THOUGHTS OF A MONK

Encounter: "Wait on the Lord"

February 2004

Imagine yourself in a busy restaurant. Your waiter comes over to your table to take your order and you are not really ready yet to order so the waiter, being impatient and thinking about the other customers he may have to serve says: "when you’re ready I’ll come back." In our modern, fast paced culture where 30-second sound bites are about as long as our attention span, it is not surprising to find harried waiters responding this way. By contrast, look at a book on the British Monarchy and check out the photographs of Royal dinners from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. What a different world. Imagine a huge banquet hall and a long rectangle table with guests in formal attire sitting around the table together with Queen Victoria. And standing behind each guest is a waiter. And what are they doing? Waiting. Waiting for the guest to express a need to which the waiter will attend. In the meantime, there they stand and wait. Hence the word waiter! This is what they do and they take their task very seriously.

Now these waiters will only be there for the course of the dinner, but Simeon and Anna in today’s gospel devoted virtually their entire lives to waiting, waiting for the Lord, waiting to see, and touch the promised one who would be the salvation of the world. Many exegetes debate the question of how long Simeon waited, but Anna, we are told, waited 84 years. What a contrast, 30-second sound bite versus 84 years!

We don’t want to wait in line for anything. Stores have banks of check out stations to keep lines short. We order something over the Internet and we want it now, second-day air please! I don’t have time to read a book I’ll listen to it on tape while I do something else. And isn’t that the underlying point: While I do something else. Just like our modern waitress, when you’re ready I’ll come back and take your order. And left unsaid is the phrase "while I do something else." Its economics, its productivity: Getting more done with less is the measure of increased productivity. It’s the standard that runs our economy. It’s ingrained in our culture. As long as productivity is rising, all is well. It is also the cause of greater stress in people’s lives, heart attacks, addictive behavior; you name it, we’ve figured out how to turn creativity into a cross to bear.

You’ve heard of 7-Up, the Un-cola? And now we have Golden Oreos, that is Oreos without chocolate, I’d call them the un-Oreo. Well, we might say that waiting is the Un-doing. It’s the opposite of doing. No wonder we don’t do it very well.

And yet, waiting is also about being expectant. It’s about actively anticipating something, but not being anxious about it. It’s a sense of inner peace that is sustainable despite all the chaos of our world. Simeon and Anna lived at a time of great upheaval, but they chose not to get caught up in that upheaval. Anna, especially, is a sign for us today. She was widowed after only 7 years of marriage. We get no sense of her being bitter over this. She devoted herself to prayer and worship in the Temple, waiting for the one who would bring salvation to Jerusalem. And when that one came, she was overjoyed and went out to tell everyone about it. This is better than finding the lost sheep or the lost drachma of last Sunday’s gospel. What better cause to celebrate than by telling everyone you see that you found salvation? She prepared herself for contact with God, she never ceased to hope and when the revelation came she was ready.

We want an encounter with God too, but we really don’t have time to wait for it. We’re too busy. Can’t come to the wedding feast, I’ve got to attend to all my other more important work. We can’t stop long enough in our busy lives to prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ into our lives. And if we take time to wait on the Lord, will our frustration at the waiting derail our effort?

This gospel is also about the sign value of these events in pointing out or affirming that Jesus is the awaited Messiah. We have an advantage over Simeon and Anna in that we know about Jesus and we don’t have to wait 84 years for him to come. We also speak of his coming again. But we may miss that too because we’re just too busy to wait for him. We may not even notice him.

When we withdraw to our special place to pray, meditate or contemplate, do we ever imagine Jesus Christ sitting next to us? How would our conversation with God, or with Jesus, change if he were sitting right next to us? We might have an icon of Christ in our prayer corner or in our room to aid in our prayer. But what if we became like Simeon and imagined Jesus as close to us as he was when he rested in Simeon’s arms? Our feast day texts, drawing from Isaiah, speak of Christ as a burning coal, the purifier and fulfillment of the Law, a new reality that is too hot to handle. Indeed, having Christ right next to us may cause us to face the pain that a purification of our lives can cause; can we take it?

Take the time. Anna’s 84 years at it may be heroic beyond our means. But at least take those joyous words of the Psalmist to heart. "Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into God’s presence with thanksgiving." Think of that Royal banquet; picture those waiters standing behind Queen Victoria’s guests. Think of each guest as Jesus Christ himself. What wouldn’t we do to wait on the Lord?