Walk into the critical care waiting room of any hospital, and you will see people in all stages and situations in life. There’s a young mother with two children who sits down by an older woman, her mother perhaps, so they can take turns visiting Dad beyond the locked doors. There’s a doctor talking quietly with a couple to offer the latest news about their loved one. A woman cries into the phone put there so that families can stay in touch. And then a doctor in scrubs walks through doing his regular job in a room where most people are feeling quite irregular, like their lives have been turned upside down.
This is a room where people wait. They may watch a program on TV, or read an old magazine article, tell familiar stories, or cry fresh tears, but they wait, and much of their waiting is waiting on prayers to be answered.
A college senior is just a few weeks away from graduation. He’s sent out over a hundred job applications for a job that never seems to materialize. He’s been rejected so many times that it begins to feel hopeless. He agonizes over what will be next. Could he even get enough work waiting tables to keep him from having to move home with his parents? When will he get his break? After all, he only wants an entry-level position. His grades were fine, interview skills normal, but no one out there seems to be hiring.
I know his plight. I once got two rejection letters from the same church as if one weren’t enough. It took two years of waiting, six months of that being a “lame duck” pastor before this job came through, and I consider myself a pretty reliable candidate. We wait on our callings, and as much as we want to claim that there’s a divine purpose behind each of our lives, God doesn’t seem to care that most people need a job to survive.
It’s another cold night in the poor part of town. Curls of smoke rise from most of the chimneys, but not this one. It was a choice, eat or pay the bills. The gas just got shut off today. Next week the decision may be food or medicine. In another month, they may need to either move in with relatives or end up on the street. It doesn’t take long to run to the end of one’s rope, and this is one of the better cases, they have a roof over their heads, at least for now. What about the homeless? What about the friendless and those who have no one to call on?
Who do they turn to? God? Can they even be introduced to the God that we know without cleaning up, sobering up, and dressing up? A pastor in this Presbytery who is trying to reach out to the outcasts of our time asked a roomful of clergy this humbling question, “Who will be the pastor to the pastor-less?”
In desperate times, “Comfort, O comfort my people says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” When we feel lost and alone, like the world has turned against us with failing health, or bitter rejection, or the crushing agony of not being able even to meet our own needs, the prophet gets a word from God that says, “Offer them comfort. Speak tenderly to the ones who have been dealt a harsh hand. Let them know that their penalty is paid and God’s time of punishment is over.”
We don’t often deal in this kind of language of “sins punished” today, but we do talk about laziness punished and we speak about the need to pick ourselves up and move on, to work harder, to earn our own rewards, and to accept the harsh realities of death. We tell ourselves these tales because we want to hear that we couldn’t end up in the same boat with that much pain. We don’t want to know that we could find ourselves lonely and destitute, so we make up stories about the American dream tied in with the Puritan work ethic and think it’s a good and noble thing.
Come on. We all need to know that we are loved through the hardships of life, not pretend that they don’t exist. Otherwise, we better keep handing out the Prozac. Our prospects for a pain-free life are bleak. Sometime in our lives, we will know loss if we have known love. We can’t have it any other way. In the musical “Rent,” different members of an AIDS support group asks in song, “Will I lose my dignity?” Dignity is a strange term. People who are dying lose functions that we take for granted, and yet dignity is much more than a bodily function. Our dignity has to do with having our vulnerability as human beings respected. Is it OK to be human? Is it OK to laugh, to hurt, to make mistakes, and ask for forgiveness?
In the depths of pain and loss we need to know that God will be there. Interestingly enough, God makes us partners, responsible for caring for each other in the wilderness times. Harkening back to the Exodus, the wilderness can be a time when the community dissolves in tension. Going forward to the disciples, they can’t take the pressure and they deny and betray Jesus at the end. But this prophet – Isaiah – says, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.” That is no small task. Are we up to making a highway for God in the desert, lifting up the valleys, lowering the mountains, making the uneven ground level, and the rough places a plain. This is a total reordering of what USUALLY happens in the wilderness. Usually, the divides get deeper, the deserts only serve to make us lost or dry, the mountains tower over those caught in the valleys, and there is no level playing field in sight.
What do we do when we are waiting not so patiently for God’s comfort? What can we do when we’ve called on God and God has yet to answer? 2nd Peter says, while we wait for the last blow to fall, we are to strive to be found by God at peace, without spot or blemish, and to regard the patience of the Lord as salvation. It’s another tall order. Once again, in the God-awful waiting time, we are to work for peace, make our confessions, and be able to say “Hallelujah” when God’s love finally showers over us with the comfort that we’ve been waiting for.
Ironically, it’s the powerful who have little patience, but in the songs and artistry of the powerless, we find the blessing of waiting in the ways God intends. There’s a spiritual that comes from the African-American tradition that says, “He may not come when you want him, but he always comes on time. He’s an on time God.” In our own self-centered ways of looking at things, it can be hard to see God’s timing at work. We are not patient in times of sickness or death. We are not humble when we are waiting for God’s call. We are shamed and embarrassed when God makes us stretch our last paycheck to its very limit. But God is never late. God is an on time God. The buzzards may be circling, but God isn’t through with us just yet!
The straights that I’ve been through have not been particularly dire in my brief time so far here on earth, and yet I know the agony of earnestly needing God’s comfort especially in those times when God’s comfort seems late to arrive. But it has always come when I needed it most – sometimes from unlikely places and situations. It’s true that not everyone will have eyes to see, and they may be consumed by anger or heartache that blinds them to God’s purposes. It’s true that some may cover over pain too quickly and never really be healed through it. It’s true that some may know terrible atrocities and be buoyed up by God’s love when another has what seem to be minor issues and yet dissolves into fear. We don’t know what our futures will bring. What we can know is that God will always be there for the final count. God presence lingers in critical care units, and with desperate young people searching for their way, and with the poor to whom God has entrusted the kingdom. God will be with us too.
Amen.