Waiting
Simone Weil, a favorite mystic and philosopher of mine, said, “Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.”
Imagine the other phrases she could’ve inserted at the beginning of the sentence.
Certainty...is the foundation of the spiritual life.
Absolute faith...is the foundation of the spiritual life.
But no, it’s “waiting patiently in expectation.”
Perhaps Weil read the Psalms, like the one that we hold close today.
I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in God’s word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Do you feel equipped to wait? Is that part of your spiritual toolkit? How does patience factor into your interior life?
We are all caught right now, in this world uniting and upending pandemic, in a moment of waiting. Even those who still are in the midst of frantic work, at hospitals, in food service, and many more still must wait with us. Even those of us who are busy still do not know the outcome of the pandemic. We predict, project, hope to understand those graphs, those curves, but we still don’t know.
We all must wait to know, to see how we will be called from death into life.
Martha waited. Mary waited. Perhaps Lazarus waited, too.
There’s a cruelty to the story of Lazarus being raised that I have a difficult time wrapping my head around. Why doesn’t Jesus just save Lazarus from his illness in the first place? I share in what Mary and Martha say, “If you had only been here, Lord!” None of this would’ve happened.
Yet Jesus is on his own timeline, his own path. We humans have not had much success forcing God to participate on our timeline, to heal when we would like. Instead we must wait. We sit in the middle days, with Mary and Martha, unsure of where this is going.
I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in God’s word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Yet God, the mysterious “I AM,” that is, I was, I am, and I will be, both arrives to us in the future, but does not abandon us in the now.
We will still wait for what we hope for, for what we want. Our desires to wish this all away will not be realized quickly. I trust that you are sharing in the grief that I feel, of missing family and friends, missing our church routines, our space. Grieving the loss of being able to go out to eat, to not have fear about a hug or handshake. Grieving the losses we know are still to come. We wait for God to show up in ways we recognize. We wait as we continue to hear that impossibly heartbreaking word, “indefinitely.”
Yet God is already here.
Jesus said to Martha, “Your brother will rise again.”
Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” I get it, she seems to say. The resurrection will be later, at the very end.
And what does Jesus say?
“I am.”
“I am the resurrection and the life.”
The life, the living, the right now. Even while Lazarus was in his grave, wrapped and bound, Jesus still was the life.
When we say, “How long, O Lord?” we are not saying God isn’t with us. We simply give voice to the way that we don’t quite understand how God is at work in our lives. We wait because we don’t know. And because we are people of faith, we learn to be okay with the discomfort of not knowing.
Some have proposed that Easter is the end of our waiting. Let’s wait no more, let’s end this. Let’s end our waiting chocolate, trumpets and hymns, churches packed full, they say. Some imagine that is the resurrection. That our pageantry is the resurrection. And yet that’s not what Jesus said. He says, instead, “I am the resurrection and the life.” We have the resurrection and the life with us right now. We can leave our building empty, waiting. We can be patient, I promise.
It’s not just about us. Simone Weil also said, “Humility is attentive patience.” Which is to say, we are humble enough to care for others for doing what we can. Leaving our building empty, while keeping our connections full. We can give it a week, a month, however long it is to wait, humbly knowing we do not have all the answers. We can wait in God’s presence because God does not live at 415 Northfield Road. God dwells where you are right now.
“Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.”
For you, my God, I can wait. I can quiet, and imagine how you are here with me even now, in my living room, in my home. I can wait for the outcomes I desire, trusting that you are a resurrection I could never imagine on my own.