Church of the Incarnation

In Samuel Beckett's bizarre play Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon try to pass the time while they wait expectantly for the arrival of Godot. Not much happens. They talk a lot, argue some, even sing some, but beyond checking inside their boots for rocks, they don't do anything while they wait. They just sit and wait. This sort of passive waiting doesn't make for riveting drama, and it doesn't make good theology, either.

Advent is about waiting. The color of Advent is blue, the color associated with Mary, the color of the dawning sky, of hopes and plans and dreams about to be fulfilled. Advent's a time of expectation, of anticipation, and of preparation. It's a lot like pregnancy.

My sister and I went through the preparations of her pregnancy with my niece Thames together. I lived four hours away from her, but we still made most of the selections together. She didn't want to know the baby's gender, so picking fabric for the nursery was tricky, but we finally found something we liked. It had a white background and was covered with these adorable people made out of brightly-colored flower petals. We found pindot fabric which matched several of the bright colors, and we were set. I took my vacation to go there and sew everything for the nursery: curtains for the windows, a bumper pad and tiny pillowcase for the crib, even throw pillows for the guest bed in the room. For nine months, I waited for the baby with her. But ours wasn't a passive Waiting for Godot kind of waiting. We were a whirlwind of activity - we painted the nursery, read every book on pregnancy we could find, and designed birth announcements using the petal people motif. We were sure we were prepared.

Vladimir and Estragon know they're waiting for Godot, but they both eventually admit that they hardly know him and aren't completely sure they'd recognize him if they saw him. They know their task is to wait, but they aren't all that clear about what they're waiting for.

I was sure of what I was awaiting during my sister's pregnancy. I know I've told you the story before of being in a meeting and getting word that the baby had been breech and had already been delivered by C-section. I jumped right in my car and headed to Asheville. The months of waiting were over, and I had to see my little niece as soon as possible. I was ready.

I had no idea.

I stood over that incubator and looked down at that perfect, tiny little angel and something in me changed forever. Some biological connection switched on, and I knew I was bonded to that child in a way I'd never experienced before. I knew that years of diaper changes and craft projects and phone calls from the Hannah Montana concert stretched out before me. I knew there wasn't anything I wouldn't do for that helpless little child. All those months of waiting and preparing. I had no idea. I had no idea what being an aunt would be like.

What are we waiting for in Advent? Christmas with its presents and festivities? Christ's birth two thousand years ago in a little town in the far east? Christ's birth in our hearts now? The Second Coming? Like Vladimir and Estragon, I suspect most of us are a little fuzzy about what we're waiting for and not totally sure we'd recognize it if we saw it. Luke uses some odd and, frankly, frightening, images to describe how we'll know that the Kingdom of God is near. But what is the Kingdom, the Second Coming, the time when God will be the unrivaled ruler of the earth? Honestly, we don't know. Jesus describes it using parables: it's a mustard seed that starts tiny but grows into a huge bush.1 It's a wedding banquet but the beautiful people don't come, so the host goes out into the streets and invites everyone in.2 It's a king who has mercy on his poor slave and forgives all his debts. 3 When Jesus is with people, he tells them that the Kingdom of God has come near. So his presence and his teachings give us a brief glimpse of what it'll be like. But just as the book What to Expect when you're Expecting can't prepare you for the wonder of that baby, so even Jesus' presence in our lives now can't prepare us for the wonders of His Kingdom.

But doesn't that leave us like Vladimir and Estragon, immobilized by our ignorance, left just sitting and waiting? I don't think so. I think Advent is a time for active waiting, a time for preparing by enacting what we know about the Kingdom. It's a time to spend way too much time and money to get the perfect gift to tell someone we care about them. It's a time to take an ordinary tree and cover it in glittering lights and shining trinkets, turning it into something extraordinary, just as God transforms each of us in the Kingdom. It's a time to hop from party to party spending time with people we hardly ever make a priority. But Advent is also a time to remember that all these things are just preparations for the coming of the Kingdom. It's a time to remember that the preparations aren't the goal, they're how we wait for the real goal.

So in Advent we wait. We wait by living out what we know of the Kingdom. But we wait knowing that all our preparations can't begin to prepare us for the miracle God has in store for us. But this Christmas when we tell the story of the tiny baby in the dirty manger and we look into his precious face, something inside us might change, and the Kingdom of God may come a little closer.

Amen.

References:

1. Mark 4:30-32.
2. Matthew 22:1-10.
3. Matthew 18:27-35.