The great wait for God

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/090219.cfm
1 Thessalonians/4:13-18
Luke 4:16-30

Our Christian faith deals a lot with waiting. We wait upon the sacraments. We wait for what God wants us to do. We wait for his whispers, guiding us, correcting us, and reminding us that he loves us.

We don’t just wait in patient duty, but in a holy trust in God that builds up over time. Waiting builds character as we exercise that trust in God. We need help in waiting, though. It’s not a good thing to do alone.

We don’t always wait with blind faith, a concerted effort to believe in God in spite of the evidence. Faithfulness to God depends upon evidence that ever so slowly builds up. Waiting for God includes anticipation substantiated by a sealed relationship. We anticipate God’s presence as a visible reality because he has already responded to us. 

God rewards us mostly with tiny, vital moments of his presence in our lives that we only hesitantly begin to realize is him. At first that recognition of God is mostly hope, based upon a yearning faith. As the relationship develops, that hope turns into love. We affirm that relationship by confirmation from others that the same thing is happening with them.

Waiting is the ticking clock of our whole life. We wait for each other. We wait for meals. Our experiences teach us, though, that not all waiting is fruitful. We often wait for schedules that surprise us because they do not happen. All this waiting develops a pattern within us for how we deal with expectations. That pattern isn’t always helpful to our theology. Waiting faithfully for God, then, depends upon a radical shift from the way our lives seem to work. 

In faith, so much of our belief system relies upon a series of waiting that piles upon itself. The two readings for today accentuate the key moments in history that mark our Judeo-Christian beliefs. First, that a Son of Man would come out of a chosen people as our redeemer. We believe this is Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah. This forms the basis for Christianity built upon the nation of Israel as that chosen people of God. 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
(Luke 4:18-19 quoting Isaiah Chapter 61)

The second key moment in creations’s history is that the Son of Man was also revealed as the Son of God. God’s arrival into creation revolutionizes the purpose for our existence. The incarnated God calls us all to be Sons and Daughters, brothers and sisters, and not just dutiful beings who worship out of fear and respect. We worship out of love.

The truly holy, according to the lives of the saints, have solved the problem of waiting by acting completely differently from the rest of us. 

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose,
so too will God, through Jesus,
bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
(1 Thessalonians 4:14)

Like any of us the saints wait upon the Lord to come back, to eradicate evil, and to be our King. There is, however, a communion with other believers that becomes the prime motivator for waiting. The entire gathering of the body of Christ will come with Jesus in his return. 

The saints know this. They’ve developed a separate pattern of expectation. They know that all the waiting for God is about belonging to God in communion with all those who’ve gone before us.

Then we who are alive, who are left,
will be caught up together with them in the clouds
to meet the Lord in the air.
Thus we shall always be with the Lord.
Therefore, console one another with these words.
(1 Thessalonians 4:18)

Any expectation we exhibit or witness of Jesus’ return, and joining with those who desire redemption and yearn for an eternity with God, will likely be met similarly to Jesus’ proclamation that he was the one spoken about in the book of Isaiah.

"Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.”
(Luke 4:24)

To wait upon the Lord in any age, or any generation, is counter-cultural. Only with evidence that has mounted through a life of patient and faithful patience, one built upon trust in God, can we be certain of God’s return. This knowledge comes from a relationship to God that has sealed us to him. And God seals this relationship by gathering us together.

We are with God now, noted in the vital moments when he speaks to us through signs and wonders and whispers. The moments come closer to each other as we remain faithful and trust him. Like the gathering at the return of Jesus, when all the dead with be raised and we will join with them, our faith and trust is cemented by communicating with each other.

Thus we shall always be with the Lord.
Therefore, console one another with these words.
(1 Thessalonians 4:18)