Waiting for God
Psalm 130, Ezekiel 37:1-14, John 11:1-45
by Isaac S. Villegas
April 6, 2014 (5th Sunday of Lent)
“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.” (Psalm 130:5-6)
I remember, as a child, waking up during the night, after a nightmare, and seeing nothing but piercing darkness, all around my bed, in my room and out the window, in the shadows, and I would panic, convinced that the my horror-filled dreams were real, that whatever it was that terrified me was on the other side of my window or at my door or under my bed. I would peek from under my covers, looking through the window, waiting to catch a glimpse of light, hoping for morning, because, for whatever reason, I knew everything would be better in the morning, with the light.
“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.”
The repetition in the Psalm helps us feel the desperation, the intensity of the longing: “more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.” The Psalmist has to say it again, because she or he is having such a hard time waiting, such a hard time waiting for the morning, like someone who is trying to shake off a nightmare, like someone who is waiting for the end of a living nightmare — for the day when light will shine, for a new day, for new life. The Psalmist is waiting.
What are you waiting for? What do you want to end? What do you want to begin? What needs a restart? We’re always waiting for something — the healing of a friendship, the hope of a new relationship, the end of school, the perfect job, or just a job, any job.
“My soul waits more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.”
To be human is to learn how to wait, to wait nine months to be born, to wait to walk, to talk, to wait to drive a car, and to stay out past 10 at night on weekends, to wait for summer break, to wait an hour or two for the radio station to play “Smells Like Teen Spirit” again because your parents would never let you buy the album, on cassette, especially with that cover; to wait to graduate high school, waiting for a good job, waiting for love.
To be human is to wait, to live with the limits of time. That’s what it means to be a creature, a human creature. Learning to be a human being takes time; it takes time to grow into ourselves. It takes time to figure ourselves out. It takes time for our wounds to heal.
We have to wait for things, sometimes for a long time, sometimes forever.
The story of Lazarus is a story about waiting. He’s dying, so his sisters send a message to Jesus, their friend, and beg him to come, to come quickly, so he can heal Lazarus, because he might die. There’s no time for waiting. Mary and Martha can’t wait, because waiting means death. But Jesus doesn’t rush to Lazarus, he doesn’t rush to his bedside, to heal him. Jesus waits: “after having heard that Lazarus was ill,” it says in verse 6, “he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.” If we didn’t know how the story ends, this would seem cruel — the way Jesus takes his time, staying where he is, and making Martha and Mary wait longer than they should have to.
When the sisters wake up in the middle of the night, in their panic, anxious for Jesus to arrive — hopefully the next morning, hopefully soon — I can imagine them praying the words from Psalm 130: “My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.” Every night they pray as they wait.
After Lazarus dies, and Jesus finally strolls into town, Martha confronts him: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21). Ten verses later in the story, when Mary sees Jesus, she says the same thing; she repeats Martha’s words: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (11:32).
That was the hope. That was what they were waiting for. They were waiting for Jesus to show up, waiting for his presence, waiting for him to do what only he could do: to cure the sick, to offer the grace of healing, the gift of restored health, to touch a wounded life.
What are you waiting for?
My mom sent me a text a couple days ago, letting me know that my grandmother, who suffers from dementia, has forgotten how to chew. She woke up from surgery and can’t remember how to eat her food. My family is waiting to see if she can remember, or if the doctors will have to use a feeding tube.
A month ago I met Palestinians, my age, in a United Nations refugee camp near Bethlehem. They still have the keys to the houses that belonged to their grandparents, houses that their families were forced to leave in 1948, but told by the Israeli soldiers that they would be able to return to them, after the war was over. In one of the community magazines from the refugee camp, a teenager put it like this: “We have keys of return to locks of houses that have been lost between the lines of treaties and endless waiting.” Endless waiting, yet while they wait they hold onto the keys as a reminder. Some wear their keys as necklaces, as signs of hope, for themselves and for others.
Lent is a season for waiting, waiting for Easter, for resurrection, for the healing of wounds, even those wounds that feel like the beginnings of death, wounds in our bodies and souls, as we join all of creation in waiting for redemption, for renewed life, for God to breath into our valleys of dry bones, the deadness inside of us and in the world, for God to share with us the spirit of life, the breath of life: “I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live,” we hear God say in Ezekiel. “I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live” (Ezekiel 37:5-6).
During Lent we learn how to wait for God, for God to breath into us, to breath through us. During Lent we remind ourselves that we are waiting for God, for God to resurrect life in us and in the world. During Lent we take time to wait, to wait with our longings, to wait with our hopes — we take time to learn how to be creatures, how to be human beings, who can’t control the future, but can learn how to trust God: that the same God who brought Lazarus back from the dead will give us reason to hope, that the same God who spoke life into the valley of bones will speak life to us, that God will look at our lives and say, as God says in Ezekiel, “Come from the four winds, O Spirit, and breathe upon these that they may live” (37:9).
During Lent, we remind ourselves that we are waiting for God, for God to show up in our lives — to show up in our longings and desires, in our dreams and hopes, to show up in our fears.
We are like Mary and Martha, waiting for Jesus to get here, but taking so long, for some reason unknown to us — only God knows why he’s taking so long. We are like the Psalmist, waiting for daybreak, waiting for God to show up.
“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.”