Jack Hardaway
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Waiting and waiting and waiting.
What do we do while waiting?
It can depend on just what we are waiting for.
Waiting for an oil change is different than waiting for surgery.
Waiting for a paycheck is different than waiting to give birth.
Waiting for a court date is different than waiting for an honored guest.
We are in a strange kind of waiting these days, waiting for a vaccine. It is its own kind of waiting. What do we do between now and then?
And so it is with the kingdom of heaven, waiting for a long time, and waiting for an accounting.
What do we do with our waiting, and hoping, and expecting?
It is its own particular kind of waiting.
The parables of Jesus are frequently about that experience, of what it is like to wait for God.
Waiting for the Kingdom of Heaven is as if we suddenly receive a huge windfall, in one case 75 years of pay checks, in another 30 years of pay checks, and in another 15 years of paychecks.
The idea is that it is an extraordinary sum.
The treasure of the Gospel, what do we do with it? The windfall of the Gospel. The Manna from heaven. The bread of angels.
In the case of this parable the grace of the Kingdom inspires a fruitful and active life of discipleship. Not a fearful passivity, but rather a courageous and hope filled life that isn’t afraid of risk or failure. The courage, and the hope to face the pain in the world and do something about it. The courage and the hope to serve the poor. The courage and the hope to be set free from hate, and grievance, and guilt.
Waiting for the kingdom of heaven is like being inspired and active, anticipating an accounting, up against an impossible deadline.
The gift is so big beyond imagining. Can I say thank you enough? How many ways can I be thankful? I can never do enough, but I’m sure going to try.
Can I ever be thankful enough?
Is that how I wake up, how I go through the day? Doing the work of thanksgiving for the gift of Jesus?
Will those words be my dying breath? Thank you.
What stops us from that? The ministry of the great thanksgiving? Do we keep the feast?
There is an urgency to the life of thanksgiving. A sense of the shortness of time.
There is also the work of endurance to giving thanks. Being in it for the long haul. On and on and on.
That kind of waiting. Both of those at once. That is what the kingdom of heaven is like.
God waits.
What is God’s waiting like? Timeless waiting.
God’s waiting is Jesus.
That is what God’s waiting is, the man of Jesus.
That is what waiting for the kingdom of heaven looks like, Jesus.
Jesus is what life looks like waiting for the kingdom.
Jesus is God’s kind of waiting, the fullness of waiting, the cup running over.
He is the parable of God.
How can I be thankful enough? How many ways can I say thank you?
I am running out of time and at the same time I have all the time in the world.
As the psalm says today, “So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.”
Waiting, and waiting, and waiting.
For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves, gave them beaucoups of dollars and told them, hurry up and wait.
Hurry up and wait.