Waiting for God(ot)

Waiting gets to me. I think it’s more than impatience or a millennial’s penchant for instant gratification. It’s so much deeper. Waiting forces me to confront the struggles I try not to bring to light. Cue advent. I didn’t grow up observing advent. Christmas, however special and “magical” never quite end up that way for me. I guess it’s part of the lot of a pastor’s kid. Christmas has always been a work day. I was exposed to the idea of advent in college, but even then I never paused to really reflect on it. Maybe I just wasn’t allowing myself to truly reflect on how advent, The Great Wait, affects me.

Advent is about waiting for the coming Christ. And, like I said, waiting isn’t my strong suit. In fact, I’m quite bad at it. Advent culminates on Christmas Eve, where you’re at your utmost breaking point of waiting. I have always loved Christmas, especially after spending years in the Pacific Northwest and not having to work on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. However, one of the things I’ve always observed is that Christmas Eve holds a kind of tension. Yes, anticipation. But I think for me, it holds the tension where The Great Wait is at its breaking point. The time when one’s soul gets tested on the hope that is the driving force behind the wait. Christmas Eve holds the climax of restlessness. Where the biggest question is:

Is what I’m waiting for actually coming?

And next to it a similar one: is all this worth it?

For some odd reason, my mind brings me back to a play I read in my high school English class. I hated the play. I didn’t see the point of it back in high school. Somehow, though, my mind kept it. Apparently it filed Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in the dark recesses of my memory, just waiting for the opportune moment to resurface. That moment is now. The play is really about nothing (and this is way before “Seinfeld”). It’s about a couple of very unique characters who engaged in discussions and different things while waiting for Godot, who never arrives.

One interpretation of this play is that religion, most specifically Christianity, is a bunch of people waiting for something - or someone - that will never show up. Beckett even comments that Christianity is a mythology to him, a myth he’s familiar with. This play somehow echoes Marx’s idea that religion is an opium for the masses. (Oh, man, I can sense my Christian friends starting to get anxious. Where is she heading with this? Hold your horses.)

I don’t agree with Beckett, but I can see where he’s coming from. Actually, I will go further and say that this play is actually very revealing. Not just of Beckett’s point of view. But of our… fears. Humanity’s fears. That question I mentioned before: Is what I’m waiting for actually coming? What if it never comes? What if I get disappointed? What if it’s never really real?

If we’re being honest with ourselves… If I’m being honest with myself, this is why waiting gets to me. If I don’t have to spend a long time waiting for something, at least I’ll know quickly. But when you’ve waited for such a long time, and then you get disappointed? What then? If like the two characters in Beckett’s play we wait and wait and wait without there ever being an end, what then? Hope can easily erode with time. Doubts creep in. Or you’re just plain tired. My fear is that I’ve put in all this effort to hope and then the rug gets pulled from under me. I would guess that I’m not the only one in this world wrestling with this. With hope. And fear.

Where am I going with this? Don’t worry. I’m not done.

I believe this is why Christmas is a miracle in and of itself. Christmas is grace. It’s a gift given to a world that’s struggling. A gift for humanity that wrestles with doubts and questions all the time. When Christ came that first time, it was to a world that, for the most part, have lost hope. But Christ didn’t come because the hope quotient of humanity was high. He’s not Santa Claus whose magical actions, according to the slew of Christmas movies I’ve immersed myself in, are based on the level of “Christmas Spirit”. The idea seems to be that if the Christmas Spirit is high then Santa’s sleigh can do its magic. That’s not how it is with Christ. He didn’t appear because our hope and faith are high. He came and moved into the neighborhood in spite of our struggles to believe. He comes even when we’re tired of hoping.

Friends, I know that for some of you - heck, for most of us - Christmas doesn’t magically make our waiting and questions disappear. The wait actually continues, because humanity wasn’t waiting for a baby to be born and then subsequently continues to celebrate this baby’s birthday even two thousand years after the fact. Humanity is still waiting. For relief. The end to sorrows. The end to pain. The end to sickness. For ceasefire. For peace.

Christmas brings a reminder that a Child was born into a world struggling to keep hope. Hope is a gift of grace - not that we’ve earned it or have it in us to muster up. Hope is a gift that is given when we’re at our wits’ end and when exhaustion threatens to set in. Hope comes despite our questions and misgivings. That the wait for rest is not in vain. Hold on a little longer. Know that you’re seen. Take heart, friends.

The hopes and fears of all the world are met in Him.

December 24, 2020