Learning to love the wait

I hate to wait. 

None of us likes to wait. Modern culture demands immediacy. Whatever we want, we want it now. I have become so accustomed to immediacy, that I get frustrated when it takes a picture on my phone to materialize in five seconds and not in one. Never mind that I hold in my hand more computing power than was used on the Voyager probe that passed by Jupiter and Saturn on its way to the cosmos. I want what I want when I want it and I want it right now.

I get impatient to get what I want, even though Acme (whoops!) Amazon, not to mention the Postal Service, FedEx, and UPS, all get things right to my doorstep, often the day after (sometimes the same day!) as when I ordered it.

Father Anthony De Mello is a Jesuit priest, psychologist and retreat leader who teaches that the main task of the spiritual life is to wake up. Despite our over-stimulation with electronic devices, addictions to the Internet and social media, and our endless quest for the newest, the best and the most, we tend to make our way through life sleepwalking. Like the person who walks down the sidewalk (or worse while driving down US 19!) while texting on the phone, we go through life somehow unaware of the spiritual dimension of our lives. Like all of the bridesmaids in Jesus’ story in the Gospel of Matthew, we let that part of our life wait. There will be time for that later, we say to ourselves.

Jesus teaches us in the Gospel to both “wake up” and “be ready!”

Since we now know that we can grow our brains to develop new habits and awareness, what will be the spiritual equivalent of filling our lamps with oil and trimming our wicks?

Let’s first address wick trimming, since lamps and candles burn slower when we regularly trim the wick. It is similar with fruit trees – they produce more fruit when we do the work of pruning. Jesus is always extolling the value of doing the upfront work so that we can reap the dividends more easily when the fruit comes in. So trimming and pruning our lives, reducing the amount of distractions, would seem to be the No. 1 lesson for those of us who aspire to be in Christ’s wedding party when he comes. The paradox is that doing less can also help us to awaken to the presence of the Spirit in every breath we take. Doing less can help us to wake up and stay awake for the presence of Christ here and now.

As to filling our lamps with oil, doing less points us in the right direction. For it turns out that another way to encourage and promote neuroplasticity is to do nothing – not just less, but nothing. All religious traditions have some form of mindfulness meditation, centering prayer and contemplation as a religious or spiritual practice. Sadly, it is rarely found in church, where we tend to relentlessly work our way through the liturgy without pause so we can get to the end. And then what? Enjoy “the 8th sacrament”, aka coffee hour? Or go watch the ball game?

Archbishop William Temple said, “The source of humility is the habit of realizing the presence of God.” He encouraged us to develop the open, imaginative, and receptive side our brains and spirituality that looks for God at work, sees and seeks connections, and enjoys the holiness of the present moment. Contemplative prayer or mindfulness meditation helps us to create what some call an empty space within, but which I call an “open” space. A space open for God, open for the holy. This has two immediate benefits.

Another spiritual guide, Orthodox Archbishop Anthony Bloom encourages us to find God right here, right now, in every day life, even in the most mundane routine or seemingly rote activity. encouraging us to find God, who always seeking us, in the here and now, because as he said "if we cannot find God where we are, we will never find God at all."

Through our prayer and meditation and sacramental living, God’s Spirit has a point of entry into our otherwise busy and sleepwalking lives. Once we prepare a place within, however small, however tentative, for  God to dwell within us, we become more aware and awake to the fact that God has been and is always with us. That God is never absent from us. When we begin to see this, we begin to recognize that the work of spiritual growth is, in fact, no work at all.

But wait, (ahem)! There’s more!

Also, as it turns out, letting the brain rest promotes neuroplasticity. And our prayer can help us develop that plasticity. And we enter into and emerge from our prayer or meditation, we are made new, re-wired and more aware of not only who we are but whose we are. 

We discover that God has always been at home in us. The German theologian Meister Eckhart is quoted as saying, “God is at home. It is we who have gone out for a walk.”

So what are we waiting for? Are we to spend our time like those bridesmaids, waiting for Christ to come? Or are we to heed our Lord’s final imperative in the story: Keep awake!

The parables that we’ll hear the today and the next two weeks are tricky. Like today’s. And how we tend to treat them as doctrinal treatises or allegories, assigning parts to each character in the story doesn't help. We find ourselves saying "The unwise bridesmaids represent this or that group, the wise ones who were ready represent someone else… maybe our side, our church, our way of being or doing prayer and worship!"

But what if Jesus meant to simply shock us with details such as closing the door on the foolish ones only to deliver the real message: Keep awake! 

One suspects Jesus really did not want us spending hours of Bible study dithering over questions such as “How could Jesus do that? Why would he close the door on anyone?” when we already know the answer is that he closed the door on no one. Not prostitute, not tax collector, not sinner. His door is always open. The disciples to whom this little tale is told knew that and have witnessed it every day. And like them, we ought to be those who recognize that what seems like his coming again is simply the process of our awakening to the very real Good News of Jesus, that he is with us always even to the end of the age. No waiting required! He is here! Forever and always. We might even say forever and in all ways!

What is Jesus calling us to do? He is calling us to wake up and keep awake!

And the best way to be awake to God is to rest in Jesus. The time and effort put into doing less and doing nothing will awaken us to the clever truth buried deep within this tale of lamps and oil and bridesmaids: He is here. His door is open to all at all times of day and night.

But we have a choice, we can use our energy and time and attention -- our oil! -- for other, frivilous things, or we can use that oil-- our energy, time, and attention-- for God's purposes.

When we wake up to this truth all things are being made new – including most importantly ourselves! —all the time, in ways that often surprise us, we discover that God is making us ready for something new and inviting to participate in that re-making. The first step in accepting that invitation? Be awake to the work of God in our lives!

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Bulletin for Worship for the 24th Sunday after Pentecost, November 12, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for the 24th Sunday after Pentecost, November 12, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on November 12, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on November 12, 2023.