Lord of Safe Harbours

It’s a very familiar story, the one where Christ goes to sleep in the boat in the midst of a terrible storm.  (Mk. 4:38) It is evening and the disciples are in the boat with Jesus. They are crossing the Sea of Galilee when a great storm arises. The boat is beaten by the wind and the waves; it is filling with water and ready to sink. All the while, Jesus is asleep in the stern untroubled by the storm, indifferent to their peril and unperturbed by their fear. We wonder why this story was included in the Bible, because it shows Jesus in almost an uncaring way.  But I think it’s a little deeper than that:  There are two significant things we could notice about the story.

One is the nature of the call.  Let us go to the other side, he says, in the boat. He calls them, off the solid land onto the storm-prone sea, at evening.  And he calls them to go to the other side, as though there is a purpose.  There are many images in this narrative about what following Jesus might mean.  He calls them out of their comfort zone, into peril, to an unknown place, for an unknown purpose.

And then he goes to sleep.  That’s the second significant thing.

Apparently, the Sea of Galilee is prone to these storms, because it’s shallow, is below sea level and is surrounded by hills, which act as a funnel, through which the wind whips up storms.  These storms are more likely to occur at twilight, because of the cool night air blowing down onto the relatively heated surface of the water.

Why did he do this at such a precarious time?  He must have had some idea that the storm would blow up. Why was the storm permitted to arise in the first place? He knew about all the mechanisms of nature (because he was there at its creation).  Did he do this on purpose?  It doesn’t seem to equate with a loving, caring Shepherd. Yet, he did seem to call them knowingly into perilous possibilities.  Humanly, we might even ask “If he really loved them, why would he put them at risk?”.  We believe that God loves each of us.  The Bible says he holds our tears in a bottle;  that he knows us completely – he knows us by name; he will provide for our needs.   But when storms strike, it’s sometimes hard to reconcile what we believe about God in our heads, with the emotional and practical reality of our existence.

In his book, A Restless Faith, Keith Mascord explains his journey to come to peace with this enigma. He tells of a terrible accident what prompted him to search outside his Moore-College trained, fundamentalist faith.  He was a Minister in the Sydney Anglican tradition at Wee Waa, and during his time there, one of his churchmen, a farmer, backed over his little toddler son and killed him, then 11 months later, his daughter was killed in a car accident, because she wasn’t wearing her seat belt.  The reason she wasn’t wearing her seat belt, was because she’d had a previous accident and would have been killed, if she’d been wearing her belt.  Keith Mascord questioned his fundamentalist faith, in the face of the unimaginable suffering of these parents, and pondered all the whys and the hows of God letting this happen.  He eventually came to re-evaluate his faith, from a very black-and-white Sunday school understanding of God, to one which embraced much more of the mystery of God, and a less rigid explanation of the suffering in the world. When we consider the personal tragedies that people face every day and the global crises that plague our world, we may also wonder if Jesus is asleep on the job. The cries of the disciples are our cries too: "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"

The verses in Job have wisdom to add here. Job was a man who seemed to be picked on by God;  it was as though God took bets with the devil over Job.  The devil said “I bet I can do this or that terrible thing to Job, and he will abandon his faith in you”.  And God said “you’re on”.  And when the terrible things happened, Job felt abandoned by God, just like the disciples in the boat. Yet, in the end Job came to realize that he was just part of a bigger picture… he was not the Centre of the Universe and he had no right to tell God what to do.  This seems harsh to us. It is harsh, but there is great victory and strength in it too.  When confronted by his Creator, Job, in spite of everything that has happened to him, grasps the greatness, the mystery, the goodness and the inscrutable wisdom of God.  He learns about God’s sovereign grasp on our world. In the midst of his suffering, Job declares, "I know that my Redeemer lives and at the last he will stand upon the earth...then from my flesh I shall see God." (Job 19:25). Job has found his way home the hard way--through the path of being reduced to nothing but his bare skin and wretched bones...he is raised by God's spirit to the soaring conviction that no matter what happens to him, he belongs to God, and God will bring him to the divine presence in glory”  We too, discover that when our Universe collapses, there is still God. We are humbled to discover that we are not the Centre of God’s universe;  at the same time, we experience the mercy and peace of the Christ who is willing to become like us and get into the boat with us.

