What Are You Waiting For?

a sermon by Reverend Lynn Thomas Strauss

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, December 11, 2005

In the Christian calendar, Advent is a season of waiting. Faithful Christians wait for the birth of the infant, Jesus, they wait in hope of a new reality to come.

Throughout the story in Luke, throughout the story of Mary and Joseph and the birth of Jesus, there are hints and signs of a world transformed. It is not just the baby that we wait for…but for a world transformed… Elizabeth and Mary wait with a radical hope.

The scripture tells us what the new world will look like…

The powerful will be brought down from their thrones, the lowly raised up, the hungry filled with good things. The rich sent away empty.

These are the promises that Mary believes in, with no certainty, no clear instructions…these are the possibilities that give her the courage to say Yes…to bearing the child, to bearing the hope of a new reality.

In my sermon last week, I said that the brightest legacy of liberal religion is ultimate optimism. When we look at the need for healing in the world, healing in our community, wholeness in our own lives…we liberal religionists take a hopeful stance…we believe that a better world is possible, we reject the dominant script of fear and hate and greed. We role up our sleeves and join in creating a world transformed, and we do this without certainty, with no clear instructions.

We embrace Unitarian theologian, James Luther Adams’ fifth core of our faith…his fifth smooth stone that says…the resources available for change justify an ultimate optimism. Healing and wholeness are possible with the gifts and talents and blessings already at hand. We don’t have to wait.

Right now we have all we need to make a difference. Right now we have all we need to contribute to healing . The resources available for change justify an ultimate optimism. We don’t have to wait.

And yet, and yet, we who aren’t sure of God or the divine, we who aren’t sure of scripture, we who aren’t sure we can trust the stranger, or that there is anything we can trust…too often we do wait….too often all we do is wait.

We withhold, we stand back, we criticize, we analyze, we procrastinate, we yearn for how it used to be or how we wish it could be.

In spite of our tradition of ultimate optimism, we UU’s have trust issues…theological trust issues.

Most of us don’t believe in God, at least not in the traditional sense, and most of us don’t trust authority figures (including ministers), we don’t trust our government, or our school principals, we don’t trust our parents, and some of us don’t even trust in ourselves.

Radical transformation; or in the words of theologian, Walter Bruggeman, creating a counterscript for a better world, requires a leap of faith….a big risk. To heal the world, to walk away from the dominant script, to fulfill the promise of ultimate optimism and start anew…all this, requires deep trust.

In what do you trust?
This is the BIG question for this morning.
In what do you trust?

I’ll tell you my answer up front; I believe that we can trust in three things…

We can trust in ourselves, in our own inner light and resources. We can trust in community. And we also trust in something larger than self and community, something unseen…something potential.

The story written in the book of Luke does not tell us why Mary went to visit her relative Elizabeth. But we know that both women were pregnant. Mary went alone. She went in search of something. She stayed three months. Perhaps she was afraid, pregnant for the first time, unmarried, having been visited by an Angel, feeling the magnitude of the life inside of her…perhaps she was afraid.

She didn’t know what to do. She was young…so she sought out companionship, she sought the wisdom of another woman going through the same thing…an older woman…someone she could trust. And Elizabeth’s immediate reaction was to give Mary an affirmation, a blessing.

A blessing is a word, or a ritual, that promises that all will be well. That whatever happens, that whatever our fear or hesitation, all will be well. A blessing asks us to trust that all will be well.

We can hold trust without knowing exactly the object of our trust. We can hold trust without believing in a transcendent God. We might trust the universe to bring blessings of healing and wholeness. We might trust a God of Love to care for us and those we love.

We might trust in the human spirit to offer compassion and hope. We might trust in a special and profound relationship. Stories of this season are often about trust…will the light return, will Santa come, will my gift be enough, will things be better next year?

In what do you trust?

Is there a person you trust to lead you? Is there something or someone you would trust enough to risk everything? Because when we take that leap of faith…it will have efficacy only if it is the real thing…only if it’s all or nothing…only if the outcome is either death or rebirth.

So suppose you don’t want to wait any longer? Suppose you want to live toward the answer of developing trust? Suppose you want to take a leap and change your life, or your little part of the world…Suppose you want a true blessing, the reassurance that all will be well…what can you do?

Become a servant! Yes, you heard right….you can become a servant.

This is my advice for the holidays…become a servant.

Many of you already serve others. Many of you are in service- oriented jobs. Many of you take care of families, serve the elderly, or the very young. But do you think of yourself as a servant?

