"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."
A couple of our texts include a phrase about waiting on the Lord.
First we have these beautiful words from Isaiah. Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not be faint.--If only they wait for the Lord.
I have known several faithful people who have adopted these words, "I'm waiting on the Lord," almost as a kind of mantra.
First there was a dear sweet woman at the parish that I served in Philadelphia. I would visit her in her home because she didn't get out much anymore. There was really nothing wrong with her except her advanced age. She could get around fine, when she had too she even took the bus to the store to do some shopping. She had decent energy but oh how she complained. She meant well and she loved our visits, she loved her family too, though it seemed they could never visit often enough or for a long enough duration. Her life had become rather empty and she seemed like she was just waiting around. In fact when I would go over to visit I would ask how she was doing and the answer was always, "not so good vicar, I'm just waiting on the Lord". Just waiting on the Lord and oh she sounded tired and weak when she said it. Just waiting on the Lord for life to be over!
And then there was another woman, Betty, not quite as physically well but just as elderly. She walked, ever so slowly, to church on Sundays and other times and was amazing at serving people. She would serve food to bereaved families at funerals. She would serve snacks to the Vacation Bible School kids. She would serve on the alter guild and at the alter. And she would certainly serve the Lord with a prayer for anyone at anytime, often whether they asked for it or not. I would sometimes visit her at home too but though I would often run into her doing one thing or another for someone else. Watching her great grandchildren or tending her sick neighbors garden, even when her health was bad, she would call the neighbors that she worried about and she would write cards to the children that she cared for. I actually often worried that she was doing too much and would try to lighten her load, and slow her down.
But when I would visit, I would ask her the same thing. How are you doing today Betty, and she would give me the same answer, almost. I'm doing great vicar, she would say, I'm just waiting on the Lord. Just waiting for the Lord.
Now her words were the same as the woman from the first story. They both knew that they were waiting to return to the Lord, so to speak, but their emphasis and their meaning were entirely different.
One was waiting for it all to be over. The other was waiting on the Lord hand and foot, heart and soul, with all that she had and all that she was and she loved it and she was not weary and she was not faint but her strength was renewed.
And it wasn't just because she understood waiting to be service you see, it was because she knew that she had been waited upon. I would watch her at communion and at the confession and
forgiveness, at remembrance of baptism and she always looked like she knew God was
saying the words just for her. She knew that she was made whole,
healed, forgiven and completed so that she was free and she knew that that
freedom allowed her to wait on the Lord.
Betty served because Jesus served her first.
We have a story today from early in the gospel of Mark about Jesus going to the house of Simon and Andrew. Simon's mother-in-law, the woman of the house, was sick in bed and as soon as Jesus heard about that he went to her bedside and he healed he. And the very next thing that she did was stand up and serve the Lord and the disciples!
Now to our ears today this doesn't sound particularly nice. As soon as her fever cleared she hopped up and started serving the men in her house. But there are a couple of things about that. First, serving would have been an honor and a cultural privilege to her as the elder and most honored woman of the house. Being unable to serve would have felt about as bad as the fever itself did. But there is more to this story than honor. She knew that a great man, a prophet, at the least, and healer, maybe even a real agent of God, maybe even the son of God had knelt down beside her, in her own home, taken her hand and waited on her in her illness so what response could she possibly have but to serve, to wait on people in his name.
She served because Jesus served her first.
Now going back to my story about Betty. Jesus had never knelt down by Betty's bed and cured her of all her illness. In fact she was living with several major health problems and she knew that she wasn't very long for this world but, she would tell you that she had seen the Lord. She had seen him bring a husband back to her from the war. She had seen him bless her with children. She had seen him comfort her when she lost that same husband and when she went through terrible times in the raising of one or two of those children. God had worked in her life through her church and her family and the very world around her. And she had paid attention!
She knew the times when Jesus had waited on her, almost as if she had seen him kneel down by her bedside and so she was ready and willing to wait on Him. Just like Simon's mother-in-law had paid attention in the midst of her fever to the busy and important man, Jesus, with crowds following him, with well educated men asking questions with people bringing out those who were more sick than her. She had paid attention to him leaving all of that behind to kneel down by her bed and pray with her and make her whole.
Because of this, because of Jesus and his self-giving love for them these women served without thought, they got up and waited on him, in Betty's case by waiting on his children in this world.
Again we hear the words of the prophet Isaiah: "those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength."
This text can have two meanings. We use it sometimes at funerals. As a sort of final affirmation of the lives of those to whom the Lord was faithful. But I think the most faithful reading of this verse is one that refers to how we live. We live as people who have been served by God. God works in our lives. Forgives our sins, completes us where we are broken, mends our relationships and lives among us to take on our lives, good and bad. Jesus said he came to serve, not to be served. He came to wait upon us.
And so we live as people who serve the Lord, who wait on the Lord because the Lord waits on us. Amen
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment