The Triune God is patiently waiting for you, because you are a critical part of God’s restoration of all things.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday of Advent, year B
Texts: 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
What are you waiting for from God?
Are you hoping for what Isaiah promises, that God will restore a broken world? These exiles lost everything, including their homes, suffered invasion and destruction, and now receive God’s comfort. A road will be made to bring them home. So they’re told to hope for God to come and shepherd God’s people, gather them up, feed them, and lead them home.
Are you waiting for that kind of restoration from God? It might feel like an empty promise. To hear that God is coming to make things new, and live in a world that’s spiraling into madness, with threats of fascist dictators here, and devastating war and violence in the Middle East and Africa and Ukraine.
How long can we reasonably wait for this restoration? Isn’t urging patience just pushing off legitimate concerns and anxiety about our world into a “never will happen” future?
But maybe you’re waiting for God to do what 2nd Peter expects: wipe the slate clean.
There’s clearly some hope in the early Church for God to make a new heavens and a new earth, in their own lifetimes. Jesus spoke of it last week, Peter does again today. Some hoped God would start over to make all things new.
So there are apocalyptic promises of stars falling, moon and sun darkening, or, as we heard today, the heavens set ablaze and destroyed and the elements melted with fire. Surely if the world is as buried in problems and suffering as it seems, this is worth hoping for. Just start over, God.
But this is a beautiful creation, too. There’s still so much love happening in our homes, our city, our nation, our world, so much grace and hope. There’s still beauty and wonder in the trees and stars and flowers and lakes and whales. Why should God destroy all this just because we’ve made a mess of things?
And if this is our hope, urging patience means ignoring all the problems, avoiding trying to make a difference. If we’re getting a whole new thing, why does it matter?
And into the middle of these two visions steps our old friend John the Baptizer.
Right on cue, Second Sunday of Advent, here he is on the banks of the Jordan. And his call is to you. To me. To all. Repent – that’s John’s invitation. John is the great U-turn sign of Advent. He stands in our road, waving his arms, saying “you need to turn around, you’re on a path that leads to death.”
He’s tied to Isaiah’s promise of a straight, flat road prepared for God’s coming. But his view of the road is that it’s your path needs straightening, my path. John says that God’s Anointed is nearly here. But if we’re going in the wrong direction, we might miss it.
So John has no patience whatsoever. His urgency is unmistakeable: come to the water and wash your old life away, and turn around. Forgiveness of the past path is a part of it. But as John makes clear in Matthew and Luke, the new path you’re invited to walk involves changed behavior, changed lives. Fruit of repentance, like giving away your second coat, helping your neighbor, carrying their burden.
But John talking of repentance next to Isaiah and 2nd Peter opens up a wonder and awe we rarely consider.
Listen carefully. The One truly waiting in Advent, the Patient One, is the Triune God.
God is patiently waiting, our second reading says, for exactly what John called for: for all to come to repentance, to turn around their lives, find God’s path of wholeness and healing for them and the world. God isn’t slow to keep the promise of restoration. It’s God’s patience that somehow all might turn around that explains why we’re still here.
This clears up a lot. If God is going to destroy all and start over, then, as Jesus said last week, we have no idea of the time. We certainly have no say whether God chooses this or not. So we can safely ignore this whole apocalyptic possibility. If it happens, it happens. All we can do, Jesus said, is be about our work.
Which leads us back to Isaiah, and God’s restoration of a broken, suffering world. Because – and we know this well from Jesus – if God is going to care for all the sheep, gather them up, feed them, bring them home, it will be through you and me and all who follow the way of Christ. And God patiently waits for you and me to repent, turn around, find God’s path that leads to all God’s sheep safe and secure.
And if this is so, consider, Peter says, how you will live. Consider, John says, if you need to turn.
Neither gives a lot of helpful detail. You’ll have to sort out that in your own life. Peter asks what kind of lives of holiness and godliness you might live, finding a way to be at peace. How might your life be more tuned to God’s way, God’s love, God’s healing? Peter asks.
John’s call to turn around is its own answer. What in your life harms you, hurts someone else, harms the world? What habits, ways, plans, finances, opinions, keep you from freely being a part of God’s restoration? If Jesus needs you to feed God’s sheep, what turn-arounds will you need today, tomorrow, next week, to do that?
John also promises you’ll have help. His water baptism was symbolic washing, reminding people of their repentance. But the Anointed One of God baptizes with the Holy Spirit, he says. God’s Spirit lives in you, gives you insight into what turns to make on the path, sometimes even calls out in John’s voice that you’re going the wrong way. Listen for that voice, that Wisdom. But also trust this: you have the strength of God’s Spirit to help you in this turning, too. You’re not doing this alone.
The Triune God’s playing a long game here.
A thousand years is like a day to God, and a day like a thousand years. We’re not remotely capable of such patience, to lovingly wait and watch as each child of God chooses whether to turn around, to turn into God’s way or not. So it can seem as if nothing is ever getting better.
But if you’re waiting for God to act, you have your answer. God’s waiting on you. So, dear ones, consider what kind of person you want to be in leading a life of holiness and godliness. God loves you so deeply, so permanently, so inviolably, that God will patiently wait for you to decide what you will do about this world, about your life. But God also knows how amazing it will be when you and I and every child of God turn and join in the way of restoration and healing God is making.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