Have I told you the story from Herman Hesse’s book “Journey to the East?” It’s the story of a band of men on a mythical journey…the central figure is Leo…Leo accompanies the party as the servant. He does all the menial chores, and he also sustains the party with his spirit and his song. He is a person of extraordinary presence. And all goes well on the journey until Leo disappears…then the group falls into disarray and the journey is abandoned. They cannot make it without the servant, Leo.

Many years later, one of this party after searching for Leo finds him in a monastery and they take him in. He soon discovers that Leo was in fact the head of the monastery. ..Leo was the guiding spirit- the great and noble leader.

Leo was a servant leader.

Imagine if all of our leaders were servant leaders…if it was their spirit and song than made things work…if it was their very presence that brought blessings of wholeness to the community.

Imagine if we all tried to live as servant leaders?

And what if we learned to trust those who served?

Isn’t that part of the message of Christmas, trust those born in a lowly stable, trust those who are pregnant, yet unmarried, trust the generosity of strangers, trust the star that guides you in the night, trust that all will be well.

How can you become a servant?

In the seminar I told you about last week, at the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral, Rev. Jim Forbes called on each person to know and articulate their life project. Everyone ought to have a life project, according to Jim. A dream, a possibility, a path that focuses their life. Something they dedicate themselves to. This project might change as we get older…or it might just be refined, deepened…as we get older and further along our spiritual path, our project just might become more clear.

Jim says his current project is to work toward “Healing the Spirit of the Nation”….he says if each high school student could imagine and commit to a life project, there would be less need to watch TV or play video-games, or shop at the mall…or engage in anti-social behaviors…or become depressed, or bored. The same is true for all of us, of all ages.

What is your life project? To what do you devote your precious energies?
What gets you up the morning, singing?
What might lead you to the edge of something wonderful?
What project might just make you into a servant leader?
What project might lead you away from cynicism and toward trust?

It needs to be particular…it needs to grow out of your life story…it needs to speak to the needs of the life you live…it needs to be a source of blessing…and a healing path.

At our seminar we turned to the person next to us and tried to articulate our life project in just a few minutes. But it’s a big question to answer without time to think about it. But I hope you will think about it. And when you figure it out, put words to it, I hope you will tell each other…and email me…or write it in your journal.

At the seminar, I said that my life project is about teaching others to use the struggle in their lives as material for deeper growth and transformation. Life is hard, resistance is a path, suffering will come, and we can use the struggle, learn from it, read about the struggles of others and take courage from their stories.

So what are we waiting for…let’s get going with our life projects, with our ministry…with becoming servant leaders…but wait, we’re scared, we’re unprepared, we’re feeling alone in our endeavour, we’re confused, tired, struggling, hurting…

Considering such a big undertaking as a life project brings us back to the question of trust. How can we do the work of Christmas, the work of creating a counterscript, the work of building a world that favors the poor, the child, the hungry and the sick…

On what can we rely? In what do we trust?

As for me, there are two things that I trust…the first is community. Specifically religious community. My life story is that religious community changed my life. Without my church inspiring me, I would not have gone to college. Without my church inspiring me, I would not have gone to seminary. Without my church inspiring me, I would not know that I had power to make change in myself, in others and in the world. Without my church I would not know the power of serving.

I think Mary went to Elizabeth’s home seeking community. She knew she needed the support of ordinary family life. She knew she needed to belong somewhere, to be seen for who she was, to be blessed by a woman who saw her, in the context of her life project… saw all of who she was.

The second thing I trust, is not a what or a who….it’s not an idea or a concept…it’s not really a material thing at all…

What I trust is a suspicion, a guess, a yearning that I sometimes feel…I trust something that I can’t see and don’t understand…it feels kind of like trusting life itself…trusting in the blessings of each day….trusting that there is something more, something bigger, deeper, better, some amazing possibility just out of reach… It feels very religious…if I were a theist, I might call it God…

There’s a song…that captures this feeling of trusting the unseen…a song written by Duke Ellington…a song that honors Sunday…as the day that can be trusted to get a person through the week, it is a song of trust in God…that there is a power that will see all people through. It’s not the words or the theology of this song that I love, it is the feeling…(the choir will sing, Come,Sunday) If you’d like to sing along…#202

Bless each of you in the week ahead…bless this community of faith, may we all be as servants, may our trust deepen…may we return to this community each Sunday and through the week, knowing that this is where we belong, this is where we will grow and be transformed…this is where the work of Christmas will continue. So May it Be.

Amen.