Advent waiting: A time for a spiritual reboot

As we listen to these readings for the first Sunday of Advent, we may be perplexed by what we hear. First, Paul’s letter to the Romans urges his listeners to put away what is dark and cultivate the armor of light.  This seems like an odd summons at a time of year when, in some parts of the world, daylight grows shorter and darkness dominates during this winter season. Then, at first glance, the Gospel may seem even more confounding. While Advent is about preparing for the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, the Gospel presents Jesus toward the end of his life, instructing his followers about the time when the Son of Man will come again. 

If we consider these texts together, however, we may discover what is common and even instructive about them. Both readings really do invite our attention to this season of Advent, to this time when we anticipate and celebrate Christ’s birth and entry into our world. Paul’s letter to the Romans and Jesus’ teaching in the Gospel invite us to participate in an undefined period of waiting . . . and that may be one among many of the challenges that we face this season.  

Waiting! Yes, waiting! Many find waiting boring, even irritating. For those of us “doers,” waiting is a waste of time and a period when we could be doing something productive. Think about our experience of rebooting a computer. We wait and wait until it alerts us that the waiting is over. Often, we don’t even know how long that will take. Thus, for most of us, waiting is that time we can’t wait to be over. Yet both Paul’s letter to the Romans and Jesus’ teaching to his disciples about the coming of the Son of Man invite us to meaningful waiting. Instead of a frustrated non-attention, the waiting Jesus describes is shaped by alertness. He notes that if the owner of the house had known during what part of the night the thief was coming, the owner would have stayed awake and remained alert.  Or had those who lived carelessly been paying attention during the time of Noah, they would not have been overcome by the waters of the flood.  Paul also invites his listeners to stay awake, not to waste this time of waiting but to use it to cultivate good and virtuous behavior.  

The great Jewish author, Simone Weil, once wrote, “Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.” This first Sunday of Advent initiates the start of a new liturgical year where we once again trace and reflect upon the life of Jesus beginning with his birth.  It also offers us an opportunity to make a new start, a kind of rebooting of our spiritual life. Like a woman’s pregnancy, we can seize the opportunity to nurture the wait, to cultivate newness in our spiritual life, to renew our attention to Christ present in our lives now. We can make these four weeks of waiting a space that dares, even in these days, to cultivate hope. Such waiting brings about an audacious openness in us, an openness to all possibilities, even unimagined ones. The reading from Isaiah suggests that our waiting makes a space for the seemingly impossible. It invites us to imagine God’s vision for the world, a world where all nations come together and “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, where nation does not lift up sword against nation, a time when there will be no war anymore.” To wait so open-endedly is an enormously radical stance toward life, especially in a world so preoccupied with control. Such waiting invites patience and an expectation for something hidden that will be made manifest. And as we wait, we believe that the manifestation of Christ was not only to those who lived at that time in Bethlehem, but also can be made manifest to us now, in our lives. Thus, such waiting is not passive. It is an active time when we reboot our spiritual quest, wait expectantly, and ready our hearts and lives for the Christ we believe will be made manifest again in this season. And, indeed, that is a wait worth waiting.