“Believing in the Future”

                                “Believing in the Future”
                                Hebrews 11:1-3; Luke 12:32-40
                                Rev. David Hutchinson
                                Sunday, August 8, 2010

    I have only seen the play “Waiting for Godot” once.
    It was so frustrating, I haven’t wanted to have the experience again.
    In the play, by Samuel Beckett, two characters basically wait.
    They wait for someone named Godot.
A name, which I understand could come from the same word that means “God”.
Implying, waiting for God.
These two characters have some very interesting conversations, but all of it is overshadowed by their waiting…for Godot…who is supposed to arrive the very next day. But…as each day passes, the frustration increases, and the keep expecting Godot will come “tomorrow”…and they wait.   /   And then, comes the end of the play…and I’m sorry to be the ‘spoiler’ for those of you who haven’t seen it…but there is NO resolution!   They title gives it away anyway.   They just continue to wait and wait and wait….for the next day…which they expect will produce Godot…which it never does…and they never DO anything. 
And it’s dreadful!
The predicament of the two characters reminded me of a cuckoo clock I once had.
    I have long since gotten rid of it. But when I first got it, I put it up on the wall in the living room. And I didn’t know there was a lever on the back to turn off the cuckoo. For two nights this drove me crazy. Just as I drifted off to sleep: “kookoo!!”
    If I woke up early, it used to be - that I was able to go back to sleep for a few hours, relieved.   But not now...
    Now…if I woke up at 4:53am…I lay there…
…and watched the glow in the dark numbers on the clock approach 5am.
    And by far…the worst part…was KNOWING when the cuckoo would occur!
    SO - - is it better to know what you’re waiting for?
        Or…like Godot’s friends… not to know?
    Surely…it depends on what you’re waiting for.
        Is it a good or bad thing?
        Is it scary or joyous?
    This morning’s reading from Luke’s gospel is a reminder that a lot of the history of Christian culture - - could be characterized as waiting for things that seem scary. Waiting for judgment.   Waiting for the end.
    Luke says that waiting for the Son of man is like waiting for a thief.
    And the hour is unexpected.
    But before that image, Luke offers one of preparedness.
        Servants with lamps burning.
        They were ready.
        And they hadn’t missed anything, it turns out:
        Because the Jewish night was divided into three “watches”
and the third watch of the night was that last one…closest to dawn.
    So Luke urges us to remain prepared…while we wait.
    But what is all this really all about?
    Is this just a pep talk for impatient motorists waiting at a stop light?
    Is this really about the end of the world?
    Or is it about something else?
    Henri Nouwen describes two kinds of waiting - that I think move us deeper into the meaning of the gospel for our own spiritual lives. He urges us to engage in what he describes as a “spirituality of waiting”. Which means being alert to God’s presence in our lives. He says there are really two main aspects to waiting:   one is waiting FOR God…
…the other is THE waiting OF God.
    We are waiting.         and
    God is waiting.
    Nouwen goes on to point out that Luke’s gospel BOTH begins and ends with waiting.
The first two chapters of Luke set the context for the whole as one of waiting, with Jesus’ birth.   In the stories of Jesus’ birth there are a whole host of people who are waiting – Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Simeon, Anna….
And all of them are able to wait..because they have received a promise.
What they wait for has already begun.
Waiting for a promise made to them.
Waiting on something they already believe in.
And so, according to Nouwen, they are able to wait as people who are open to the present moment.  They pay attention. 
    On the other hand - the story of Jesus death and resurrection reveals the GOD who is waiting.   Jesus went to Jerusalem to announce the Good News and put a choice before the people.  Their response is out of God’s hands...and in their hands.
    God in Jesus Christ is waiting for a response.
    A response to divine love.
    Our response.
    And yet, while God waits on us…we wait on God…
        …and wait…and wait…
    And it’s like we’re playing chicken with God!
        Who will go first….
    How can we get to the point - 
- where we are able to do the kind of waiting Nouwen describes?
    I think a clue to the answer comes in the part of Luke’s gospel that comes just before the story of the lamps burning. In it Luke describes a heart that finds its treasure in God.
    I think the state of our hearts has a lot to do with how we wait.
    And by that I mean to use “heart” as the seat of our spiritual and emotional life.