It’s the involvement of God with us that is the great overcoming mystery.  Not the head knowledge;  not the doctrine, but the absolute certainty of knowing God is there.  And sometimes, we only really understand that fact, when the great billows rise and the wind howls. This is the wisdom of the Storm story. This is why Jesus calls them out in the boat, at evening.. He knows what storms will blow up in our lives and still bids US follow him into the boat. Otherwise, we’d stand alone, marooned on the rocky shore of our lifeless head knowledge. The sleet of life’s storms would still rain down on us, but if we never venture into the thrashing water, we will never experience the real Jesus;  the overcoming One;  the one who, even asleep, still knows the storm rages.  He wakes to our call.  Every time.

Perhaps that’s why the story is told the way it is – because we know Jesus even sleeping, is still with us, so the sleeping bit is like a metaphor which represents our interpretation of what we feel when he doesn’t stir and answer all our why questions and answer our prayers in the way we want.

The mystery and the blessing of the storms of our lives are all mixed in together.  It feels messy to us.  Life is messy, complicated, unexplained.  The blessing we finally learn from our wave tossed journeys, are the blessedness of the presence and therefore the peace of Jesus, even while the tumult rages.

It can be unwise to directly link God’s caring of us, with our circumstances.  I have a friend on Facebook, who has had a pretty comfortable life.  And I know, we can’t always see behind closed doors, but in the overview of life she’s got a lot to be thankful for… stable marriage, plenty of money, healthy kids, grandkids, a job she loves.  Sometimes her posting to Facebook will be filled with exclamation marks and big smiley faces…. Things like “I love my life.  God is so good”. Or, “flying out to Paris today, our God is wonderful!” There’s nothing wrong with that.  It’s giving God the credit for our many blessings.  But if we only count the good circumstances of our life as proof of God’s favour and love for us, then when the storm comes, we may want to abandon the faith life altogether. A head knowledge faith, can be a fair weather faith.

The truth is that we live in a world which is defined at times by injury, loss, illness and death.  We all face our own storms and this story tells us, not so much why they happen – I’m not sure we can ever know that – but about how we can behave in the midst of them.  Of course, the disciples were afraid.  We also are afraid when terrible things happen.  And I think, it’s OK to cry to God, as the disciples did “Don’t you care?” Maybe that’s why this story records their reaction.  It’s like God is reaching down the years, saying to us “it’s OK to ask me why, or even why not”. But in the end, Jesus is the voice of calm, and he calls us to trust him over our fears.

Can we cultivate so firm and deep a trust in the wisdom and sovereignty of Christ that we do not fear following Him into the boat at evening, to go to the other side? The paradox is that until we step into the boat and until the storm arises, our faith can never be that firm or that deep. When we are in the thrashing unsafe boat and realize that He is still in control, our faith in His ability to either calm the storm, or calm our spirits, becomes rock solid.

Finally, can I share a lovely image of this seaside encounter with Jesus.  In his book Letter to a Man in a Fire Reynolds Price tells of an elderly lady who wrote to him about her experience of seeing Jesus more clearly. She was facing her own “storm,” as she was going through exhausting medical tests in preparation for surgery. One day an image came to her mind’s eye. "I went out along the Galilee shore and came to a crowd gathered around a man, and I stood on the outskirts intending to listen. But he looked over the crowd at me and then said, 'What do you want?' And I said, 'Could you send someone to come with me and help me stand up after the tests because I can't manage alone?' He [Jesus] thought for a moment and then said, 'How would it be if I came?'" (Letter to a Man in a Fire, 30-31)

“How would it be if I came?" This is precisely what God has done in Jesus Christ. God has come to us in our suffering and pain, in our struggle to be human, in our fear and anxiety, and in our doubt and uncertainty. Jesus put off deity and put on humanity. He became one of us--one with us--one for us.”

He bids us follow him into the boat, without revealing where the other side might be – without giving us a travel plan or sea sickness pills or life jackets.  He calls us to follow knowing full well that the journey will involve setbacks and storms.  But we have to get into the boat with him, before He calms the storm or hands out the life jackets.  Sometimes, indeed, he waits until the storm is strongest before he acts. If we waited until all was prepared and ready and known we might never go.  And risk being stranded on the shore for all eternity. 

