Today is the beginning of Advent, a word of latin derivation meaning "to come". Advent is about the future.

When you think about it, most of Christian spirituality is about the past and present. We read about what God has done in order to know what God is like and what we should do now to be like God. We remember, we relive, we re-enact in order to live faithfully in the present.

But Advent pushes our reflection into the future. Therefore Advent is about waiting. I do not wait well. As an active type. I want to be about doing things. Waiting requires a lot of patience, not one of my notable virtues. When I go a doctor`s appointment or to get the car fixed, I take along my work. I panic if I have to sit and do nothing for more than five minutes. The time between now and then must be filled or I start to fuss. Furthermore, in almost every way, our society tells us that we shouldn`t have to wait.

Advent is about waiting. Our spiritual tradition has set aside a whole season for waiting and it comes at a time when most of us are busiest! Waiting must be important then. Waiting must be part of the Christian spiritual path. And here I mean by the word spiritual the valuing of that which is most important, most beautiful, and most truthful, in our lives.

From our biblical readings this morning, and with reference to the heroes of faith whom we read about in the bible, waiting challenges all of us.

In the big picture of world history we can only wait for events to unfold. We do not know when the world will end or what will happen when it does. We do not even know when our own lives will end or what will happen. There is so much gloom and doom about us pushing us to believe that we are headed on a course of destruction that we can be overwhelmed by a sense of futility. We read from the Book of the prophet Jeremiah this morning. For thirty-two chapter Jeremiah shakes his finger at the Hebrew people for their unfaithfulness which, he claimed, caused the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, and only at the end of this long harangue does he offer a word of hope "The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfil the promise I made to the house of Israel...I will cause a righteous branch to spring up from David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land" (Jeremiah 33:14 ff). The people needed this encouragement in the midst of their national disaster.

Waiting pushes us deep inside of ourselves to the very core of what sustains us. The time between now and the future is a vacuum which cries out to be filled. What will you fill it with? Have you over the years by study and prayer filled your storehouse with nourishment for the bleak and cold of winter?

What do you do with the time between a blood test or a scan and its results? What do you do with the problem you have now with a spouse or a child and the resolution of this problem? What will do, here at St John`s in the midst of our discussions about renovations, between now and their completion?

In all of these instances we can predict doom and dire consequences, we can imagine the worst, we can generate guilt and bad feeling. We can panic. We can live in fear. Or we can do otherwise. Do we recognize that the choice is ours and the choice is a spiritual one? Waiting is never easy but it can be agony if we let it.

The bible tells us to live in the promises of God. Jeremiah promised the desperate Hebrews a new lease on life by raising up a ruler from the house of David. We read this text today because, As Christians, we see the face of Jesus beginning to emerge from this prophecy. But if we do not read God`s word, and spend time in prayer, and are active in helping one another we will never even be able to recognize the face of Jesus when it does appear to us.

Jesus counsels us in Luke`s gospel this morning not to be frightened by calamities. "People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world.." he says, but you, when these things begin to take place must "stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near" (Luke 21:27ff). We are a people who know where we are going.

(Some of you will remember back to 1952 when a certain Roman Catholic bishop had one of the most popular TV shows. Bishop Fulton J Sheen once told the story about himself in which he had been asked to speak in Philadelphia. As he walked toward a town hall where he was to speak he stopped to ask some young men on a street corner directions to get to the appointed place. When they asked him why he was going there he told them, "To make a speech on how to get to heaven" and invited them to come along. The boys decline saying, "If you don`t know how to find the town hall, you probably don`t know how to get to heaven"

As Christians, we are all like Bishop Sheen, we know where we want to go ultimately but are not always crystal clear about how to get there today)

Advent is about waiting with heads held high not in fear and anxiety provoking anger and bickering. Advent is about looking in eager anticipation for what God will do next in our lives, our church, our world, because we know that what God will do next will be faithful and loving, that God`s judgment is always wrapped in boundless mercy, and that every ending is a new beginning.