Rev. Rebecca M. Heilman-Campbell
Selected Verses: Psalm 25:1-10; Luke 21: 26-35
It’s the first time I traveled out on my own in the capital city of Lusaka, Zambia. A bustling city with people selling their goods, traveling to work, building walls and businesses. A city that felt foreign and has every marker of a developing nation where poverty is vast and normalized. I’d hoped to get to an adult field day across town and it is my first time using the Lusaka minibus system by myself, which can only be described as chaotic.
Now, to emphasize how big of deal this is, let me say this, besides the birth of my son and nephews and a few other things here and there, mastering the Zambian minibus transit system falls under my top five proudest moments of my life. It’s nearly impossible to do and by the end of my year in Zambia, I could get anywhere I wanted to go. This story, well this story is only the beginning of that bumpy ride. The auntie of my host family, who barely speaks English, escorts me past the drunken bars and the hustling market towards the rows upon rows of minibuses lining the barely paved streets. It is absolute pandemonium. Bus conductors yelling their fair fare, bus drivers pulling into impossible spaces, women with babies scooting in and out of bumpers. All of this happening in a different language with me, the only white women in a mile radius, taking it all in.
My auntie finds the bus I need, opens the front door, and pushes me in. She said in her broken English, “you wait. The bus will fill up and you will go. But don’t forget to ask for this stop, get off at this exit take this bus.” She names the stops and the buses for transfer, and I scramble to write it down, unable to catch it all. She said, “They will scam you because you’re white, so don’t pay more than this. And whatever you do, don’t get on an empty bus.” I look behind me…the bus is empty. She said, “I’ll wait with you.”
Well, this auntie is a social butterfly and did anything but that! She flutters from shop to shop, laughing with women, flirting with men, purchasing tomatoes and kale for dinner. That is the last I saw of her. I am suddenly left alone in an empty bus with a drunk bus driver sitting next to me, barely aware of his surroundings. What have I gotten myself into? I wait and wait. People point at the mzungu (the white woman), they try to tell me to take a taxi, but I wait, just like my auntie said. One person would get on the bus, wait a bit, get impatience and move on the next bus. This went on for an hour. In Zambia, I learned quickly how to wait. Or as I
often said, how to sit. I became very good at sitting. I was not on American time, but Zambian time. I waited for buses.
I waited for three-hour worship services (in the local dialect) to end. I waited days for the power to return. I waited and I waited, and I waited. In the beginning, I hated it. But the more I waited, the more God revealed God’s self to me. As I anxiously sat on that bus with the drunk bus driver, I remember my fear subsiding when a woman carrying a baby on her back walked by, not giving me any attention, but her baby looking up with big brown eyes and who then smiles directly at me. A sense of calm took over my worry. As if God said, peace, be still. Wait. As I frustratingly waited for the power to turn back on after days of having no lights, my host sisters and I played volleyball together, laughed together, told stories today.
We are still close today and I just saw them last year. As I learned to sit through those long worship services, I read Scripture through the eyes of a different culture. I journaled in prayer and found myself closer to God than I had ever been. We don’t have time to wait here in America. It’s both our privilege and a great downfall. We are busy, busy people, expecting results at our fingertips, often passing by God to go on to another task. And yet, each year Advent circles back around, and we are invited, no, we are told we must wait.
And so, we enter into the season today. With two passages that remind us to slow down. And while we often think of this season as the waiting for Jesus’s birth, it’s also the waiting of Jesus’s return, after his death. We see that in our Luke passage today, which depicts Jesus’s final teaching to the disciples before the passion. Luke writes it as an apocalyptic discourse to the early Christians. Shortly
before Luke wrote his gospel, Jerusalem is in shambles. The temple is destroyed, death is on the Jewish-Christian’s doorstep with Roman troops and imperial control. And Luke responds to these fears with apocalyptic language and storytelling. Now apocalyptic language is supposed to sound strange to our 21st century ears. Maybe today’s Luke reading is for you. It’s not so much a narrative, but instead cryptic, poetic, symbolic language and storytelling. Think of Revelation and how bizarre that story is to you.
I often compare apocalyptic discourse to our political cartoons. You know, they are satirical, exaggerated, and reveals a deeper meaning about our society that we may not want to admit. The same goes for apocalyptic discourse and storytelling in our scriptures. The Greek word for apocalypse means to “uncover” or “reveal.” It’s the idea of God pulling aside a veil, revealing God’s hopeful plan, God’s promised rescue, God’s longing
for justice and grace, redemption and mercy. That God is turning the world around! It’s the idea of God showing up and taking the reins towards hope. You can imagine the first listeners of Luke’s Gospel hearing Jesus talk about the temple’s end that just happened to them and the great suffering not long after that they are experiencing right then and there. And then hearing our Scripture today when it writes of signs in the sun, moon, and stars. Of the heavens shaking and “the Son of Man coming in a cloud.” Where they read and hear about their redemption drawing near, that God is near as Scriptures say. The hope, I imagine,
settles in their hearts. And they must wait. They must wait. They must be alert, be ready, be on guard.
So much of Advent is overshadowed by the good cheer of Christmas. Christmas lights and Christmas carols wrapping paper and joyful cards, but we can’t have Christmas without Advent first. No Christmas isn’t here yet. As I said earlier, we are invited, no, we are told we must wait, which means slowing down, sinking into the realities of our world. As a theologian for the writer of the Salt Project writes, “we first need to enter the shadows, those places where all hope seems lost. We have to listen alongside the traumatized soldier, the desperate refugee family, the isolated prisoner, the heartbroken addict.”1 She continues, “Once we’ve entered the shadows (both intellectually and emotionally), from there we can proclaim the good news, the hope that rings out in the midst of catastrophe. The essence of apocalypse, the point of what is “revealed,” is that God is on the way, turning the world around. And precisely because of this, all of us should be watchful and alert over the days and weeks ahead.”
To wait, doesn’t mean to wait around. It’s an active verb. To wait means to be alert, be on guard, be awake! Look for God in the shadows of our waiting. Look for God in the sun, moon, and stars. Look for God just when we reached the point of no return and see otherwise. We begin this season in the unknowns, in the shadows of despair, but it’s precisely here that God is revealed, and God reveals the light of the world. The light that is lit symbolically each week – hope, peace, joy, and love. We can’t have Christmas without Advent. So as Luke tells his first readers, “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and the worries of this life.” To wait is to be ready and to be lifted up in this season of new beginnings, this season that points to hope. The Psalmist chants, “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust; Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.” Pray with me. Loving God, we believe. Help our unbelief. Amen.
1 https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/advent-week-one-lectionary-commentary