Tired of Waiting?

Still waiting? Still hoping? It is this challenge to pray without ceasing and not losing heart as we wait for the Kingdom. Here we are into the middle of another Advent with its themes of waiting and the Lord coming. Once again we muscle up to preparing a strait highway. We are asked to visualize the leveling of the mighty mountains and the creating of level valleys.

Is this annual Advent journey a make-believe exercise? Is it only a time to be consoled by the wonderful consoling images of the prophets assuring the People of a restoration in the Day of the Lord? Perhaps it’s the putting up of our “spiritual” decorations before Christmas.

The Kingdom seems as illusive and patience-testing as Christmas, which never seems to come quickly enough. The liturgical lament of so many of unnecessarily holding off Christmas by not singing carols or decorations gives us a metaphor of our impatience with waiting for the Lord’s coming. Our culture screams: just let Christmas happen, why the wait? Advent often enough occasions an urgent cry: Come, Lord Jesus. And we add that he might hurry up.

What's the Delay About?
We get concerned about our patience as response to the Word of God which invites waiting and not knowing the end, neither day, nor time, nor season. The writer of the second Letter of Peter turns things around in today’s readings. He invites us to prayerfully consider the Lord’s delay and his patience, not ours.

"The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard ‘delay,’ but he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." (2Peter3:9)

Our faith challenge is the same as the early writers of the epistles, when the Lord’s coming was not as quick in coming as the community had expected. The writer of today’s second reading presses the same urgency in waiting for the Second Coming as had been the earlier thought of the immediate appearance of Christ in glory. The question is not for the writer whether or not Jesus was coming back, but that the time and date really didn’t matter.

Living in the Kingdom
How to prepare for Christ’s Coming or for the establishment of the Kingdom is about what we do in the meantime. Since we cannot hasten the Kingdom, nor do we know its arrival time, we are admonished by the New Testament writers to live as Kingdom people. The writer today suggests that we be patient like the Lord is patient in his “delay” about the Kingdom. And how is that? We wait and look for repentance and conversion in our lives. We live expectantly and with urgency about the presence of God in our world among our neighbors. We are urged in Peter’s Letter today to “[conduct ourselves] in holiness and devotion, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God…[being] eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, in peace.” The judgment scene on Christ the King urged us to the care and love of our neighbor in our waiting.

CDH