Worth the Wait

The message given in the Sunday night worship service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on November 27, 2022.  The Bible verses used are Mark 1:1-8.

How many of you are really anxious for Christmas to come?

We all have different times when we start really getting into Christmas, when we feel like we just cannot wait for it to come.  Some people started way back in October, or as soon as Halloween is over.  For some people, it’s when the Hallmark Channel starts showing Christmas movies.  For others, it’s today, the first Sunday of Advent, when the church starts focusing on preparing for Christmas.  Or maybe it’s when we decorate the sanctuary, or maybe when you decorate your house for Christmas.  For me, when I start hearing Christmas music on the radio is when I really start getting into Christmas.

           It can be hard to wait for Christmas.  It’s hard for me sometimes, too.  It was especially hard for me when I was a kid.  See, my birthday is December twenty-second, so not only was I waiting for Christmas, I was waiting for my birthday, too.  And it was hard.  I had all this stuff I wanted, stuff I was waiting for and hoping for, stuff I could not get for myself, but I could not find out yet whether I was going to get it.  I wanted the time to pass quickly and for the big day to come, but time just kept moving one day at a time.  All I could do was wait.    

But then, finally, the big day would come, and sometimes I would get exactly what I wanted.  And when I did, it was always worth the wait.  That’s the thing—anything that’s really good is worth waiting for.

Now, put that in the context of the first Christmas.  In a sense, though, the whole world was waiting for it.  The world had been waiting, really since the first humans walked the earth.  You probably remember the story of Adam and Eve and the serpent.  That’s the story of sin entering the world.

As soon as sin entered the world, humans became separated from God.  We tried to find our way back.  That’s what all that Old Testament law was about.  The theory was that if we could just follow all the rules, if we could just do everything the way we’re supposed to, then we’d be the people we were supposed to be, God would be happy with us, and we’d feel close to God again.

Maybe that could’ve worked.  We’ll never know, because we humans never could follow all the rules.  We could never do everything the way we’re supposed to.  The thing is, we were trying to do something by ourselves that we cannot do by ourselves.  We were trying to get back to God by our own abilities, and by our own merits, and that simply was not possible.  It was not possible because we were and are sinful people, and sinful people cannot follow all the rules perfectly and do everything we’re supposed to do, no matter how hard we try.

Eventually, people figured that out.  They knew they could not get back to God by themselves.  They knew they needed God to bring them back.  In other words, they knew they needed a Messiah.  They knew they needed a Savior.

They knew they needed a Savior, but they had no way to get one.  There was no way they could bring a Savior about.  They knew, from scripture, that they’d been promised one, but there was no way they could cause the Savior to come.  They wanted the time to pass quickly and for the Savior to come now, but time just kept moving one day at a time.  All they could do was wait.

And so, they waited.  Day after day.  Week after week.  Month after month.  Year after year.  Eventually, it became decade after decade, even century after century.  They waited, and they hoped, and they prayed.  And nothing happened.  They waited some more, and they hoped some more, and they prayed some more.  And nothing continued to happen.           

Eventually, some of them got tired of waiting.  Some of them got so desperate that they started following false Saviors, false Messiahs.  Some of them got discouraged.  They decided their hopes were worthless, that there was no point in praying.  Either God did not hear their prayers and was not going to answer, or God did not exist at all.  And so, they quit waiting.  They gave up.

And so, when the Savior finally came, they missed it.  Think about that.  Can you imagine what that would be like?  They’d waited all that time, all those years, but they just could not wait long enough.  And then, what they’d waited for and hoped for and prayed for finally happened, and they missed it.  They saw it, maybe, but they could not recognize it for what it was.  As John says, “the world did not recognize him.”  That’s an incredibly sad thing, when you think about it.          

We wonder, sometimes, why God waited so long.  We don’t know, of course.  We never will know.  We assume there was a reason.  There are theories people have, but we’ll only know when we get to heaven and can ask.  And at that point, it may not matter to us any more.

What we do know is that, for those who did not give up, for those who did not get tired of waiting, for those who kept waiting, and kept hoping, and kept praying, it was all worth it.  It was worth the wait.  Because, eventually, the Savior came.  The Savior came, and they no longer had to be separated from God.  They could come back to God through their belief in Jesus Christ as the Savior.           

So can we.  We don’t have to miss out.  We still wait for Christmas, but we don’t have to wait the way they did thousands of years ago.  We don’t have to wait for something to happen.  We just wait to celebrate the anniversary of something that’s already happened.

We don’t have to wait for the Savior to come.  The Savior has already come.  We’re not waiting for the first Christmas.  We can have Christmas any day of the year.  Any time we make a decision for Christ, any time we dedicate our lives to following Jesus, it can be Christmas Day for us.  And any time we renew our decision for Christ, any time we re-dedicate ourselves to following Jesus, it can be Christmas Day for us, too.  We don’t have to wait.  We can do that any time.  We can do it now, today.           

You know, when I was a kid, Mom and Dad would try to get me what I wanted.  They did not always succeed.  Sometimes what I wanted was not practical or was not good for me.  Sometimes they made mistakes because they’re human.  But they tried.  God, though, did not need to try.  God knew exactly what we wanted and what we needed.  God knew the one thing we could not get for ourselves.  And that’s what God gave us:  a Savior.

When we’re kids, and we get just what we want for Christmas, we don’t hesitate, do we?  We tear off the paper, we see what it is, our eyes get big, we get a big smile on our face, and we take it out of the package as fast as we can.  We cannot wait to start enjoying the incredible gift we’ve been given.

And yet, too many times, we don’t do that with the most incredible gift of all, the gift of salvation.  God has given us this incredible gift, but so often, just like people did two thousand years ago, we’re not sure about it.  We see it, but we don’t always recognize it for what it is.  We wait, as if we’re deciding whether to accept it.  And so, sometimes, we miss out.

So, sometimes, it’s God’s turn to wait.  We’re no longer waiting for the Savior to come to us.  Instead, now the Savior is waiting for us to come to him.

God will never get tired of waiting.  God will never give up on us.  God will never quit on us.  God does not want to wait, of course.  God wishes we would make the decision now, today, to dedicate or re-dedicate our lives to God.  But God is willing to wait.  God is willing to wait because, to God, you and I are worth waiting for.

Really, that’s the most amazing thing of all.  We understand why it’s important for us to be close to God.  What’s hard to understand is why it seems to be important for God to be close to us.  We understand why it’s worth waiting for God.  What’s hard to understand is why God would decide it’s worth waiting for us.

Yet, God does that.  For reasons that we cannot understand, reasons that don’t really make any sense to us, God does want to be close to us.  God does think that you and I, the sinful people that we still are, are worth waiting for.

When you think about how strong and powerful God is, and how small and weak we are in comparison, there really can be only one reason for that.  God loves us.  We’re God’s children, and God loves us, and God thinks we’re worth waiting for.

When you think about it, that’s the real message of Christmas.  God gave us the greatest Christmas gift of all.  God gave us just what we’d been waiting for:  a Savior.  It was exactly what we wanted and exactly what we needed.

The world waited for a Savior for thousands of years, but we don’t have to wait any longer.  Let’s not make God wait any longer, either.  Let’s make the decision today to dedicate or re-dedicate ourselves to God.  Let’s accept the incredible gift of the Savior that God has given us.