Early this week, I prepared a sermon for today dealing with the story of Zacchaeus. But by Friday morning I was convinced in my heart that I needed to put that sermon on hold and preach it on another Sunday. I am not sure if it is my own anxieties that motivated me to say what I am about to say or whether it has been the working of the Holy Spirit or perhaps a bit of both. The result is I am convinced that what I need to think about and talk about—at least for myself, and I suspect for some of you as well—is what the Gospel has to say about our having to wait.

For weeks I had assumed that late Tuesday or at the latest sometime Wednesday morning, the long campaign season would come to an end and our nation would be clear about who our next president will be. We might celebrate the results, or we might mourn the results, but the issue would be settled. We would know, and knowing we could begin to adjust and begin getting ready to relate to a new leader of our nation.

As we all know, life did not work out as we expected. The issue is not clearly and finally settled. On the one hand, Governor Bush appears to have won by a narrow margin, but on the other hand, the required recount has delayed a clear and final decision. The cloudy situation in Florida has expanded into a cloudy situation for our whole nation.

Each of us and our entire nation, and to some extent all the other nations are in a waiting mode. We must wait for the slow and careful process of recounting to be completed, and even then we may be forced to continue to wait even longer while legal battles are fought in the courts. It is going to be several days, and perhaps even many weeks, before we as a nation are out of the cloudy situation and moving on in the sunshine of clarity.

We Americans are not good at waiting. Even at stop lights, if we do not move quickly enough when the light turns green someone behind us will start honking. People driving too slowly on the freeway and keeping us from speeding to the appointment we are already late for cause our stomach juices to flow and our impatience to build to the point we are struggling with irritation and anger. We are part of an instant mashed potatoes, microwave culture. Our attention span has shrunk significantly in the last few decades. If the TV program does not interest us immediately, we click through the channels looking for a program that can capture our interest within the two or three seconds we give it. We will even spend several hundred if not thousands of dollars just to have a computer that is a few microseconds faster than the one we own. We are an instant gratification culture. This is why so many people go into excessive debt rather that save until they can afford whatever it is they want—and want right now. We are a "can do" and "do it right now" society.

All this means that waiting—especially waiting for something important to us—is not merely difficult for us to do; such waiting causes us to experience anxiety and the stress of anxiety. We want what we want when we want it. We want decisions that must be made by others to be made quickly so we can quickly move on to other things on our agendas.

But, as we all know, there are times in life when we must wait; we have no choice in the matter. The plane did not arrive on time; therefore the plane did not leave on time; therefore we missed our next connection, and we had to wait and wait. Or to mention a more important kind of waiting—our child has been seriously injured in a car wreck and we must wait while the doctors try to discover the extent of the injuries; and then we must wait the agonizing hours while difficult surgery is being done; and then we must spend long hours in the intensive care waiting room, being afraid our child might have life-crippling injuries, or worse, that our child might die, or most terrible of all, that our child might be just a biological vegetable. Waiting is not only difficult. Waiting can be hell.

But whether it is waiting for the phone to ring telling us whether or not we got the job we wanted, or waiting for a delayed flight, or waiting in a hospital waiting room, or waiting for a clear and final decision about who has been elected president, waiting is not something we in this society do well.

I struggle with waiting. So, often when there is nothing I can do that will impact what is going to happen, my mind rushes to imagine worst case scenarios. "What if ..." kind of fear can easily fill my mind; my thoughts seem to race to embrace all sorts of terrible possibilities. I suppose all parents of teenagers have experienced this kind of "what if" crazies when their son or daughter is not merely late, but very, very late. Waiting, when we can do little or nothing about the situation, is not easy for us to do, and our crazy "what if" imaginations make the waiting even worse.

This is bad enough, but to have others dump their "what if" fears on top of ours, makes it even worse. Fear can spread like a destructive virus.

So can anxiety. You probably remember one of the classic definitions of anxiety. It is that anxiety is fear without an object. Anxiety is feeling a kind of fear, but not being able to say with clarity exactly what we are really afraid of.

Since last Tuesday’s election, many people in our nation have been suffering an attack of acute anxiety. And, quite frankly, the anxiety is being heightened by TV commentators and radio talk show hosts who are vying for ratings by encouraging and intensifying "What if ..." fears. For some people, waiting and not knowing is so painful they jump from dealing with anxieties and begin to believe their "what ifs" are no longer "what ifs"; they begin behaving as if their scary thoughts are really the way it is. They are like the man who was told he might have cancer. He found it so difficult to live with the anxiety of not knowing for sure he chose to assume he did not have long to live and began preparing to die.

