Waiting and Wonder.

As we move to celebrate the beginning of the Church year and season of Advent on Sunday, let's look at the patterns of life that this season offers us. Looking around the church, we can see the traditional signs of Advent: violet coloured hangings and vestments. We would in some places find dried flowers rather than fresh in the church and maybe even an Advent wreath. Just what do these observances suggest? Well, they are rituals of waiting and wonder.

We begin our church year a bit differently to what happens in the community within which we live. We do not start with something from the past that becomes present once again. Our church year starts, instead, with a strange emptiness, a strange sense of expectation. The church year starts with waiting and wonder. Yes, we wait and wonder. Unless we do this, we will find no real reason for celebration. Waiting and wondering are signs of a heart that lives, a heart that remains open to God. Yet waiting and wondering are not much spoken about. They are not honoured among us.

Who are we who wait, who are the people in this world who wait? They are powerless people. They have no choice but to wait. The possibility of becoming one of these people makes us uncomfortable. Who are the people in this world who wonder? They are small children standing there with their eyes widened with wonder. The prospect of behaving in this way makes us uncomfortable, too. The way of waiting with the wide eyes of expectation like children, is something that has disappeared within us and sadly it does make us uncomfortable.

To have it made or be part of the top or in group in society today means not waiting, not wondering. Making it as we would call it, means you are too busy to wait, too important. Making it means you are too smart to wonder, too adult. We want it all now. We find it impossible to wait for anyone or anything. And surprises make us uncomfortable. We avoid experiences of wonder. It's easy to screen them out. But what makes us afraid? What keeps our pace fast, our vision narrow?

It is because waiting and wondering open us to the possibility that current arrangements are not here to stay. It is because waiting and wondering make us realise that solid structures (for which we have worked so diligently) come apart and might give way to something unexpected. That time in hospital has taught us about our mortality, that loss of a loved one has left us facing a life on our own, that loss of abilities and gifts has bought us into line with the rest of the community.

So, waiting and wonder provide the church year with a powerful start. We are disoriented, as though we were spinning in a circle. We experience both dread and delight. To wait and to wonder do not prepare us for the blank spaces on a new calendar. They do not train us to keep a schedule. Instead, waiting and wonder prepare us for a life where God acts, where the unexpected future is unfolded as if it were a mysterious treasure map -- which, of course, it is.

When we accept the Advent's invitation to wait and wonder, we find ourselves in good company, with others who have tasted dread and delight. There are many such people here in Advent. This week Jesus tells his disciples he will return at an unexpected time. He will arrive like a burglar breaking into a house. The disciples are left to wait and wonder.

Another opportunity comes once the services have been celebrated, the gifts opened, the dinner eaten, and in the living room, the decorated tree is left to stand guard. Tired and at peace, we may choose to go to bed for a Christmas nap. And when we lie down, we are not only people in our prime, but the old men and women we may become, and the children we once were. About to drift off into black velvet slumber, we may wait and wonder for a moment about the Christ who was, and is, and ever shall be -- the beginning and end of all our dreams.

The candles of Advent, the changes in our building, the violet linen and vestments -- all of them invite us to wait, to wonder, to look for Christ. He was born in an obscure barn in Bethlehem. He will come with great glory when this world folds up forever. Now he is hidden where he can be found only by those who wonder and wait.