Keep Awake!

hope and anticipation- Advent 1 2023

Friends, welcome to The Book of Common Words, where we explore the Christian spirituality of being human through poetry and essays about my life, art, and the Christian faith. I’m your writer, Aaron.

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Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37

Waiting is a dark thing.

We wait for what we cannot see, what we cannot touch, what we cannot feel. If we could grasp it, we wouldn’t be waiting. Waiting requires an element of the unknown and risk. What we wait for may never come to be. It’s not a sure thing, not a guarantee.

I’ve been waiting a lot this past year.

In January, I began the process of discernment. Basically, it is a time of seeking clarity about what God might be asking you to do, what God might be calling you to. I began this discernment process thinking about lay leadership, serving the church as a congregant. No title, no position, just serving as an ordinary member of the congregation.

I’ve been preaching on and off at my church for a few years, and while I am happy to do that, I wanted to see if God was calling me to a more intentional role in the liturgy. Was God asking me to be an Eucharistic minister, to aid at the altar and serve the Eucharistic wine to people? Was I called to be a worship leader, helping to facilitate daily office prayers and portions of the liturgy? There were a few roles that I had in mind, but wasn’t sure about.

This can sound like a lot of over thinking about serving, but it was important to me to see if God was calling me to do this, or if I was taking something upon myself. See, in the evangelical/Pentecostal churches I grew up and served in, you did things because you could. I could preach, so I did. I could teach, so I did. I could play music, so I did. There was no discernment or waiting on the nudge of God (which is ironic). Instead, if you should, you did. That is how you were faithful. That is how you served, that is how you used your gifts.

That is also how I got completely burned out.

I spent nearly 10 years serving every way I could. Every Sunday, I was teaching, preaching, or leading music (sometimes doing multiple roles). I taught mid-week bible studies. I fielded questions from congregants and counseled people from scripture. I wrote sermons. I wrote songs. I wrote curriculum. I did everything I could because I could.

By the end of my time in the evangelical church, I was empty. I didn’t have more resources to go on. I was heartbroken of over a girl, and that cracked the dam. My cycles of going and giving and doing ground to a halt and I stepped away from leadership and serving. My decision and move was greeted with a cold silence. It was as if I wasn’t serving, I didn’t have meaning and place in the church.

That hurt.

Fast forward to my time in the Episcopal church. I want to serve the people, the church, the Divine. But I don’t want to do it just because I’m capable. I want to do it because it is healthy, it is needed, and because the Spirit is seeking to manifest her grace to the church and the community through these specific actions in my life. In short, I want direction and purpose behind how I choose to serve.

So, I entered discernment.

In the process of figuring out if I was supposed to be a lay minister, I caught feelings for the diaconate. The Diaconate in the Episcopal church is the ministry of a deacon, which centers around physical service of the poor, oppressed, and needy by personally serving those people and by calling and helping the church to understand the needs in the world around it and discern—that word pops up a lot lately—how the church can then meet those needs. The deacon is also a part of the liturgy, reading the gospel passage to the congregation, offering and leading the prayers of the people, setting the Eucharistic table and cleaning up at the end.

In short, a deacon is a servant.

And I have been exploring a call by God to servanthood.

That exploration has involved a lot of waiting. I’m still waiting for a final decision by the commission on ministry and ultimately the bishop on whether they recognize a call to the diaconate in me. I wait, and wait, and wait, not knowing the results, not knowing the outcome, not knowing even what is going on with other people in the process. I am waiting in the dark.

That’s often how it feels waiting for Christ.

We wait into the unknown. After all, no one knows the day or the hour. Not even the God the Son. We are at the mercy of the timeline of God the Father. Theological implications aside, this is an uncomfortable and hard waiting. We go through decade after decade, year after year, season after season and nothing seems to happen. Life remains ordinary, Christ seems distant, and we are left wondering if there will ever be a culmination to this waiting.

It’s tempting to grow complacent, to grow weary, to give into the exhaustion of life around us. Wars, poverty, exclusion, oppression, and greed rage all around us. It is exhausting to keep hoping that Christ is on the way in the midst of all of these things. It would be easier to tune out, to shut down, to bury our heads in the sand and ignore what is happening all around us.

But that’s the thing. We are going to miss Christ if we ignore what’s around us precisely because what’s going on around us tells us that Christ is near. Jesus exhorts us to keep awake, to stay aware of what is going on so that we can interpret what season we are in.

Here in Oregon, the rain has started. This tells me that winter is around the corner. Days are darker and darker, wetter, colder, and drearier. We need to be prepared for ice and snow that will shut our cities down. But we won’t be prepared if we just ignore the gray days around us.

In the same way, no matter how bleak it looks, we need to be prepared for tumultuous times and upheavals if we are going to see Christ tear open the heavens and shake the mountains with the coming of the Divine. That day is either going to catch us off guard, catch us sleeping, or we will be the ones who have hope, who anticipate the coming of Christ… and offer that hope to others.

Death stalks us all, and it will come for us all one day. That is depressing. Life is hard and we are in an economic situation that is bleak. That is depressing. Everything in the world seems depressing and hopeless. But you and I, those who believe in Christ and look for the coming of the Divine, we have hope, and the world needs hope. When we stay awake, we become a witness to the light that is breaking in, the light that can’t be swallowed up by the dark days we find ourselves in. We are witnesses to the world around us that good triumphs over evil, light will conquer the darkness, and that the world will not always be this way.

Without us, the world would have no knowledge of the hope that is coming.

Even as waiting in the dark is hard, even though waiting its self is a dark thing, we wait in anticipation of something spectacular breaking forth: the revelation of the God who works for those who wait, who anticipate, who stay awake.

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