Lord of safe harbours.  We know we are forgiven for all manner of our frailty You are the same today as you were when you bid the waves and winds to cease in the midst of the storm at Galilee.   You understand our fearfulness;  you speak the same words of peace to us.  You hold the mystery to all which befalls us;  you always know the measure of our endurance and faith, and will always command the storm to cease, before we plunge beneath the waves.  We know that all things are under your control.  You can calm the storms we face;  you can give us peace while the storm rages. Blessed by your name O God.  

The Lord's Prayer

“Teach us to pray;  the Lord’s prayer”.  These are my thoughts on what the verses from Luke mean to me; it’s how I’ve applied these precepts in my own life.

*        The opening sentence is “Our father in heaven; hallowed by your name”.  It’s like in a nutshell of who God is: We have on the one hand the invitation to see God as a very personal God who is like a father, and on the other, the Jehovah God to whom all things owe adoration and worship, and who reigns in heaven which is the beginning and end of all creation.  “Hallowed” means “all holiness belongs to you”.  . Some people struggle with the image of a Father God, because their earthly father was a very flawed character, We can feel compassion for those whose fathers were strict and severe, or violent or abusive, or feckless or work-shy; Nevertheless, we can at least relate on an intellectual level, to the ideal of a loving parent who has our best interests at heart, and who will always be interested in our lives;  who will forgive  us no matter what, who provides for us and looks out for us..” Our father” speaks of relationship;  of being able to talk to God in our own language, confident that He is listening. So we are invited to be in relationship with the One to whom all sacredness and power belongs.  And it seems that this prayer teaches us how to get our priorities right.  To start with acknowledging who God is and what He deserves from us, is a good beginning.

*        The next bit is “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. This has absolutely nothing to do with our idea of earthly Kingdoms.  I confess, I’ve recited this bit since I was a child, not really seeing it’s significance, or knowing what it really meant.  But after my son died, it became more meaningful.  My son was a young policeman, and when we gathered at Wesley   for his funeral; as we walked up the aisle we could see that the church was absolutely packed;  everybody squashed into the pews, and the little slide out seats too, and outside, and in the vestry. As we bowed our head for the first prayer, I began to have a sort of mental picture of that packed church and I could see lots of slender soft ribbons floating down onto the heads of many of the people.  In later days, as I pondered and prayed over Ben’s death and where God was in all of it, I could still see the ribbons descending.  And I began to pray that whatever purpose God had in allowing Ben to die, that it would begin to be put into place on earth;  I began to pray, that in relation to Ben’s death, God’s will would be done on earth as it already was in heaven.  God’s will was done in heaven;  Ben was with him;  God had counted Ben’s days;  He’s counted all our days and he has the final word on what happens to us..  Now I prayed that this will and purpose would be done on earth too, for all those people on whom the ribbons settled.  I felt that in this one way at least, Ben’s death would help someone else find peace with God, as he himself had found. Perhaps this is fanciful to you;  the silly imagination of a grieving mother.  Maybe.  But this I know;  God’s will is a fact;  a force;  a divine energy;  the divine intellect and purpose in the shadow of which we can only stand in mystified awe.  I could never say that it was God’s will for Ben to die, but "in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose" (Rom. 8:28). Ben was called home to God according to God’s purpose and I have to believe it works for good in the big picture.  Jehovah and parent God, may your will be done for us, on earth, as it already has been done in heaven.

*        Now we come to the petitionary part of the prayer;  “give us this day our daily bread”  This is the only part of the prayer which is for our physical provision.  Or is it?  I’m sure it  means we should be asking for the bread of physical life.  Notice that we are instructed to ask only for what we need today, on a daily basis, not for our sustenance and health in the days to come.  Tricky, very tricky.  It goes against our inclination doesn’t it? We want to know that we will be secure with food and money, long into the future. I don’t think many of us have any idea at all of what it would be like not knowing where our next meal was coming from.  But for the people of Jesus’ day, this was a real prayer, prayed for their survival.. And we are to ask for others too “give us”, not “give me”. And when we ask for bread, we probably should be mindful of all those who grow it and cook it and transport it, and especially those who are dying for the want of it.