    What is the heart of your life?
    What is your core all about?
    In a recent New York Times, columnist David Brooks offered an ALTERNATIVE to the perspective expressed by Clayton Christensen in the Harvard Business Review. The business review article had advocated for what was described as “the Well Planned Life”. In a talk at commencement, an address to graduates, Christensen, who by the way is a Christian, urged graduates to pursue a “Well Planned Life”. This was done by coming up with an overall purpose, and then making decisions about how to divide up time, energy, talent, money, based on this main purpose. A Christian spirit, combined with a business methodology. Not an all-together bad idea.
    But Brooks expresses skepticism about whether business models alone can guide all areas of life. Brooks suggests that the most important areas of life, and the human landscape - - PRECEDE choice. He writes that we have commitments…to family…nation…faith…or a cause…which defy logic.
    Brooks describes the difference in outlook as - the difference between a “Well Planned Life” and a “Summoned Life”. As he describes it, life isn’t a project to be completed. It is an unknowable landscape to be explored.
    The well planned life asks “what should I do?”
    But the “summoned life” asks “what are my circumstances asking me to do?”
    This second question is answered primarily by observing:
        What is needed of me in this time and place?
    And though Brooks doesn’t explicitly call it that, this is, I believe, the language of faith.
    It sounds to me like the language of calling.       Which is about listening.   
        We are called in listening to wait more for God, than for what we want.
        But how can we wait for a God - we haven’t seen with our eyes?
     The Hebrews reading for this morning says that
“Faith…is the conviction of things not seen”
    When we are convicted of it…though we have not yet seen it…
            …that is faith.
    I am reminded of a story Jim Wallis once told about Archbishop Desmond Tutu standing face to face with armed military. And in the face of the threats of their guns, he simply invited them to, “come over to the winning side”.
    He had not seen the victory…but he was convicted of it.
    As Tutu once said to a crowd in Ireland, when comparing the events in South Africa to their own struggles, and urging them NOT to GIVE UP because of their frustrations, he said:
“They were part of a cosmic movement, toward unity, toward reconciliation, that has existed from the beginning of time”.
A movement that has existed from the beginning of time.
    His was a faith in the future.
    And it changed how he waited, in the mean time.
    I recently read a book about Bigfoot, by naturalist Robert Michael Pyle, which explores the phenomenon of belief in something not seen. Pyle is fascinated by people who believe in the giant humanoid ape called Bigfoot. And as he says, the book is not so much about the existence of Bigfoot, as it is about the people who believe in Bigfoot. Something none of them have seen.
    “Bigfoot might or might not exist, in the sense that other known animals exist”, he writes.  “Answering the question of existence is not the purpose of this book”. “How our hearts are carried off by…monsters…and how much wildness will survive our rough handling of the land – these are the questions I explore”.
    At the heart of his exploration is the question: if something lies beyond our ordinary experience, do we shrug and say it is nothing at all?
    Pyle suggests that the attraction of Bigfoot is that the very wildness from which the Bigfoot myth emanates is disappearing. Bigfoot habitat vanishes as we develop more and more land.
    As I have watched the struggle over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico over the summer, I have gained a new appreciation for those who would cling to all that is wild in nature, and I’ve mourned the destruction of its beauty.
    And as I mourned, I’ve wondered about Pyle’s question: who really is the monster?
    And how WILL it all end?
    What will be the end of us?
    How can we be hopeful about the future?
From where does our hope come?
    Only one place I know…
        Where is your heart?
        There…is your treasure.
        There…is our assurance.
    Our faith in the future - comes from our conviction that we know the end.
        Which is totally different from knowing what will happen!
        It is totally different from having seen with our eyes.
    It is about seeing with our heart.
        Believing in the future - instead of mourning the future.
    I don’t know what will happen to the turtles in the Gulf of Mexico.
        But I know all creation will be redeemed.
    I don’t know if all the recent graduates will figure our their purpose in life
and live a well planned and successful existence.
But I know their commitments to family, nation and faith will change them.
And I know God’s grace is theirs for the asking.
    And I know…that believing in the future…changes the present.
            It changes how we wait.
             It changes waiting…into hope.
                    Amen.