A few years ago when I was doing some continuing education studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, I discovered that one of the theaters in Greenwich Village was doing a revival of Samuel Beckett's curious drama, Waiting for Godot. This avant guard play is a non-story sort of story, which laboriously tries not to develop a plot nor employ meaningful movement or action. The main characters, Estragon and Vladimir, are pitiful men who have no reason even to exist. They would probably kill themselves if they only had the courage to do so. Their sole reason for being at this place and time in history is to wait for somebody named Godot. But alas, Godot never arrives on the scene. The only other character who makes an appearance is a young messenger who, in effect, announces that Mr. Godot has told him that he will not come this evening, but perhaps tomorrow.

On the night of the performance there were no outbursts of rollicking laughter from the audience. I do not recall whispering lines of sagacious wisdom from the script before taking a subway seat on the return Broadway Express. The only effect that this evening at the theater had upon me was the creation of a temporary mood of despair. The existentialist author succeeded in his apparent objective: to foster a mood of melancholy in the audience. After all, Beckett firmly believed that we wait for God’s arrival in vain.

Much of life is the activity of waiting. We wait nine months for the birth of a child. We push along the seasons of that child’s life, awaiting the time of his or her maturation. Yet when the day of her departure for college finally arrives, we experience grief instead of joy. Why? On that day we discover that the real value of life is disclosed in the time between the times. Between promise and fulfillment, there is this eternal now in which we are present to one another.

Thus, the great tragedy is to spend our life waiting in vain, not realizing the sacredness of life while we are living it. At the end of our days we come to the sort of startling moment of truth that Gertrude Stein described in the 1920’s when she drove all the way to California, the writer’s imaginary Promised Land. She wrote, ‘When I arrived there, there was no there there.’

The biblical text discloses two types of waiting: the sort of anxious anticipation that causes us to be frozen in fear and inertia, and the vibrant from of aggressive waiting that enables the believer to participate now in the realities of a coming glory. Thus, the Kingdom of God will come like a thief in the night -- that is, when we least expect it. But we prepare for God’s coming, not by concentrating upon the future, but by seizing the present moment of joyous expectation. Otherwise, we fail to grasp the holy within the ordinary. We even fail to hear God’s arrival within the familiar voices that surround us daily. Voices like the confession of Thornton Wilder’s Emily whose ghost cries out, ‘Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? -- every, every minute?’

Still we wait with anxiety, pushing life at a faster pace. We wait years for our elevation into prominence within a prestigious company. After achieving that vocational goal, we long for retirement. Life itself becomes a waiting game. Our greatest fear is that our waiting will ultimately be futile, that we may become like an abandoned wayfarer along a roadside foolishly waiting for Godot, or the god who never arrives.

Advent is the season which dramatizes all our activity of waiting. Like the child with her moist nose pressed against a window pane in anticipation of Santa, we sense the drama of intense expectation down to the bone marrow of our being. We resonate, especially in this reflective season, with the critique of the apostle Paul when he surmised that "the whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own."

Advent is an agonizing time (and perhaps the most difficult of the year) for the one who treads upon soft sod at a certain cemetery's edge. Going home to a silent table meal is not easy during Advent. Thus, she entertains the fragile fantasy that he will come walking through that living room door on Christmas Day, just as he did before a fatal disease brought down death's curtain.

We tire of waiting for Godot, or God. We pray for world peace; yet, the saga of Middle Eastern violence deepens again this season with the latest episodes of car bombings in Jerusalem. A child beseeches God for tranquility at home, but Daddy is seeking the counsel of a divorce lawyer even before the decorations are brought from the attic. There will be fewer Christmas lights at that home this year. So some of us become anxious and fretful in our waiting. We identify with Ferrovius in George Bernard Shaw's Androcles and the Lion who, instead of offering his allegiance to Christ, made his pledge of loyalty to the Roman legion:

"In my youth I worshiped Mars, the God of War. I turned from him to serve the Christians god; but today the Christian god forsook me; and Mars overcame me and took back his own. The Christian god is not yet. He will come when Mars and I are dust; but meanwhile I must serve the gods that are, not the god that will be."

The gods that are tempt us at Advent; for we have grown impatient with the God who has not yet come in fullness. The gods that are, are easily worshiped. They are visible, tangible and always on tap. All one needs is a credit card. There is no waiting for these gods. They are the gods of instant gratification: sex without commitment, treasures without sacrifice, freedom without responsibility, birth without gestation, healing without chemotherapy, victory without sacrifice, resurrection without a cross. In short, these are gods who require no delay or inconvenience. Their sanctuaries provide no waiting rooms.

The biblical text is in constant contention with the gods of the instantaneous. The ancient prophets were people of enormous vision who spoke of God's future deliverance. They were men who patiently waited. Rarely did any of these faithful men live to see the fruition of their hopes. Isaiah, more than likely, died in Babylonian exile. But this sage who witnessed the decimation of the temple in Jerusalem cried out in pain and ecstasy, "It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it...."