This idea of a providential God, supplying everything we need and looking out for us, is a bit of a two edged sword and is never simple.  God is not a Father Christmas giving us what we think we want or even need.  We can’t say “God is good since he saves our children;  and we DO say this “God must have been looking after him or her because they walked out of the wreckage unscathed”. But where does that leave people like me, whose child was not saved?  Why was Peter freed from his prison cell by an angel, but Stephen was stoned to death? Why was John the Baptist allowed to be killed at the whim of a silly girl?  We believe in God’s providence when we get what we want, and we must also trust that providence when He allows things to happen which we don’t want. If I’m going to believe in a God who is absolutely good and always has my best interests at heart, then when Ben died, I couldn’t turn away and declare that God isn’t a loving Father.  This is mysterious stuff which we won’t understand until we get to heaven.  It’s all mixed up with our free will, and God’s absolute will, but at the end of the day, we are still the child, with the burdens and cares of our lives, coming to God’s door, saying “Give to me what I need and I’ll trust you for what that is;  let your will be done for me and all that happens to me”.  In the face of the death of my son, this is all I could offer God.

Could these verses about bread also mean, that we should be asking for God’s very heart to be shared with us;  the bread of Life;  the Spirit.  After all, the rest of these verses  go on to speak of the Holy Spirit, and God’s delight and desire to share his personhood with us, through the Holy Spirit. (down in vs 11-13 where he says that as earthy fathers know how to give good gifts, so the Father longs to give us the Holy Spirit)

*        And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.  We accept and embrace God’s forgiveness of us, but we aren’t always so energetic about forgiving others who have wronged us. It can be very hard to forgive people and our capacity to forgive is probably linked to how much they have hurt us.  Sometimes it can take a long time to forgive and it takes much prayer. Maybe this is why we are instructed to pray in this manner;  so that God can change us from resentful, ungodly people, into forgiving, Christ-centred people.   Prayer is not designed to change or persuade God; it is designed by God to change us! Prayer is a spiritual discipline through which we are formed into disciples of Jesus Christ. And a surprising shortcut to forgiving people is to pray for them. 

When my son had been dead for less than a year, I encountered a woman who took every opportunity to establish a pecking order, with me as the peckee.  She could have done me a good turn but she did me a bad one;  she could have shown compassion but she showed me veiled malice instead. In her defence, the things she said and did were petty, small-minded and if I’d been in a normal emotional state I could have flicked them off before they took hold. But I was in a very dark place, with a great wound on my heart and soul. It went on for months and as I drove home one rainy winter night, after another bad encounter with her, at a meeting during which I was not permitted to speak, I thought that I didn’t really want to be in the world any more. But after a few more months and with a skerrick more emotional strength, another way of escape presented itself. I began to pray for this lady.  I prayed for God to bless her;  I prayed that my attitude to her would change.  I prayed for God to love her and for me to love her the way He did. We can’t change how others treat us but we can change how we respond.  She had added to my burden of brokenness.  But prayer began to change the way I saw her and it allowed me to withdraw from the arena.  Her bossy pettiness began to fall on my deliberately-deafened ears.  I yielded her up to God and if that meant she always had the last word and the victory in the pecking order, then my reward was a healing emotional state. She began to seem like a little girl, always trying to prove how much she deserved praise and approval.  I began to see her with more compassion and understanding. Prayer did that. I’m sorry to be sharing something which is so personal, but I discovered that this praying for those who hurt us, actually works.

*        The next bit of this prayer is “And lead us not into temptation”. It’s no surprise that we are told to ask God not to lead us into temptation.  We could spend a month of sermons on this one.  Do not bring us to the time of trial.  Nobody wants trial. God knows how frail we are;  he knows we have need of confession. - We all of us have inclinations to wander to a particular area of sin;  for some it might simply be eating too much, or gossiping, or any type of natural appetite for which the human race is so prone to distort and adulterate. Temptation never strikes when we are strong and have the ramparts of our souls in place.  The evil one knows our weaknesses as well as the Christ does and he waits ‘til we are made vulnerable by any type of life circumstance through which he can fire an evil dart.  But with much praying and the help of the Spirit, we can overcome any temptation.  We have Christ’s example in that too.

*        We move on to the verses 6 to 13 and they are really about persistence;  the man who keeps knocking on his neighbour’s door, the verses about seeking and finding, asking and receiving.

