Lo, This Is Our God.

It will be said on that day, "Lo, this is our God; 

we have waited for him; so that he might save us."

-Isaiah 25: 9a

This comes from one of the lectionary texts for this week.  It's one I didn't choose to incorporate, but it's one that gnaws at me in a non-sermonizing sort of way.  We mulled it over in study group yesterday, and we had all sorts of pastor-like thoughts about historical context and word associations.  We talked about what images grabbed us, but when we got to the: "well what does this say?" question we just kind of looked at each other and said, "I guess it means we're supposed to wait."  And then we talked some more about what it might look like to wait for God and decided that it wouldn't make a very good sermon and moved on.

We don't like waiting as a course of action very much at all.  We humans are chronically impatient creatures.  We don't want to wait for solutions to our problems, we don't want to wait for the rewards we covet, we don't want to wait for anything.  I spend a good portion of any given day trying to read broadly about crucial matters in the church and in the world.  I try to read varied opinions and different perspectives, and I find it interesting that almost no one ever counsels patience.  Whether it's politics or a debate about what songs to sing in church, no one ever wants to wait for God to act, it just seems like a bad idea.

Most of us pastor types are no better than anyone else, we want people to get with the changing, I mean, as long as they're going generally our direction.  In most cases, waiting seems like wasting time.  After all, a definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.

Waiting may be an exception, at least if we're going to take the Bible seriously, because people wait for God a whole awful lot.  Of course there are the odd exceptions, like if you are in the course of an oncoming train and you decide to just wait until you know exactly which direction is the best escape, maybe you ought to just act.  And there is certainly no shortage of on-coming trains, but waiting patiently for the Lord may be the only sane thing we can do at this particular moment in the life of the church.  Our attempts to modernize lead to alienation, our attempts to cater to niches and try to meet all sorts of specialized needs leads to an incoherent, stumbling existence, where we just don't know what we're doing, which then leads to a crisis of actually not knowing who we are.

"But," come the voices, "We can't just do nothing!"

Indeed, it doesn't seem prudent, we need to adapt, we need to change, we've got to solve this problem and plan our way out of this pit.  We need a strategy.  We need measurable goals.  We need benchmarks and mission statements.  We need to do more advertising, better advertising, more outreach, better outreach, we need a gimmick, a slogan, some T-shirts.

We need more activity and services, we need more mission projects, we just need to DO something, because what we are ain't working, at least not the way we think it should.

I read an article this morning about how, after decades of churches trying to keep up with cultural styles of worship music, people (at least a few people, mostly pastor types and religious bloggers) are returning to the traditional liturgies and kind of liking them.  I so want him to be right.  I would love nothing more than to put worship wars in the rearview mirror and just go back to the good old, tried and true Presbyterian forms, which may not be high liturgy to some, but are consistent and predictable in the same ways.  (If you're curious the liturgical order of mainline protestant denominations, in order from high to low goes something like (Episcopalian/Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Pentecostal).

The problem I have with the perspective, is that it still focuses the debate about worship, on what a given person "likes."  And while I spoke in favor of "liking" your theology, I would caution against letting your personal preference run your worshiping life.  If you do, you will channel surf worshiping communities and thus never really come to rest and wait in any one.

There is a typical huge mega church on the other side of town from our little Presbyterian Church, and at session meetings and such, we always hear about New Life this and New Life  that, and how we should be more like New Life because they have thousands of participants every weekend.

"But," I say, "we're not them, we're us, and being us has some good points, and those good points for us are different than the good points for them."  I presume, in this day and age, that the reason why people come to us, is because they want to do what we do.  Would I enjoy more people joining in what we do?  Certainly.  Do I think we ought never to consider new ideas or work to adapt to the community we're in?  By no means, as Paul likes to say.  But I think we also need to get more comfortable with waiting.

Waiting is doing something.  However, waiting, when you're in relationship with a God who has an eternal scope of vision, can be uncomfortable to say the least.

Too much dissatisfaction with what we are now prevents us from living in the "Eternal Now," and essentially makes it more difficult for us to participate in the Body of Christ.  If we, out of fear of what we might lose, or anxiety about the future, wander away from our participation in the incarnation, we are then utterly lost, and we will never find a vision to hold us on course.

As a Pastor, I try to balance the sense of God's action in what we are now, with a prophetic vision of what we might be, which is what Isaiah does as well, I think, and what the Psalms do for us again and again.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.