Simone Vey has a description of the Christian life - “the Christian life is like two lovers who miss their ron-day-vu. God is here and we are here. Each waits for the other in the wrong place. We think God should be turning up here. God thinks we should turn up here.
Whatever our experience is God is in it. Whatever our feelings are. Frustration. Anger. We will miss something. It is going to teach you something. Wisdom. The upshot might be a phone call, “hello, I cooked a meal”. It does not mean to let people tread all over you. There is an example of Jean-Claude Colin and Bishop Deve. Colin stood up to him.
Put yourself in their shoes. What if you got home and there is no food in the house. They might say, “its not fair…” They might learn a very good lesson. I know I would learn a lesson if there was no “tucker”.
Waiting with is a sense of security. Waiting is two way. I trust God and he trusts me. It provides a sense of security.
The overriding metaphor with God’s relationship with his covenant (from the Bible) a covenant of love. Which paradoxically is forged in the desert. In the original exodus story. People are set free from the oppression of Egypt and taken out into the desert. The desert is the place of death. What sought of story is this? He has set us free to a place of death….It is through the journey of dying, we find something that is beyond the self. People learn to wait with God, but God waits for them in death. A covenant is forged.
There is a duplication in the New Testament. Where is the dessert in the new testament?....Calvary. In the writing of the Gospels Jesus is the new Moses. How is the covenant forged? God is with us. His name is Emmanuel. There is profound richness in this notion. God is with us even in death. Our call in the Christian life is to enter into the dying and rising every day.
When the alarm goes off in the morning, that is the moment of death….think about it. Suppose you say “I am not going to do this dying. I am going to curl up in this warm bed and stay here”. What is going to happen?
If you stay in bed, you die. You’ve got to go through the dying to live. You’ve got to dying into life. Get on with a new day. All the duties of waiting are partial to the ordinary events of living. Turning up means dying. This is part of the human reality. There is no way around this.
One of the awful fictions of our culture is “life can be endless convenience, comfort and pleasure and you can do whatever you like”. Non-sense. There is a sacrifice. There is an enduring. There is a system. There is a rhythm of dying and rising. If you refuse this, you die. If you enter into it, you live. That is the great paradox.
Is this part of our culture? Culture which is making things easy. Getting the cleaner. Getting the money. And the not waiting. Having a hedonistic life. In our culture you’ve got to find your purpose. Meet your potential. Life does not turn out the way we think. When do we interfere and don’t interfere? This just gets confusing and yet it feels so nice when we do this.
There is a solidarity in waiting in “waiting with”. It is not just waiting with this group because this person is sick. There is a “waiting with” which is part of this Christian dispensation. There is a “waiting with” with what it means to be human. It does not mean we denying your responsibility, your accountability, and your talents. It is how you engage. Is it about facilitative and participative or is it about mastery and conquering? Our culture is big on mastery and conquering. You have one of two options. You are going to be a winner or a looser. The culture says – are you going to join us?
Waiting Creatively gives grace.
When I get conscientiously religious, I think, “I should do something more”. The measure I bring to this is “is it making me more free and more gracious”? Grace and freedom are the two corner stones of the authentic religious person.
Be ware of signs that light up and say “I am a thriving religious person”. Beware the doctrinaric, legalistic and dogmatic approach where religion is reduced to ideology. Where you either belong or don’t belong. Your in or your out. The line in the sand. There was not in or out with Jesus. Or…if there was an out Jesus went looking for it to establish a community.
There is a beautiful moment in the Prodigal Son where the father comes out in the night to get the elder son. Think of that metaphor. The father comes out of the house. This is the faithful son. The words of the faithful son are just so sad. Remember what he said to his dad, “I have slaved for you”. “What”? the father replies. “I thought you were working for me. I thought you loved me. ” What has been going on in this character? I thought the older son was the faithful one and I was worried about the other one. We don’t know how that story ends up.
I encourage you to think of a name for that story. Prodigal son is too boring. Dysfunctional family…..
Normal family.
There is solidarity that comes with waiting. We are in this situation in the church. If some one turns up and says, “I know which way we should become church, because I have got this idea of what church should look like”. Hold that. Be very very careful. There is a sense that no body knows the church. Where someone puts it into place. Be very careful. There is the grace of God. Any one who works with the grace of God becomes gracious, graceful and free.
We bring forth presence should actually set people free. Not bringing people into our way of doing things or thinking. We should be thrilled when people say “thank you very much and disappear”. God is with us. Our task is to disappear.
Jean-Claude’s Colin’s notion is to be “hidden and unknown” in the church finds its expression right there. Your presence is facilitative and participative. He looks to enable that person or those people to find their talents and energy and place, and they may turn around and walk off. Let someone else find their place.
You are not going to make the 7 o’clock news for being a Marist.
It is like being a parent.
Day 7 - Activity
Listen to the audio by clicking the play button above.
Discuss the following:
Spend 20 minutes journal about moments about "dying and rising".
Where in your life have you symbolically felt like dying?