In his classic book, The Meaning of Prayer, the great preacher, Harry Emerson Fosdick, puts it this way: Some things God cannot give to a person until he or she has prepared and proved his or her spirit by persistent prayer. Such praying cleans the house, cleanses the windows, hangs the curtains, sets the table, opens the door, until God says, "Lo! The House is ready. Now may the guest come in."

The Rev. Dr. Charles Reeb, pastor of United Methodist in St. Petersburg, Florida, has expressed this attitude very succinctly:  “When we ask long enough, seek hard enough, knock loud enough, and pray persistently enough, something happens on the inside of us. The discipline of prayer begins to awaken us to the Holy Spirit inside of us, and our motives and desires begin to change”.

It’s been said (Peter Annet) that those who pray persistently are like sailors who have cast anchor on a rock. As they pull on the anchor, they think they are pulling the rock to themselves, but they are really pulling themselves to the rock.

This is what persistent prayer does. Especially, if God’s answer to us, is eventually “no”. It pulls us closer to the rock of God’s divinity. . And in that continual coming, God changes us;  in that persistent coming, we are changed into what God wants for us.  In that constant coming, He shares his Holy Spirit with us. When our temporal needs are foremost in our minds, it might seem that this isn’t what we need.  But it IS all we need in the whole of our life’s journey, and is what is at the heart of this passage. Teach us to pray Lord?  Yes, he teaches us to pray, but it’s not an easy learning; we are often on a different wavelength, with different values and different ideas of what we need.  Yet, as we move closer to God in prayer, we may not always get what we ask for;  instead,  from the wisdom of God, we get what we need. We get what God wants for us, for our spiritual and eternal good. We find that as we move closer to our Rock, we begin to desire what God desires, so that what we ask for, knock for, and seek after becomes what God so desperately wants to give us. Then the truth of Jesus' words come to life so that what we pray for we truly receive. This is the secret of how to pray.  In the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit. Amen

When God does nothing

There is an awful story in the Gospel of Mark which relates the death of John the Baptist.  It is a very confronting story.  It’s confronting, because of the pictures it gives us of betrayal, debauchery, revenge, hatred, and death.  We have this terrible picture of Herod and his family, taking their revenge on John, because he dared to speak out against their moral discrepancy. It’s confronting because Jesus appears to do nothing to intervene. 

This is the story of one of the greatest juxtapositions in the whole bible: The Herald of the Lord sacrificed for the whims of a deceitful woman and her spineless husband.  It is a story of the risks we take  when we choose to follow Christ.

John, the cousin of Jesus;  the one whose voice in the wilderness, foretold of his coming. Jesus’ ministry starts after John is arrested.  While John is in prison, Jesus is about and about preaching and healing. Let’s press the rewind button a little bit, and go back to before John’s death. 

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"

John is in prison, no doubt anticipating his own execution.  And he hears what Jesus is doing, and sends the disciples to ask Jesus this question. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?".  After his own glorious ministry, as the prophet appointed to proclaim the Christ’s coming, he is plagued by doubts, it seems. What has happened to the glorious vision of Isaiah, where the eyes of the blind are opened, the ears of the deaf are unstopped, the lame leap and the tongue of the dumb sings for joy?  It must seem to John, that having foretold these things, he wasn’t going to be around to see it. Instead, he’s captured and held on the whim of a woman with whom he had gone into battle on many occasions over moral issues.  It’s the old story of a good man to whom bad things happen.

Then we have Herod. Let’s look at him, his family for a minute. According to most scholars, the Herod that is spoken of in this reading is a son of Herod the Great, a cruel and hated despot who oversaw the entire Palestinian region.  When Herod the Great died (in 4 B.C.); Rome split his region into four areas and placed the Northwest area of Galilee under the rule of his son, Herod Antipas.

If Herod the Great was a maniacal, violent despot, then Antipas the son, was the cowering survivor who outlived his father.  A brief study of his character reveals that he maintained his position not with strength but by connivance and manipulation.  We know this because of his hesitation to have John executed immediately when John first insulted his wife.  He’s scheming for the way out of his predicament so he comes out of it unscathed.  The historian, Josephus, tells how he won his seat by sniveling before Rome and later lost it in like manner.  He’s an amoral “yes man”, whose first concern is always his own position of power and comfort. Scripture tells us that he stole his half-brother’s wife (she was also his cousin) and appeased her by sinking to her frivolous whims while also lusting for his stepdaughter (who was also his niece).  He is a sleazy man.  He, the manipulator, is also manipulated by his wife.  He is weakness personified. 