"(Yahweh ) shall judge between the nations,

and shall decide for many peoples;

and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war any more."

This was not the wind of wishful thinking blowing from the lungs of a wistful holy man. This was the collective vision of hope internalized by a people in exile. This vision of hope was the dream of a homeless slave. The same words were shared by Micah and drawn to the bosom of an embattled people through many subsequent epochs of suffering. Centuries after Isaiah, the Essene monastics of Qumran held tightly to this hope, even as they were being butchered by Roman soldiers. Not one single devotee to their sect remained after the Emperor unleashed his brutal troops; but in an arid cave, every sacred line of the prophetic scroll of Isaiah remained safely hid until discovered by a Bedouin herdsman in 1948. The same vision of peace lives in the heart of humanity today; and, until it shall come to pass, this vision of shalom shall be the focus of all human dreams.

The prophet of the exile (Isaiah) confessed that "for a brief moment I abandoned you."

It has been observed by Elie Wiesel that during the most savage period of the Warsaw ghetto, in which the Jews of this Polish city were being liquidated by starvation, there was one hope that kept alive the spark of resistance. Desperate victims of the holocaust began to whisper throughout the ghetto that, if only one faithful Jew survives, Israel will arise like a phoenix from the fires of present persecution. So the Jews waited courageously for the carnage to end. In Warsaw they never ever capitulated to tyranny because they believed that at least one among them would survive in order to maintain faith in the righteousness of Yahweh.

We of this generation demand instant gratification. This is the age of the instantaneous. This is especially true in regards to our sexual ethics. ‘Why should we wait until marriage in order to be gratified sexually?’ young adults ask the church. ‘If it feels good, why wait until marriage?’ The Hedonistic culture that engulfs our youth grants no credence to the concept of delayed gratification. One teenager writes, ‘I gave in to pressure because saying yes was easier than saying no and trying to explain why not.’

Our message at Advent is that some things are authentically worth the wait. The covenant of intimacy called marriage is far more fulfilling than the instantaneous effects of a casual fling. Peace of mind, emerging from years of spiritual discipline, is far more valuable than the vaporous pleasures of an unfocused life. We enjoy a meal most of all when we have waited until the arrival of hunger pangs. The bread of life and the cup of salvation are worth the wait. Without them, we shall forever hunger and thirst.

The discipline of waiting is best known by those who have experienced grief and have maintained their faith amidst the agony of severe loss. C. S. Lewis, in his startling confession, A Grief Observed, demonstrated that a deeper solace came to him after the dark night of his soul's emptiness. The comfort that God brings is a divine gift only for those who wait in patient expectation with the vulnerability of a beggar.

Jürgen Moltmann once observed that ?patience is the greatest art of those who hope."

About five years ago, Mary suffered a massive stroke. Her speech was impaired. She could no longer walk. The quality of her life was severely limited. She remained at the Thoms Rehabilitation Center in Asheville for months. But Joe and Mary refused to surrender to despair. Through intense determination, Mary regained her ability to communicate. She now works as a volunteer receptionist at the church, giving a full dosage of inspiration to anyone who hears her voice. When she first returned to worship in a wheelchair, the congregation rose to their feet as if royalty had entered the room. Every time Mary arrives at some new plateau of achievement, her progress is the joyful talk of the entire community. It is as if Christians around the world who know her and Joe are standing on tip-toes, awaiting the moment of her recovery.

This phenomenon is remarkable, if not miraculous. But the really amazing miracle is not Mary’s healing, for she is still severely handicapped. The real miracle is Mary’s passionate spirit that continues to generate hope in the lives of all who know her. Mary’s wholeness, in fact, may await a healing that only heaven can supply. But, in the meantime, people everywhere are being transformed by the courageous and expectant witness of one of God’s remarkable saints.

The season of Advent invites us to live with a life-style of expectation. Advent people face the future without anxiety or fear. Advent people embrace the present moment with the fullness of gratitude. Why? Because the God of love has decisively acted through the advent of his Son, our Savior. Through the vibrant spirit of the servant Christ who has come, who is present, and who shall come in final glory, our hoping and waiting shall never ever be in vain.

1. Thornton Wilder, Our Town New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1957), p. 100.

2. Romans 8: 19 J. B. Phillips Translation

3. George Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion, Act II

4. Isaiah 2:2 RSV

5. Isaiah 2:4 RSV

6. Isaiah 54: 7 NIV

7. Josh McDowell and Dick Day, Why Wait: What You Need to Know About the Teen Sexuality Crisis (San Bernardino, California: Here?s Life Publishers, 1987), p. 18.

8. Jürgen Moltmann, Hope and Planning (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1971), p. 173.