The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
IV Advent
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
December 18th, 2011

Have you noticed? Have you noticed that we just don’t wait so well? I suppose it makes sense when we think of the conditioning we have bought into, the conditioning to expect things so immediately. You know, 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G, 4 G that connection so much quicker. Marketing genious has taught us carefully to find value in immediacy, the silver club gets us immediate check in at the hotel of our choice, the green mile club assures us our rental car will be waiting for us and we Not waiting for our rental car, Miracle of all Miracle’s Even the Government will eliminate your waiting time to process your passport, if your willing to pay the price! Indeed it seems we have been conditioned to expect NOT to Wait.

This struck home the other night when I attended my daughter’s orchestra concert. I confess, my internal voice questioned, I wonder how long this will be? The ego-centric me should have been delighted when it seemed clear those who put the program together were concerned about the attention span of the audience. The program was short. No time for an intermission, hard working middle schoolers cleared the stage between acts as we were “entertained” with background piano designed to distract us and try to keep our attention as the stage was furiously cleared…….as if we wouldn’t wait, and equally important, as if what was being presented wasn’t worth waiting for. I mean after all, ALL of us were there to capture the moment of our offspring offering their best!

We are not good at waiting, as a matter a fact, we’ve become so good at not waiting, we tend to expect to move from one thing to the next with such immediacy it is as if we have bought into the belief that we must do so for fear that we might just miss something if we don’t get there quicker. This I submit to you in God’s economy is as they say bass ackwards!

Advent is a time that’s calls us to wait. It is a time to wait expectantly and expectantly wait. In a culture that conditions us to not only expect immediacy but has convinced us its worth paying NOT to wait, hear clearly this spiritual message of waiting expectantly and expectantly waiting is in direct conflict with our culture. Once again, the Gospel is countercultural.

It is this Gospel that leads us to explore what it is we can expect to find if we are patient enough to find it? It seems what we can expect is the unexpected.

We consider Mary in today’s gospel. This young woman--most likely a teenager at the time of the Annunciation--Mary, living out in small town Nazareth, betrothed (engaged) to Joseph the carpenter; is totally taken by surprise, as God’s messenger Gabriel speaks directly to her one day. The messenger shocks her nearly to death by telling her that she is God’s favoured one; she is going to give birth to the Messiah; she is going to name him Jesus (in Hebrew, Joshua or Jeshua, meaning “God will save”)! Surely, if we were to talk with Mary today, and ask her whether this was part of her plan; whether she was EXPECTING such a visitor, with such a message, OR that this message was what she was waiting for all of her young life, my guess is she would be hard pressed to answer Yes.

It seems for sure when it comes to Godly things; one of the things we can expect is the unexpected! Maybe even the unwanted advances of God on our lives. At first blush in this story one would perhaps want to tell Mary, perhaps you shouldn’t have waited around Mary.

If Mary had not waited around, and if we do not wait so we just might miss it. We just might miss God’s opportunity in our lives. The opportunity even to be shocked by God; the opportunity to learn that we ourselves, each of us, are favoured ones of God, that we too have something Godly begging to be born into the world; that we ourselves are called to take part in God’s plan of salvation.


God calls the strangest people; speaks the most surprising messages to them; and asks them to do the most unexpected things. At first, we, like Mary, tend to respond by being perplexed; by becoming overwhelmed or afraid. We, like Mary, may also be sceptical: “How can this be, since I’m a virgin?” Or we, again perhaps like Mary, may wish God would not choose us for such an unplanned, surprising future. After all, we are “creatures of habit,” some of us schedule our lives to the nth degree, We gotta get to the next thing, and some of us may not feel the unplanned or suprising is something worth our waiting. In a world that extols the virtues of planned, ordered living; of living for the immediate, where we seem to have lost the “art of waiting”, moving from one thing to the next for fear that we might be missing something; the message of today’s gospel says to us that which is not to be missed IS Worth waiting for AND we should NOT be afraid of God’s unexpected, surprising plans for our lives.

DO NOT BE Afraid are the words of the interruptor, God’s very Angel. God’s future for our lives can be unexpected and even surprising.

In a world where we have much cause to be afraid; where human life seems all too cheap and even at times disposable. God’s word speaks to us, “Do not be afraid.” As we look at our own personal lives or the lives of loved ones; we may respond with fear for the future and ask questions like: “Am I going to get sick? Am I going to recover from my illness? Am I ready to face and accept the worst? God answers: “Do not be afraid.” Or maybe we fear our future as a congregation: what are God’s future for this Cathedral? Will we live and grow, prosper and flourish / will we wither and die? God answers us: “Do not be afraid.”
So I ask you, when it comes to your relationship with the God who made you…….What do you expectantly Wait For And What are you Waiting for Expectantly? What is it that you feel is worth waiting for?