Waiting has never been easy for us human beings. But it is especially difficult for us who live in a society known for its impatience, and in an age when computers speed through data, making complex computations in a tiny fraction of a second. But there are times when the way life really is makes us wait.

How shall we do our waiting? This is a very important question because the wrong kind of waiting will contribute to making matters worse—not only for ourselves, but also for others. Wrong waiting leads to acting out of our anxiety-driven fantasies. And when we act out of these fantasies we usually make a mess of things—both for ourselves and for others.

So, how are we to wait? Throughout the Bible we run across a variety of expressions that say to the reader: "Wait on the Lord." One of the most familiar of these is the one that was read this morning.

Listen again to that passage. ²⁷Why do you say . . . "My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God"? That is, why are you increasing your fears with all sorts of negative "What if ..." thinking? Why are you allowing anxieties and fears to shape what you are thinking and saying and doing?

²⁸ Have you not known? Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God,

the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary;

his understanding is unsearchable.

²⁹ He gives power to the faint,

and strengthens the powerless.

³⁰ Even youths will faint and be weary,

and the young will fall exhausted;

³¹ but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,

they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

they shall run and not be weary,

they shall walk and not faint.

Throughout the Bible is the truth Paul most clearly stated when he wrote that we are saved through faith. Or as Ephesians 2:8 puts it: We are saved by grace through faith. ... It is through faith in God and God’s grace that we are saved. Or to say this in other words, when we live trusting God and God’s love we are made whole and are our best selves. It is this faith, this trust, this confidence in God that sets us free from the anxieties and fears that would lead us into crazy thinking and inappropriate behavior that only makes matters worse.

Paul in Romans 8 made a statement that sometimes seems not only strange, but even a little far fetched. We know [that is, "by faith we know"] that in everything God works for good with those who love him. (8:28) Now Paul was not saying that those who love God have everything turn out the way they want. What he was saying is that even when the worst happens, when we live confident in God and striving to do what God wants, then, even in the worst of situations God works for good. This is part of what the message of the cross is. Even the crucifixion of Jesus, which is the result of human behavior at its worst, has been used by God for good. If God can take the worst we humans have done—namely the crucifixion of his son—and transform it into the saving event for the whole world, then certainly God can take whatever happens to us, whether it be what we want or the very thing we do not want, and use it for good.

How are we to wait? We are to wait for the Lord. We are to wait, in confident hope and expectation, even if we have all the bad things happen to us that happened to Paul. Paul, even after experiencing personal slander, great injustice, many beatings, often being jailed, and the threat of torture and death, still proclaimed: If God is for us, who is against us? (Romans 8:31)

Sometimes life makes us wait. And waiting is difficult for us—especially for us. It is so difficult that if we are not careful, we will start thinking and talking and behaving in ways that not only make our lives worse, but also the lives of others. We are to wait, trusting God—trusting God is for us and not against us, trusting God can and does work for good in all situations—even in those situations that are not what we wanted.

 

God give us the faith we need to wait. Help us know and believe what Isaiah knew and believed: that even in hard times those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Amen.

Pastoral Prayer:

God, we thank you for being our help in ages past and our hope for years to come. We ask you to give us the faith we need to deal with the present. In the midst of our joys and good times, help us be sensitive to the generosity of your amazing grace. And when we must face difficulties and endure hard times—even bad times—enable us to live through these times, facing what we must face confident that you are with us and trusting that you will somehow make good use of what we are going through.

God, the last few days have not been easy for the citizens of this nation and especially difficult for the candidates for the highest offices in this land and their families. We ask you to give them and each of us the peace of soul that is beyond understanding. Bless all of us with an extra measure of patience. Give us some of your wisdom so that we are more able to see our situation from your perspective. Free us from any fears, resentments and angers that hinder our ability to be our best selves. Enable each of us to deal with whatever we are facing in ways that are pleasing to you. Make us so sensitive to your grace at work in our lives that our words and deeds are motivated by the same kinds of concerns Christ had for all persons. Set us free from bondage to self-centeredness so that we can live as you intend us to live.

God, enable us in all situations to live the prayer Jesus taught us: "Our Father ..."