This is the man, who so abused his authority against the daring, devoted John the Baptist by ordering his beheading.  This is the picture we have of the strutting weakling Antipas, who was responsible for Christ’s death too.  He scorned and mocked and thought he would have the last word. 

All of this background is very interesting and helpful, but we might ask, “why was it included?”  Why does the death of John include all this detail about Herod and his family?  Why do the preceding chapters tell us of John’s question to Jesus from the gloom of his prison cell?  Where’s the good news in all this?

There is always the danger in religious circles to think that if you’re on God’s Team then everything will be great. You’ll be healthy, wealthy, and wise. God will heal every disease and conquer every foe.  Well…not if you’re John the Baptist. If you’re John you’ll be the victim of a little slip of a girl, her scheming mother, an ineffectual puppet ruler, and your head will be served on a platter.

The sobering reality is that even the very best of us can be victim to the very worst, and sometimes even to the very worst in other people. How many have heard of Clunes Mathison?  He was born at Stanley, near Beechworth, in 1883. His parents, had six children, but only Clunes reached the age of 10; moreover, when he was 12 his father, too, died of illness. The close experience of sickness and suffering influenced the young Mathison and he went on to be a brilliant doctor.  When the first world war came, he served as the 5^th Battalion’s Doctor on 25^th April 1915 at Gallipoli.  He survived the landing, and went from there to Helles where he set up a medical post in a creek bed.  After the 5^th charged towards, Krithia, Mathison returned on May 9 to the aid post he had established in a creek bed. He was getting dressed during the afternoon, when a Turkish bullet fired from far away fell to earth and struck him on the head.  He died 9 days later. He’d survived the hideous Gallipoli landing but was struck down by a freak bullet.  Not only did Australia loose a good man, but also a brilliant Doctor.  He was only 34. But I can’t help but think of his Mum.  She lost all her children, except this one;  she lost her husband and then her  only remaining child marches off to war and is killed by a stray bullet, way behind the battle front.  Life is not always fair. This story is confronting because it tears at the fabric of our belief that God will intervene, fix, heal, save.  But he didn’t save Clunes Mathison, or his mother from the crushing grief of multiple losses.  And he didn’t save John the Baptist.  That’s why it’s such a confronting story.

But, these fates aren’t what define us, for even though we suffer and are cut down, we are still God’s.  It’s why we need to keep our lives aligned with the plumb line of our walk with the risen Christ, because sometimes, that’s the only thing that makes any sense.

John’s story challenges us to live with hope in the face of disappointment and the ending of our hopes and dreams. Is our fidelity to God only valid when everything turns out the way we want it to?  How do we understand this story in the light of all the promises God made about hope and joy and the desert blooming, and the afflicted being healed?  Can we step outside the boundaries of our own expectations and let God write his own will and expectations on our hearts?  The truths is, that God’s hope in us, actually becomes stronger, the less hopeful our circumstances are;  he himself becomes our hope, our strength;  we look beyond the things of this life, to a greater hope in the life to come.  And in doing this, we begin to live now, with hope and integrity, even when we are in our own particular prison, whatever that might be.

When the imprisoned John the Baptist queried whether Jesus was the promised Messiah or not - Jesus replied by pointing John to the transformation which was occurring in people's lives. How God's love for the world was being revealed through the way Jesus touched people's lives with healing, compassion, justice and love. So, in a way, John must have realized that his task was done.  He had foretold of such a One, and his prophesy had been fulfilled.  So take heart, because even our suffering, our acceptance of it and our trust in God through it, is how we discover that God is present in all our circumstances;  whether they be joyous ones like, say, the birth of a baby, or terrible ones, like John’s life sentence. God is the God of both situations.  The abundance of happy things, is no more a sign of God’s presence than the desolation;  the constant is God.  We tend to measure God’s presence in any situation by our sense of well-being, and fail to recognise that God is just as present with us in the dungeon, as he is on the mountain top.

