to count for nothing, for now.  This calls out Advent faith, and it’s not for the faint of heart.  It is certainly not the kind of sweet sentimental “faith” that surrounds a lot of our run-ups to Christmas now.  Both action and contemplation are hard work, demanding of patience, demanding of persistence. 

This month I am using an ugly thumb – watching and waiting for it to get better.  But I am using it every day, both here at the altar and elsewhere, believing that both are necessary.  May our Advent activity invite us in to this two-fold mystery of what it means to be faithful.