Sermons

Embracing Uncertainty

Advent is often described as a season of waiting.
Waiting, so much waiting. But waiting for what?
We don’t know.
We walk the path each year through the seasons.
Through the uplifting and horrible parts because all lives have those seasons.
Seasons of waiting. Of watching.
Times when we do not know what we are waiting or watching for
In a way, we are always waiting.
Waiting for the phone to ring, The knock at the door
The sun to come up to end an anxious night before the worst day of your life.
Waiting to find out if they got the job.
If the chemo is working,
If the election has been called.
So, we tell ourselves stories. Stories to make sense of the waiting.
Advent is not a story about Jesus.
Advent is a story about our very human reaction to God.
The reaction of a limited, finite creature
to its awesome, unquantifiable, ineffable Creator.

Is it any wonder that we are anxious?
Is it any wonder that we often seek to claim more knowledge about God, about everything, than we
truly have?
We don’t know what is going to happen next.
So, we tell ourselves – or rather, centuries of Church Fathers and Theologians tell us that it always
was going to be thus.
That Isaiah foresaw it all:
A baby, a stable, a starry night
Some kings swing by on the way across town.
This story gets told and packaged.
A tale that we have heard so many times that we no longer listen to it. Maybe because the rough
edges have all been knocked off,
It is so shiny and smooth. Maybe it’s the phenomenal soundtrack,
It doesn’t speak to us.
We know what it means. We have heard it to death.
But, Beloveds, the Prophets are not soothsayers.
They don’t predict the future; they are truth-tellers.
They tell you why you’re in it up to your neck, and they dispense advice about how to get your act
together and get right with your God.
What is Advent about now? What does Advent mean to us now?
Not knowing is not the same as knowing nothing.
We are in uncertainty. That isn’t anything new.
I argue that it’s not a bad thing or unusual thing
I’ll go so far as to say Certainty is what we should pitch overboard.
Certainty. It is an illusion.

It is a lie.
It is a lie we tell ourselves.
The path to uncertainty is to divest ourselves of the illusion and lies that tell us we know the story; we
know the history, we know the future.
When we grip what we know so tightly, we cannot collect any more knowledge or experience.
When we say we know all there is to know, then we cease to allow our knowledge to deepen, mature, or change.

We are finite creatures, and when we draw a line under what we know,
we are exponentially increasing what we cannot know.
Because we aren’t letting anything else in.
And that takes so much energy.
It is exhausting.
And then anxiety seeps in
Like flood waters, it comes up through the floorboards, under the door, and through every gap in our walls.
Bailing is not gonna save us.
We need to learn to swim.

This finitude, this anxiety,
why not acknowledge and embrace it? Make our peace with it?
We do not know. We cannot know.
We are Uncertain.
John the Baptist says, “I do not know.
There is one beyond me who will know.
I am telling you to look past me to the one who will come after me.”
The Baptizer’s diet and sartorial choices are a testament to this way of life.
Wild honey and locusts are found foods.
Not cultivated, planted, and harvested.
He lives on what is provided by the Almighty.
His clothing is fashioned from the material from which tents are made.
He is not holding onto a place in this world.
He does what he can with what he has. “I baptize you with water.”
He recognizes what is beyond him. “The one after me will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
When Mary is asked, when her consent is sought BY THE ALMIGHTY
to play a role in the revolution
Not to lead it but to make the leading of it possible.
she says, “Here am I, the servant of the lord. Let it be with me according to your word.” She can
imagine how this will likely end. You don’t speak of your child casting the mighty from their thrones
and sending the rich away empty without a good idea that your child will pay a great price for that.
And you’ll have to wait, wait for that other shoe to drop. Wait for the price you’ll have to witness; that
your boy will have to pay.
She grasps that accepting this task will upset the apple cart of her engagement with Joseph.
That her motives and her actions will be suspect.
She lets go of her expectations. She. Lets. Go.
Just like the disciples will leave behind their fishing nets, tax collection booth, jug of water at the well
to answer the call.

Did the Baptizer, Mary, and the Disciples have anxiety amidst their letting go of what they each
thought their life would be?
I have no doubt.
Hear this: None of them were asked to do it alone. None of us are asked to do this alone. God is with
us. Emmanuel.
Think of it as Anxiety with a side of trust
What does trusting God look like?
Doing what you were asked to do:

Love your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.
And love your neighbor as yourself.

Sometimes it’s asking for help.
Sometimes, it’s answering that call for help.
For Emmanuel to happen — We have to say yes
We are God’s hands and feet in this world.
As the sages tell us:

“You are not obligated to complete the work,
but neither are you free to desist from it.”

What are you waiting for?