Pastor Dan Mangler's Sunday Sermon

Waiting Confidently

1 Corinthians 1: 1-9

January 16, 2005

Waiting Confidently

We are not a patient people. What we want we want now. One of the fastest growing of the service industries is fast food, and the indispensable appliance in any kitchen is the microwave oven. E-mail and faxes illustrate our impatience with regular mail, which we nickname snail mail. We want higher speed limits so that we can get where we are going quicker. We grow annoyed at the grocery check out lane if we are more than second in line. Most of us can empathize with the man who said, "I know I should learn patience. Does anyone know where I can take a crash course?"

And we are just as impatient with God. What we want from God and we want now. You remember the story of Ben who desperately wanted a bicycle. He began a letter to Jesus: "Dear Jesus, I've been a very good boy...". He stopped, thinking, "No, Jesus won't believe that." He wadded up the paper, threw it away, and started again.

"Dear Jesus, most of the time I've been a good boy..." He stopped in the middle of the line, again thinking, "Jesus won't be moved by this.” So into the trash can that paper went.

Ben then went into the bathroom, grabbed a big terry cloth towel, brought it into the living room and laid it on the couch. He went to the fireplace mantle, reached up and brought down a statue of the Madonna, the mother of Jesus, that he had eyed many times.

Ben placed the statue in the middle of the towel, gently folded over the edges, and placed a rubber band around the whole thing. He brought it to the table, took another piece of paper, and began writing his third letter:

Members of the early church, Christians in the time of Paul, felt the same. They wanted Christ to come back for them, as He promised. He said He would return and they wanted it to happen now. It was not easy being a Christian in a pagan world. Their one consolation was that some day Jesus would return and their faithfulness under fire would be vindicated. In the meantime all they could do was wait, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "wait for the revealing of the Lord Jesus Christ."

Things haven't changed much in 2000 years. We live in an increasingly pagan society where Christian morals and values that once shaped our communities come increasingly under attack. Christianity is no longer the norm, but must now compete, not only with other world religions, but also with the New Age religiosity and the occult, as well as with those who deny any sort of divine being or any reality beyond what we can be seen and touched. Jesus promised that there would come a day when He would appear in power and glory to straighten this all out, and we wonder what is keeping him.

This is true not only on a global level, and cosmic level, but on a personal level as well. We, too, experience troubles for which help can only come from Jesus. We seek Jesus' direction in a difficult decision. We long for comfort at a time of great pain. We pray for moral strength in a time of great temptation. We seek reconciliation with a loved one for which we need Christ's spirit. We pray, and wait, and wonder. Why does it take so long?

Waiting is hard. It requires humility. When we wait, we admit there are some things that are not under our control. Most of us like to believe that we are in control. We imagine that we are captains of our own ship, masters of our own destiny. We've been taught that we can do anything if we try hard enough, but that isn't true. Some things are out of our control, things for which we can only wait. John Claypool once said, "Let's face it. There are two kinds of reality in this world of ours. There are things you have to work for, and there are the things you have to wait for." But we don't want to wait.

We especially don't want to wait for those things God promises. We want them now. Phillips Brooks, a wonderful preacher of the 19th century and the composer of "0 Little Town of Bethlehem," was pacing back and forth one day in a terrible fit of agitation. A friend asked him what was wrong. Brooks answered, "I'm in a hurry, but God is not." It is what we, too, must accept. We are not in control, and God is in no hurry.

Waiting requires humility. Waiting also requires faith. We do not like to wait because that means that we are not in control of things. Faith is the conviction that there is One who is in control and whose nature is love.

Because God is in control and his nature is love we can wait with confidence, literally "with faith." The Psalms are full of confessions and admonitions of waiting confidently for God, of which the following are just a few: Psa 27:14 "Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!" Psa 37:7 "Be still before the LORD, and wait patiently for him; Psa 130:5 "I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;"

Earl Nightingale tells the story of an American team of mountain climbers who set out to conquer Mount Everest. Before the team left the U.S. a psychiatrist interviewed them. Each was asked individually, privately, "Will you get to the top of Everest?"

There was a wide assortment of answers. "Well, Doc, I'll do my best." "I'm sure going to try." Each knew how formidable was the challenge. But one of them, a slightly built team member, gave a totally different answer. When the psychiatrist asked him the question, he thought for a moment and then quietly answered, "Yes, I will." Not surprisingly, he was the first to make it to the peak of Mt. Everest.

Nightingale comments: "Yes, I will" —three of the most potent words in our language. Whether spoken quietly, loudly, or silently, those three words have propelled more people to success and have been responsible for more human achievement than all other words in the English language combined."

Yet there are three more potent words— Yes, God will. These three words spoken quietly, loudly, or silently are responsible for achievement that goes far beyond the human.

Waiting for God is not only waiting in faith, it is waiting faithfully. It requires not only patience but also attentiveness to where God's help will come.

Don Edwards, a newspaper columnist, writes of the little boy standing at the bottom of a department store escalator. Intently looking at the handrail, the small boy would not take his eyes away. A salesperson asked, "Are you lost?" "Nope," he said, "I'm waiting for my chewing gum to come back."

While we are waiting and watching for God's help, we will wait and watch where his help is most likely to come, in his church where is word dwells. The little boy could wait confidently for his gum because he knew where he would find his gum. He didn't wait by the toys. He didn't wait by the candy counter. He waited where it was most likely that his gum would be returned.

We can wait confidently when we wait where God's help and answers are most likely to come. They won't likely come at the lake or on the golf course, at the job working or at home reading the Sunday paper. God's answers and help come when and where we gather around God's Word and Sacraments. We cannot neglect to hear and study God's word and still expect his help or appearing.

St. Paul was writing to a church that was waiting for the revealing of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are still waiting for that revealing today, in big ways, at the end of time when Jesus will bring about a new heaven and new earth as Peter writes: "But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home." (2 Pet. 3:13) and in more personal and immediate ways, as the psalmist writes: "Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act. (Psalm 34:4-5)

We confess that there is much in life that is beyond our control, but not beyond God's control. And so we gather around God's Word, bringing our hurts, our needs, our concerns, that we might experience the revealing of God's power and glory. Amen.

May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.