Waiting in Hope This Advent

By our bishop, Todd Hunter

 I pray to God—my life a prayer—and wait for what he’ll say and do.
My life’s on the line before God, my Lord, waiting and watching…

Psalm 130. 5-6 (MSG)

I miss the planning that came with Advent when I was Rector of Holy Trinity Costa Mesa. My friend and associate, Beth Khorey, and I had wonderful moments seeking to connect worship, word and table—in thoughtfulness, quiet and beauty—to God, our congregation and our formation in Christ. 2019 is my first year as an Anglican to experience Advent in a more personal, less clerical way.

Advent is my invitation to notice that expectant waiting is frustratingly difficult. It makes all of us tense and anxious. It is wearying. Just think of the last time you were in a waiting room at a hospital. They ought to call them an “I am in agony while my loved one is giving birth or in surgery” room. We have all experienced such torment, but we rarely have space and time to dig into the underlying reality of the struggle.

When we find resistance to hopeful anticipation in our thoughts or emotions, it often has to do with a lack of unfeigned, heartfelt trust. In its place, commonly, is fear or perhaps a judging of God that he doesn’t see me or care about my situation. In the moment, these feelings seem perfectly reasonable. And that twisted intuition forms an invitation for us to notice it, name it and grow through it.

Waiting reveals who we really are. As Jesus said: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile (Mark 7.15). For instance, I can get crazy when I can’t immediately know all the details in order to figure something out in my timing and make it come to pass. That reality comes from inside me. I am the perpetrator. I am not a victim of things being heaved upon me by a given set of facts or circumstances.

Rather, it is precisely the impatience and irritation associated with waiting that is, like all of life, the soil for real spiritual transformation. Romans 12:1 in The Message has long been both evocative and imaginative for me:

Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering…[in so doing] God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Making it even more plain for our use here, we might say this to ourselves: take your waiting, longing, hoping, sometimes faith-filled, other times fearful life circumstances and place them before God as an offering…[in so doing] God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

I have one last thought, gleaned from years of celebrating Advent. I feel thankful to Dallas Willard (Life Without Lack) and James K.A. Smith (You Are What you Love) for helping me along this path: I do not have to live under the tyranny of my needs, desires or wishes. I refuse to be reduced to my longings—as passionate as they may be. Yearnings and aspirations are a real part of me, a real part of being human, but just that: a part. And that part is best managed within or beneath a transcendent whole. That overarching notion is this: this is my Father’s world. He is in control even when I cannot recognize it or feel it. And his control, unlike mine, does not require hurry.

Noah waited with huge pressure upon him. Abraham had to wait patiently for the promise of a nation birthed through him. Moses waited for 40 confusing years in the desert. Israel strained under 400 silent, nervy years. The Church has been waiting in expectant anticipation of the return of Christ for 2,000 years. These periods of waiting have not harmed the people of God—they have nourished and sustained us.

Advent teaches us to notice that truth. It teaches us to pray: Come, Lord Jesus! We wait upon you. We wait upon the comings of the Spirit. With storms within and without, we prepare and anticipate under the umbrella of fully competent, Trinitarian love.

The Rt. Rev. Dr. Todd Hunter is the founding bishop of The Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others and founder and leader of The Telos Collective. He is past President of Alpha USA, former National Director for the Association of Vineyard Churches, retired founding pastor of Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Costa Mesa, CA, and author of Christianity Beyond Belief: Following Jesus for the Sake of Others, Giving Church Another Chance, The Outsider Interviews, The Accidental Anglican, Our Favorite Sins, and Our Character at Work.