“Are you the one to come or shall we look for another?”
Are you patient when you are waiting?
I don’t know about you but I’m,
I’m not good at waiting; particularly in lines.
In particular, any form of line at the grocery store.
When I go to Costco, I always look for the shortest line, number one
and then when I am in the shortest line,
I’m comparing who is moving faster.
If some other line is moving faster,
I jump line right away.
Then as soon as I get into that line,
some other line is moving faster, I go there.
Then I’m measuring in my head,
I’m calculating the efficiency of this cashier.
I’m wondering “How long, why is it that so long.
Oh my Gosh, really? No,
look, it’s over there, it is faster.”
Thankfully, it is my inner voice.
Not my outer voice because that could be a little bit embarrassing.
And then eventually I get to the cash register and
like as if that 20 seconds or 60 seconds
would have made that much of a deal.
But, that is the problem, we are waiting.
We want things now.
I have thought about this quite a bit
because I am quite impatient about a line.
I do not know whether it happens to you,
whether it is a line at Costco or
whether it is lines at Starbucks or maybe it is TSA.
One of the reasons why I am impatient is
because I have false expectations. Right?
At the root of this is the false expectation
that there should be no line at Costco.
That would cost more money if you have that many cashiers;
and they would reassign them.
That would not happen.
But even if there were more cashiers,
I have the false expectation that I will always get the shortest line
and the most efficient and effective cashier in the world.
I know I don’t say that out loud
but that is the root cause of this frustration
because someone other than me has a shorter line
and they are more effective and more efficient.
I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this
although I probably have broken it down
a little bit more than most people.
But the reality is we all have false expectations,
which is why we get frustrated with one another
whether it be with our spouse over doing this or doing that;
or whether it be at the Costco line
or some other cashier’s line for food or TSA.
We tend to get caught up in our own little world,
which is fed by really small pieces of information and mostly self-centered.
I suppose the good and the bad news is
that it has been going on for a long time
because John the Baptist had the same thing.
John the Baptist had false expectations.
His were way more significant than standing in line.
Remember John had seen Jesus
at the very beginning of his public ministry
when he had baptized him in the Jordan river.
And now, it is days before he gets his head chopped off;
and he is questioning himself and Jesus.
“Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”
And why? Why is he impatiently waiting?
Because his expectations are very different from what Jesus is doing.
John the Baptist was fiery.
He blasted words of condemnation
“You are going to go to hell if you don’t repent!”
and he went out into the desert,
telling people how bad they were.
And that God’s wrath was at hand.
His expectation of his Messiah,
the Messiah, was going to be the warrior God
who was going to fulfill his expectations;
that he was going to come and blast them
and give them a good dose of this God’s judgment.
Along comes Jesus, who does not give judgment but gives love.
He doesn’t harangue them, he heals them.
He doesn’t condemn them, he includes them.
He goes to the furthest extremes.
He goes to the widows, the sick and the orphaned
who were considered untouchable, and he welcomes them.
And even goes to have dinner at their homes.
This is not the expectation of John the Baptist.
John the Baptist is not confident anymore.
Here he is, he has spent his entire life
proclaiming the Kingdom of God is at hand
and now the one who is bringing that
John asks, “Are you it?”
He’s saying “I’m not really sure here.
You don’t fit my image.”
Jesus doesn’t even say what he does;
he said, “Look at what happens;
just look at what happens and tell John the Baptist
what you see and what you hear.”
And so they give witness to it;
and of course, he is the fulfillment.
The challenge for us as disciples is that
we too also have false expectations,
not just of our cashiers and our TSA attendants
but we have false expectations of our God.
We have false expectations of each other.
And that leads to frustrations;
that leads to judgment;
and if we do not catch ourselves, it leads to condemnation.
And that becomes the real problem because
then we become like the Pharisee and the Sadducees
that Jesus railed against;
and they are not the only ones he railed against.
He railed against those who thought they had it figured out;
those who thought that everyone else wasn’t doing it, but they were.
We are in this together and our expectations ought to be
that God is already here among us and
that God is with every single one of us
and it is for us to come to the conclusion
that God is not:
the God of strength;
the God of power;
the God of influence.
This is the God who is hidden;
the God who is simple;
the God, who came as a baby child in a manger
and hung upon a cross.
So that we could understand that it is
not through strength but through humility;
and through weakness that God reaches out to others;
and that he loves all of us no matter what.
Today as we arrive on this Gaudete Sunday,
which we celebrate by lighting the rose candle.
And we are called to rejoice in this waiting
not just to simply wait but to rejoice.
One of the things I have figured out
while waiting in these lines instead of getting frustrated,
I try to convert that into a form of a prayer.
What I try to do is I try to say well, what am I grateful for?
As I am waiting, I’m grateful for many things.
This last week when I went to Costco,
I was grateful for the fact that I could go to Costco at all
because for the last six weeks, I have not been able to walk
long enough to be able to go from my car into Costco.
I was just simply delighted to be able to stand in line at all.
I didn’t care how long.
And in fact, I looked for a longer line this time.
Just because I was like,
“Oh somebody else is probably in a hurry, I’m fine.
I’m walking. I’m feeling pretty darn good today.”
We can convert those moments of anxiety and frustration
due to false expectations into moments of prayer.
Whatever it is that you are anxious about or frustrated about,
let us turn it into a moment of prayer; a patient waiting.
And to turn to God and say thank you for whatever it is
that is going well in our life;
and to not focus on what we do not have
but to focus on what we have.
Together rejoice with the Lord,
who is present to us no matter what;
whether we are impatiently in line
or whether we are patiently waiting,
God is by our side.
He is with us and within us and he always will be.
That will never, ever change.
May we cooperate with God.
Let’s patiently wait.
Let us embrace those moments and pray for the goodness in our lives
so that we can together rejoice in the presence of Christ.