Sometimes, like the story of Clunes Mathieson,  the very worst happens.  It’s then we can experience the presence of God.  And let’s remember, it’s not over until the resurrection.  The story of whatever has happened to us here, is not finished until God welcomes, recognises and renews us, on that Resurrection morning.

Why are we waiting?

"Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"

The account of the death of John the Baptist in Matthew 11, makes for gruesome reading. John, sitting in prison, no doubt anticipating his own execution, hears what Jesus is doing, and sends his disciples to ask. How sad. How sad that, having given his life to the task of preparing the way for the Messiah, having said to Jesus at his (Jesus’) baptism, "It is you who should be baptizing me," having seen and done all this, John is finally plagued with uncertainty as he watches the Messiah fulfill his ministry. He just cannot be sure that this is what God intended the Messiah to be and do

The Bible also contains the well known stories of Mary’s rejoicing when she realizes she will be the mother of the Saviour of all mankind.  

Both of these people are waiting;  Mary is waiting in the way all pregnant women wait;  my daughter is pregnant at the moment and she and her husband are starting to prepare for the baby’s birth.  I too, await with eager longing to see this little new life.  We wonder whether it will be a girl or a boy;  we wonder what the baby will look like;  what sort of person will it be?  But in Mary’s case, she is also waiting for the restoration of her reputation and for the fulfilment of God’s prophesy to her, because although she knows she is pregnant by the holy spirit, we can imagine that perhaps the people in her world found this very hard to believe, and would have been quick to condemn her has promiscuous - a very harsh judgement with terrible consequences, in Mary's culture.  People would undoubtedly have been very unkind to her.  She must have spent some anxious times when it became apparent she was not married but was pregnant, and even after the birth, Joseph married her of course, but down the years, she must have borne the taunts of people who never really believed that the child she bore was not just the child of a human father.

She waits as he grows, to see what sort of man he will become.  She waits to see evidence of his divinity, she waits while he begins his ministry. She must have worried about him. She must have wondered where his destiny would take him.;  indeed the bible says “she pondered these things in her heart”.  She waited and watched and wondered.  And finally, she waited at the foot of the cross for him to die.

Waiting is often very difficult.  Waiting even on worldly things can be a frustrating business.  How often have we fretted about how long we’ve had to wait in the supermarket queue?  In reality, it’s never more than a few minutes.  And just as an aside, I always use this time to pray for the people around me.  It’s my way of turning something with potential for frustration, into something much more pleasant and positive.

Waiting on test results is often very difficult.  In most cases, we find waiting difficult.

Waiting on God is also difficult.  What does God say to us about waiting?  He has, after all, been telling his people to wait, for thousands of years, from when he told Abraham he would be the heir of thousands of people of God, and impelled Abraham to wait until he brought this about, to this story in the new testament of Mary and her waiting for the Saviour to be born. 

In John's case too, he must have wondered why Jesus didn't come to the prison and save him.  He was his cousin and the messenger to Christ's coming.  

 We might spare a thought for John’s parents.  They must have also waited a very lonely and anxious vigil, to hear news of his death. They would be hoping for his release, but really, I think they knew in their hearts, this would not happen.

We too, in our waiting, hope for the best outcome;  we want the test results to be good;  we want our child to be healed;  we want our financial worries to be over. 

But life isn’t like that;  sometimes the worst happens.  God doesn't always rescue us.  We see that from the death of John the Baptist. But just as we must walk out into the dark to see the stars, sometimes we have to experience terrible darkness in our lives, in order to see the stars of God's presence in our lives. It’s then we can experience the presence of God.  Our anxious waiting can give birth to a new understanding of the peace of the Christ child. 

Whether we are waiting, like John, alone, with the threat of something dreadful over our heads, or like Elizabeth, expecting a child who will become the messenger of the Messiah, or like Mary, expecting the fulfilment of God’s promise to her, we can always wait, with the hope and peace of God in our hearts.

Sustain us, Father, with the power of your love on our journey to meet the One who is coming; strengthen our weak hands, make firm our feeble knees, and open blind eyes to the dawning of your kingdom; that our hearts may rejoice with joy and singing as we behold the majesty of our God. We ask this through your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen ( Prayer was written by Rev David Beswick, Uniting Church  website)